AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs for laptops have finally launched: here's what you need to know
Team Red is all about battery life this time around
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: AMD Ryzen for laptops
💻 AMD has launched its Ryzen 7000 CPU lineup for laptops
🧠 Features several different CPU architectures for different use cases
🤓 Up to 16 cores and 32 threads in the Ryzen 7045 series
🔬 Ryzen 7040 Series built on a 4nm process
AMD has launched its AMD Ryzen 7000 processors for mobile at CES 2023, and pretty much every type of the best laptops have been impacted.
The new CPUs are based on several different manufacturing processes, depending on the kind of laptop they’re meant for. There are HX-series Ryzen processors, for instance, the super-high performance of which are intended for the best gaming laptops. At the same time, AMD is launching some of its best CPUs on a 4nm manufacturing process meant for thin and light gaming laptops with extreme battery life.
It’s a unique approach, but it does mean that not all AMD Ryzen 7000 processors are built on quite the same technology. It’s confusing to be sure, but here are the different series and the architecture they’re based on.
Ryzen 7045 Series | Zen 4 | 5nm
Ryzen 7040 Series | Zen 4 | 4nm
Ryzen 7035 Series | Zen 3+ | 6nm
Ryzen 7030 Series | Zen 3 | 7nm
Ryzen 7020 Series | Zen 2 | 6nm
Some of the chips, like the Zen 2, are based on architecture as old as 2019, but being manufactured on a newer process means they should see better power efficiency and lower prices – though the latter is just speculation on our part. These older-style chips are meant for everyday computing, so they don’t need the cutting edge features as some of the more premium designs out there.
The more premium designs on offer here are extremely attractive, however. The Ryzen 7045 series, based on the same Zen 4 architecture as Ryzen 7000 desktop processors, will have CPUs with up to 16 cores and 32 threads, with boost clocks up to 5.4GHz. That’s a lot of oomph on their own, but AMD packed these chips with gargantuan amounts of cache, with up to 80MB on the flagship.
That 80MB cache is going to be hugely important to gamers, as it’ll cut down on latency in games. Although, we’re going to have to wait and see exactly how well these laptops will perform when we get them in our labs for testing.
AMD truly hasn’t left a single portion of the laptop market untouched with these new processors, and we should start seeing them in laptops of all shapes and sizes within the next few months. But with Intel also announcing its 13th-generation laptop lineup at CES, it’ll be interesting to see who comes out on top.
AMD Ryzen 7000 performance leaks have started
While we haven’t seen these new laptops actually appear on store shelves yet, we are starting to see leaked benchmarks appear. Most recently, the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS has been benchmarked on 3DMark, then leaked on Chinese social media platform Bilibili. The leaks suggest the CPU will be able to hit a score of 11,343 in Time Spy, looking just at the CPU score.
The integrated graphics seem to be a bit of a let down, though, not really marking any significant improvement over the last generation. These benchmarks were used on pre-release drivers, however, so it’s unlikely that they’ll be indicative of final performance, and you should take all of this with a grain of salt.
Still, this performance leak does give us an idea of what to expect when the next-generation laptops start making their way onto store shelves later this year.