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AMD announced its new Ryzen Mobile APUs today, kick off what'due south arguably its nearly important refresh of 2022. Over the by decade, laptops take accounted for a steadily growing per centum of the full PC market place. At the aforementioned time, all the same, AMD was forced to fight a defensive rear-guard action with a CPU blueprint that was fundamentally unsuited to high-efficiency, depression-power operation. As of today, that'south (hopefully) changing.

Similar Intel, AMD is taking a staggered approach to its rollout and launching merely ii new mobile parts: Ryzen 7 2700U and Ryzen v 2500U. Both new cores are 15W parts; a summary of the ii chips and comparison to their closest Intel counterparts is shown below:

AMD-vs-Intel

Right off the bat, at that place are some obvious differences betwixt the Intel and AMD products. The Ryzen vii 2700U has 640 GPU cores at a maximum GPU clock of 1.3GHz, while the Ryzen 5 2500U has 512 GPU cores at a maximum GPU clock of 1.1GHz. In both cases, AMD almost certainly outclasses Intel's graphics functioning. While Intel's integrated solutions are far meliorate than what the company used to field, AMD has historically had an edge in this market.

As far as CPU performance is concerned, AMD and Intel are pursuing different strategies. Intel has significantly lower base clocks, but moderately higher turbo frequencies. How well the chips compare will depend significantly on the specifics of each laptop's design. If both fries are limited to their base of operations frequencies, AMD will have a significant edge, while Intel volition savor a clock reward if both CPUs can run at total turbo frequency. AMD has too left itself a fiddling room to maneuver on GPU performance; there are 11 Vega Compute Units on these APUs, not just 10. Adding more cores only boosts integrated GPU performance just so much — these systems are typically memory constrained — merely it'due south a bit of actress oomph if AMD needs it later on.

Raven Ridge Takes Flight

Given how long information technology's been since AMD fielded a truly competitive mobile product, it's worth stepping through what these new Raven Ridge CPUs deliver. In the slideshow below, we cover the specific improvements AMD is introducing with Ryzen Mobile, including some new features that Ryzen desktop doesn't yet have. Each slide can be clicked to open up information technology in a new window.

I've long maintained that AMD's engineers deserve some kind of award for turning Bulldozer into a CPU that could run within a 15W TDP, merely these new Ryzen Mobile capabilities show how important it is to start from a fundamentally strong architecture. Some of these gains are courtesy of the motion to 14nm manufacturing, but even that comeback only goes so far. Ryzen'southward vastly improved efficiency gives AMD flexibility that Carrizo could never deliver.

In the next slide deck we'll step through AMD's various performance comparisons and claims. As before, click on each slide to open it in a new window.

Ryzen Mobile is an impressive APU on paper, with potent CPU and GPU operation and far meliorate competitive positioning than annihilation we've seen from the company since at least Llano, and possibly before. How stiff it'll exist versus Intel is something nosotros'll have to wait to find out, but at that place are some concerns in that area.

Systemic Challenges

AMD has announced three laptops that will ship with Ryzen Mobile APUs in the near futurity. One thing to exist aware of is that of the three laptops AMD specifically announced yesterday, only ii of them — the HP Envy X360 and the Acer Swift 3 — offer dual-channel DDR4-2400 configurations with upwards to 8GB of RAM.

HP-Envy

Click to enlarge

The HP system only includes the Ryzen 5 2500U, but it has a 512GB SSD selection, a larger bombardment, touch brandish, and USB Type-C. Equally the name implies, this laptop has a rotating hinge and tin can be used in tablet or tent mode likewise. Pricing starts at $699.

Acer-Swift3

Click to overstate

The Acer Swift 3 is designed for a 25W CPU and tin can accept advantage of Ryzen Mobile's XFR clock rates. Information technology offers a 256GB SSD, IPS display, and (assuming it's well-designed) probable higher CPU perf than the HP, thanks to its increased TDP.

Lenovo-IdeaPad

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The Lenovo IdeaPad 720S is the thinnest and lightest organisation of the 3, but it's too the least compelling from a functioning standpoint. This system is limited to a single-channel DDR4-2133 configuration. It'southward prissy to see AMD winning space in this kind of system, but exist enlightened of the memory configuration limitation (Intel-based IdeaPad 700s, for what it's worth, seem to be similarly constrained).

If AMD wants to retake market share from Intel higher up the depression-terminate space, information technology'll need to convince OEMs to market these systems equivalently, and work with companies like Best Purchase to train staff in why an AMD solution is equal-to or meliorate than an Intel configuration. In that location's considerably more upside with Ryzen Mobile than in that location always was with Carrizo, but the lack of a channel marketplace means AMD can't sell these fries to people who want to DIY a laptop the way information technology can in desktop.

Nevertheless, based on what nosotros tin evaluate today, Ryzen Mobile is the strongest mobile product AMD has brought to market in years. There are nonetheless some substantial questions virtually how all this will play out in-market and how shipping solutions will compare against each other, but Ryzen Mobile plain beats the pants off Carrizo and, if AMD's tests are remotely authentic, it should have no problem competing with Intel at a range of price points and system configurations.