Every section of the laptop market has fresh possibilities, but pay close attention to the model numbers.
In response to a wide range of laptop categories, AMD has launched a great variety of new CPUs in its current-generation Ryzen 7000 series. As well as showcasing its new Radeon RX 7000 series laptop GPUs, the company also unveiled its new XDNA architecture for AI processing, which will eventually be incorporated into everything from the firm’s dedicated accelerators to datacenters to consumer-grade PCs. Dr. Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, gave the opening keynote address at CES 2023. She discussed the current state of computing in our society and the increasing use of artificial intelligence, noting that AMD is well positioned to benefit from this.
With laptops that are smaller, lighter, and more power-efficient, AMD is asserting its leadership. A new naming convention for products has been adopted by the corporation, with the first digit of the product number designating the generation, the second the relative performance within a series, and the third the Zen architecture generation it is built on. The U-series is intended to operate at 15W to 28W in thin and light laptops, the mainstream HS series operates at 35W to 45W, and the high-performance HX models in gaming and professional laptops will operate at 55W or more.
The new Ryzen 7040 series, which starts with the most notable CPU models, is the first to include integrated Ryzen AI hardware based on the new XDNA architecture. The “first integrated AI engine on an X86 processor in the world,” according to AMD. These new CPUs will be able to multitask AI workloads and offload AI processing from the CPU and GPU, resulting in significant power savings. They can support up to four concurrent AI streams. AMD says that its new products are up to 50% more efficient than the built-in neural engine in the Apple M2 SoC.
This decoder will assist customers who may be perplexed by AMD’s new name convention.
Benefits include retaining data on-device rather of sending it to a cloud service for processing and significantly decreasing the battery life impact of AI workloads. According to AMD, in the future, AI on the PC will enable more advanced non-playing characters and better visual quality in games. Other anticipated applications include customised user interfaces and real-time security.
In addition to discussing future use cases for Ryzen AI, Microsoft EVP and Chief Product Officer Panos Panay joined Su on stage at the keynote to discuss current use cases, including real-time noise suppression, portrait blur, eye contact correction, and automatic framing in video calls.
Based on the Zen 4 core architecture, the AMD Ryzen 7040 series has built-in RDNA 3 graphics. AMD expects the battery life of these CPUs, which will be fabricated using a 4nm process, to be 30 hours. The Ryzen 9 7940HS, the highest model, offers eight cores, 16 threads, and a boost clock speed of 5.2GHz. According to AMD, it is between 11% and 39% faster than the Apple M1 Pro. AMD claims that the eight cores and 16 threads of the mid-range Ryzen 7 7840HS outperform an Intel Core i7-1280P in content production workloads by between 23 and 106 percent. In March 2023, the first laptops featuring Ryzen 7×40 CPUs will start to ship.
Within the same generation, many CPU series will target various market groups.
Similar to desktop Ryzen 7000 CPUs, the higher-end Ryzen 7045 series is built on the Zen 4 architecture. It was produced using a 5 nm technology. The top-tier Ryzen 9 7945HX has a target TDP of 55W+, 16 cores, 32 threads, 80 MB of total cache memory, and a 5.4GHz boost speed. With 12 cores and 24 threads, the Ryzen 9 7845HX sits below it, and the Ryzen 7 7745HX has 8 cores and 16 threads. A Ryzen 5 7645HX with 6 cores and 12 threads is also available. The platform supports Wi-Fi 6E, DDR5 RAM, and PCIe 4.0.
These CPUs are designed for multitasking, 4K video editing, and 3D rendering by gamers and producers. With up to 18% greater single-threaded performance and up to 78% faster all-thread performance than the Ryzen 6900HX in Cinebench, AMD claims a significant improvement in mobile game performance as well. In February 2023, the first laptops equipped with 7045 CPUs will start to arrive; Alienware, Asus, and Lenovo have all stated that they will be among the first manufacturers.
AMD’s Ryzen 7035 and 7030 series CPUs are at the bottom of the stack and are based on the Zen 3 architecture. A new entry-level Ryzen 7020 series is based on the Zen 2 architecture.
Additionally, AMD introduced new laptop GPUs. The Radeon RX7700S and RX7600S are designed for thin and light laptops, while the Radeon RX7600M XT and RX7600M are targeted towards the gaming market. Based on the RDNA3 architecture, all four GPUs use 8GB of GDDR6 memory. These GPUs will be available in laptops from Alienware, Asus, Lenovo, and other OEMs starting in February. The company will release Smartshift RSR (Radeon Super Resolution) later this year. This feature boosts performance by shifting upscaling calculations from the GPU to a Ryzen CPU.