AMD has presented at CES the Ryzen 7000 Mobile, the new processing platform for laptops that will have to compete with the Intel Raptor Lake also presented in Las Vegas.
To begin with, say that the platform includes five distinct series to cover the entire product range. And that’s great, but -as we feared- it combines CPU microarchitectures (Zen2, Zen3, Zen3+ and Zen4) and GPUs (Vega, RDNA2 and RDNA3) that can confuse the consumer and that, to be honest, is too much mix with a lot of ‘refried’ component, some with a long time in the market. Intel has a more defined and modern product line, and that is where AMD should go if it wants to repeat the great success of Ryzen for desktops on laptops.
Series on Ryzen 7000 Mobile
- Ryzen 7045 for high-end, extreme gamers and creators.
- Ryzen 7040 for ultra-slim enthusiast laptops.
- Ryzen 7035 for premium thin and light laptops.
- Ryzen 7030 for large consumption
- Ryzen 7020 for the entry range.
That said, the first two series are the most interesting as they are based on AMD’s latest architecture, ZEN 4, which we saw debut with the desktop models in the fall and which AMD has also expanded on at CES. (We will see it in another article)
Ryzen 7045
AMD’s highest performance series for notebooks looks very good. Manufactured in 5 nm technological processes and with all the technology of ZEN4will have versions up to 16 cores and 32 threads native processing working with work frequencies up to 5.4 GHz and will include a whopping 80 Mbytes of cache (L2+L3).
These “Dragon Range” will support DDR5 memories and new connectivity standards such as USB4 that will compete without any problem with Intel’s Thunderbolt. Its graphics performance will be limited with only two RDNA2 compute units, although in this product range it is understandable since this type of CPU will be combined with dedicated graphics. Their TDP consumption will be at least 55 watts and they will be marketed in Ryzen 9, 7 and 5 versions.
Ryzen 7040
The other series of interest will be the one for ultralights, also under ZEN4. Manufactured in processes of 4 nanometers, will offer processors with up to 8 cores and 16 threads, with frequencies above 5 GHz and 20 Mbytes of cache. Being focused on high-end ultralight laptops, here yes AMD mounts integrated graphics of good levelwith 12 computing units and the most advanced RDNA3 architecture.
It will support DDR5 and LPDDR5 memory and also USB4. Its consumption will be between 35 and 45 watts. It should be noted that this series will have a Ryzen AI, a built-in AI engine that can handle video call tasks or sort through a photo library. AMD says that Ryzen AI can multitask with up to 4 different workloads or combine their power into one. It is a novelty that we will have time to comment on. These “Phoenix” will be marketed in Ryzen 9, 7, 5 and 3 versions.
Ryzen 7035 and 7030
Less attractive than the two previous ones by not using the latest ZEN4 architecture and even using Vega graphics chips with many years behind them and which, honestly, have been completely outdated, are manufactured in 6 and 7 nm technological processes and will offer models with 8 nmcores and 16 threads.
They have 20 Mbytes of cache and respective supports for DDR5/LPDDR5 and DDR4/LPDDR4 respectively. The 7035 will support USB4 and will have 12 RDNA2 compute units. The use of Vega graphics in the 7030 -in my opinion- completely rules them out, although they will be the least consuming of the entire series (from 15W to 35W) and essentially cheap.
Ryzen 7020
Finally, point out the 7020 as the entry range to the Ryzen 7000 Mobile. Manufactured in 6 nm processes, they will have 4 cores and 8 processing threads, with 6 Mbytes of cache. For graphics, they will include 2 RDNA 2 compute units. They will be very cheap and we will see them on basic laptops with Windows or Chrome OS.
The Ryzen 7000 Mobile will hit the market in February and some high-end models have already been announced, Alienware m16, ASUS Strix or Lenovo Legion that we have already been presenting to you in the coverage of CES 2023.
