AMD’s new processor chips take the fight to Intel

AMD has brought the third generation of its Ryzen chipsets for laptops to CES 2020, unveiling a Ryzen 4000 mobile series based on the company’s 7nm, Zen 2 processor architecture.

Similar to Intel’s Core i3, i5 and i7 offerings, AMD will be selling Ryzen 3, Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 tiers of its two different chip types. These are split between the 15W U-Series, designed for ultraportables; and the 45W H-Series, built for more powerful gaming and work machines.

AMD claims its top-of-the-line Ryzen 7 4800U is “the world’s highest-performing ultrathin laptop processor”, with an eight-core, 16-thread design that offers a 1.8GHz base clock and boost speeds up to 4.2GHz.

The company is also boasting of a 4% lead on single-core performance over Intel’s Ice Lake, Core i7-1065G7 processor, as well as a benchmarked 90% multi-thread lead and a 28% lead on graphics. The new Ryzen 4000 chips are also twice as power-efficient as the previous generation 12nm Ryzen processors, according to AMD.

Altogether, it could spell trouble for Intel, with AMD gunning for the lead over the dominant chipmaker in terms of battery life and performance when it comes to the next generation of laptops. Taking of which, AMD says its Ryzen 4000 chip will land in laptops from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo and other manufacturers beginning in Q1 2020. See below for a full list of the announced chips.

• AMD Ryzen 7 4800U, 15W, 8 cores, 16 threads, 1.8GHz to 4.2GHz
• AMD Ryzen 7 4700U, 15W, 8 cores, 8 threads, 2.0GHz to 4.1GHz
• AMD Ryzen 5 4600U, 15W, 6 cores, 12 threads, 2.1GHz to 4.0GHz
• AMD Ryzen 5 4500U, 15W, 6 cores, 6 threads, 2.3GHz to 4.0GHz
• AMD Ryzen 3 4300U, 15W, 4 cores, 4 threads, 2.7GHz to 3.7GHz
• AMD Ryzen 7 4800H, 45W, 8 cores, 16 threads, 2.9GHz to 4.2GHz
• AMD Ryzen 5 4600H, 45W, 6 cores, 12 threads, 3.0GHz to 4.0GHz