AMD launches Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 mobile processors

AMD has launched its Zen 3 based Ryzen 5000 mobile processors for the next generation of ultra thin and gaming laptops.

The 7nm chip comes with up to eight cores and 16 threads and comes in two types: the 5000U series which is aimed at ultra-thin devices and the 5000H which will be found in gaming laptops.

On the gaming laptop side, AMD paid special attention to the Ryzen 9 5900HX and Ryzen 9 5980HX chips which offer speeds of 4.6GHz and 4.8GHz from a 45W+ power drain respectively.

Alongside a demo showing Horizon Zero Dawn running at over 100fps at 1080p with high detail, AMD highlighted the 5900HX’s performance against the best Intel has to offer – the Core i9 10980HK. According to AMD, the 5900HX is 13% better at single-core tasks, 35% better at general CPU performance and offers a 19% boost on games physics benchmarks. No doubt these are cherry picked benchmarks, but it’s impressive all the same.

Meanwhile, on the ultrathin side, the top-of-the-line Ryzen 7 5800U is the only 8-core processor currently available for ultrabooks and offers speeds of up to 4.4GHz. According to AMD’s benchmarks, it’s competitive to Intel’s Core i7-1185G7 processor, offering an 18% boost on digital content creation, a 7% improvement on office applications and a whopping 44% boost for video encoding via Adobe Premiere.

If AMD’s numbers represent real world usage, this is a chip that will also give Apple’s new M1 MacBooks a run for their money, reporting battery life of 17.5 hours for general use and 21 hours’ worth of movie playback. While AMD was obviously keen to talk up the flagship chips, you should be aware that not all of the Ryzen 5000U mobile processors will be using the Zen 3 architecture – some of the chips destined for ultrathin laptops (the 5700U, 5500U, and 5300U) will stick with Zen 2 innards.

Therefore you should keep a close eye on the model numbers of any laptop you purchase when Ryzen 5000 based laptops go on sale next month.

The full list of chips is reproduced below.

Ryzen 5000H

Ryzen 5000U