AMD gaming laptops get 16 core 32 thread CPUs this year and RDNA 3 graphics this year!
Sounds great! But there’s one problem that you need to know about first.
Take these two 2023 ASUS Zephyrus G14 gaming laptops for example, they’ve both got brand
new CPUs right? Wrong! The one on the left uses last year’s Zen 3+ architecture, while the right
uses this year’s latest Zen 4, which could be up to 18% faster in single core performance!
So this year it’s critical that you understand AMD’s
new processor naming before making a mistake when buying!
The first number refers to what year it came out, so all CPUs this year start with
a 7. The second number will be a 7 or 8 for Ryzen 7, or an 8 or 9 for Ryzen 9. Kind of
weird they had to use the 8 at all, but ok.. The third number is perhaps most important,
because it refers to the architecture. A 4 means it’s AMD’s latest Zen 4, while anything
lower is last gen. The letter on the end refers to power limit range and what it’s intended for,
so top-end gaming laptops get HX processors, while HS is meant for thinner designs.
That Ryzen 7 7735HS that’s available in this year’s ASUS G14 almost has exactly the same specs
as the 6800HS last year, except for a 50MHz higher max boost. Both are based on Zen 3+,
as far as I can tell this is just a rebadge, hiding an existing product behind a new name.
To be fair, at least now there’s a way to tell which architecture a processor is using based
on its name. Remember a couple of years ago when we had the Zen 3 5800U and Zen 2 5700U
in the same lineup? My problem is people that don’t stay up to date on tech aren’t going to
have any idea about this. You can’t expect your average consumer to know what all the
numbers and letters are going to mean. They’ll just see an 8 core Ryzen 7 and assume it’s good
to go. I suppose you could argue companies like ASUS just shouldn’t use these processors that
have older architecture. I don’t know what the solution is other than just not selling
those older lower cost chips. But at the same time they still do offer good performance,
so it’s kind of good to have a lower cost option. I just don’t like the confusion
that I know this is going to create. But I digress… Let’s get into the new stuff!
The 7045 Dragon Range HX series is AMD’s top-end laptop processor lineup this year,
available with Ryzen 5, 7 or 9 versions - which is
why they’ve got the second number in 7045 series as 0, it changes.
Below that we’ve got the 7040 Phoenix HS series,
which we’ll see in thinner and lighter gaming laptop designs. So the H series
is gone this year, last year’s 6800H won’t be replaced by a 7800H, it’s either HX or HS now.
Below that we’ve got the 7035 series, which also uses HS, but take note that the third number is
a three, meaning that these chips will be using the last gen Zen 3+ architecture,
so I’d expect similar performance to Ryzen 6000 laptop chips last
year. 7045 and 7040 series mean the newer Zen 4, with the higher Dragon Range chips maxing out at
16 cores and 32 threads this year - double what AMD has been offering for the last few years!
What’s equally impressive is the amount of cache, with Dragon Range maxing out at 80 megabytes of
total cache. For comparison, the best AMD laptop processor last year had 20 megs of total cache,
so this is a 4x improvement to cache and a 2x improvement to cores and threads in one
generation. More cache has already been proven to improve gaming performance with AMD’s X3D
desktop processors, so with this I’d expect to see nice boosts in games on laptops too.
While that sounds amazing, the performance increase isn’t quite as high as I’d expect. In
Cinebench, AMD’s top-end 7945HX processor is up to 78% faster in the Cinebench multi core test.
You’d think with double the cores and threads, we should see a doubling of performance, so 100%
faster, but that’s not the case. Not sure if it’s not able to get enough power for all the cores
or what. I know scaling wouldn’t be perfect, but that’s putting aside other improvements
like the jump from Zen 3+ in the 6900HX to Zen 4 in the 7945HX. Those differences seem
more obvious in the single core gains, which are 18% higher in this test compared to last year,
and that’s where the 18% figure at the start of the video came from.
The gains look much bigger in gaming though, at least out of AMD’s hand
picked selection of titles. This is where I’d expect the 7945HX’s cache to shine,
along with that higher single thread performance that we just saw in Cinebench. The GPU used here
wasn’t specified, but hopefully it’s the same one for each laptop. I’ll
be sure to compare it myself as soon as possible, so make sure you’re subscribed!
We can also see the specs for the other HX chips here. It’s really only the Ryzen 9
options that have lots of extra cache, as the Ryzen 7 7745HX has half the amount of
the Ryzen 9 7945HX. This could mean that Ryzen 9 in gaming laptops actually matters this year,
because last year’s Ryzen 7 6800H and Ryzen 9 6900HX had the same amount
of cache at just 20 megabytes, and the performance difference wasn’t that big.
Compared to Intel’s top-end 13th Gen HX lineup, Intel has more total cores at up to 24,
but 16 of those are less powerful E cores, though both AMD and Intel have 32 threads now.
AMD has more than double the amount of cache, but Intel has PCIe Gen 5 support. Gen 5 ssds
are still rare and gen 4 still gives fairly high speed, so I don't think this is as important yet.
AMD haven’t specified their DDR5 memory speed just yet, so I don’t know if it will increase from last
year’s DDR5-4800. I’ve seen spec sheets of two AMD Advantage laptops this year though, and both
listed that they’re shipping with 4800 memory.
AMD don’t have Intel’s new 13th gen laptops yet, because they’re not out,
but compared to the last gen 12900HX which is still a 16 core 24 thread processor,
the 7945HX has some nice improvements. I doubt the 13900HX is going to have a 50% performance
uplift from its extra 8 E cores this year, so AMD might still win in raw multicore performance.
After the top-end 7045 HX series,
we’ve got the 7040 HS lineup. These max out at 8 cores 16 threads, but the Ryzen
9 and 7 options still have the same amount of cache as the higher tier 8 core HX chip.
These new Zen 4 processors also use AMD’s latest RDNA 3 for the integrated graphics,
so it will be interesting to see if this results in a battery life improvement. AMD just teased
that battery life will be better this year, but didn’t go into any specific details.
We should be getting the first gaming laptops featuring the 7040 HS chips in March,
while the higher tier 7045 HX will come earlier in February. Though that Alienware Advantage
laptop shown here will come later because it’s got discrete RDNA 3 graphics, let’s get into that next
This year we’re getting the Radeon RX 7600M XT and 7600M, both with 8 gigs of GDDR6 memory,
a 128-bit bus, and AV1 encoding and decoding. I’ve also just got to say,
thanks AMD for keeping the M on the end to indicate mobile, unlike Nvidia.
Compared to the 6600M last gen, the new 7600M XT is 26% faster in a selection
of 8 games according to AMD. Apparently both GPUs were tested with the same CPU,
but AMD’s notes say that it’s a Ryzen 5 5600X, a desktop processor,
so some sort of test system. While this is fair to compare GPUs, the FPS numbers
shown might be higher than if the laptop GPUs were paired with a lower wattage laptop CPU.
They’re also comparing the new 7600M XT against Nvidia’s last gen RTX 3060 desktop graphics cards,
not the laptop 3060. Their reasoning for this was that they don’t yet have Nvidia’s latest RTX
4060 laptops because they don’t come out until February, so this was their way of showing that
the 7600M XT does quite well in games compared to something a bit stronger than a 3060 laptop.
The S series GPUs are getting an update too,
with the RX 7700S and 7600S, also with 8 gigs of VRAM. These are for slimmer laptops,
so the power limits aren’t quite as high, allowing them to run with smaller coolers.
AMD are claiming a 29% boost gen on gen when comparing the
new 7700S against their previous 6700S in these handpicked games.
This table better shows the differences between AMD’s M and S GPUs. Basically the 7600M
XT and 7700S have the same key specs, it’s just that the 7700S has a lower maximum power limit,
which will mean less performance, but also that it can run in thinner laptops. Same
deal with the 7600M and 7600S, same key specs, just that the 7600M can run 15 watts higher.
AMD’s new SmartShift RSR will also help boost FPS in games with AMD Advantage
gaming laptops this year. Basically RSR uses FSR to boost FPS in games, that’s not new,
what is new is that this smarter version is able to free up discrete GPU resources by
redirecting the upscaling calculations to the APU, or integrated graphics in the processor.
As for availability, AMD mentioned we’re looking at the first half of 2023 for Radeon
GPUs. As mentioned, gaming laptops with Ryzen CPUs and Nvidia GPUs will arrive in February.
Alienware will have an AMD advantage version of their new m18 and m16 gaming laptop going up to
the RX 7600M XT. Dell’s press release actually said this was coming in Q2,
so still technically the first half of the year, but they’re clearer that it’s in the later part.
The ASUS TUF A16 Advantage Edition will feature the new RX 7700S,
and I haven’t actually heard of the other two companies that AMD are promoting here,
but apparently they’ll have all AMD gaming laptops coming this year too.
No offense or anything to those brands, but I’ve been reviewing gaming laptops for 6 years now and
I’ve never heard of any of them. So unless AMD are just trying to shine some light on some of
their other partners here, to me this says that there might not be a whole lot of AMD gaming
laptops this year. Unfortunately there wasn’t any news about anything higher than a 7600M
XT, so there’s no update to the top-end 6850M XT at this time. Maybe there could
have been more laptops if they had more GPU options? I’m not sure.
But given AMD are launching many months are after Intel and Nvidia laptops with
what appears to be a smaller selection of laptops, well it’s going to be a challenge
for them to claim market share. If anything, it really seems like we’re getting less AMD
laptops this year. Lenovo’s Legion 7 series, despite still using AMD Ryzen processors,
is now using Nvidia graphics. Last year the AMD version had AMD Radeon graphics.
ASUS’s popular Zephyrus G14 is also leaving AMD graphics to Nvidia this year,
and ASUS have also moved their Zephyrus G16, which was the G15, and Flow X16 away from AMD
processors to Intel this year, it really makes you wonder what’s going on. Is there just not
going to be enough AMD chip supply or something? I don’t know, but regardless I still can’t wait
to test all this new stuff. But I want to see more competition from AMD, not less.
Come and check out all the gaming laptops coming out this year over here. There are some really
cool models that you need to know about, so I’ll see you in one of those videos next!