AMD’s new Ryzen 5000 processors for laptops are finally here! Let’s get straight into the details.
These are the new processors that have been announced today, so a similar looking lineup in
terms of naming scheme and core count to what was available with Ryzen 4000 last year. A difference
with this new Zen 3 generation is that the top end Ryzen 9 processors now have HX versions.
Let’s start out with the higher end H series,
we’ll take a look at U after - the processors that is, not actually you.
When looking at the specs, we can see that these HX CPUs offer the best possible speeds,
with a 3.3GHz base clock and 4.8GHz boost for the top tier 5980HX.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get official information on HX chips in time,
but I’ve heard they’re unlocked for max performance, hence the plus next to the wattage.
We’ve also got the 8 core 16 thread Ryzen 7 5800H. This replaces the 4800H from last generation,
but with a 300MHz higher base and 200MHz higher boost clock speed at the same 45
watt TDP. The 20MB of cache is both L2 and L3 cache combined together,
my best educated guess is that L3 cache has been doubled from 8 to 16 megabytes.
Below that is the 6 core 12 thread Ryzen 5 5600H, the newer 4600H,
again with 300MHz higher base and 200MHz higher boost clock speeds within the same 45 watt TDP.
Same deal with the cache here, with L3 doubled from last gen.
These processors also have lower wattage HS variants which are perfect for smaller machines.
AMD have provided Cinebench R20 scores for the Ryzen 9 5980HS. This is one of
their best new mobile processors, though HS still does have a lower 35 watt TDP.
AMD are claiming that their single core performance beats Intel’s best currently
available Tiger Lake processor, the i7-1185G7. Multicore is also higher
than the 8 core i9-10980HK tested in the Alienware M17 R3 in this test, or 12% higher.
Rather than rely purely on AMD’s numbers for Intel, I’ve got a lot of my own Cinebench
R20 scores to compare with. I’ve highlighted AMD’s provided results for the 5980HS in red
alongside my own test results. The AMD provided numbers for the 1185G7 are actually extremely
close to my own results for the same chip in the MSI Prestige 14 towards the bottom of this graph,
so I think AMD are fairly representing Intel there.
Their multicore score for the 10980HK was lower compared to
some gaming laptops I’ve tested though, but that’s always going to depend on power and
thermal limits of the specific laptop used. Regardless, for a 35 watt part,
the 5980HS appears to be hanging with higher wattage 8 core processors.
The single core score from the 5980HS is the best I’ve ever seen from a laptop,
passing 600. I’ve recently noted that Intel’s 11th gen Tiger Lake
was a nice step up in single core performance, especially for thinner and lighter machines,
and you can see these higher scores towards the bottom of the graph, but the 5980HS is now ahead.
To be fair Intel’s 11th gen 1185G7 is a 28 watt part,
and Intel did just announce their own 35 watt versions of Tiger Lake, and granted they are
just quad cores, the single core performance will probably end up being pretty similar.
AMD didn’t provide me with the raw Cinebench scores for the 45 watt 5900HX,
but they did note that it’s 14% higher than their 10980HK result.
The 5900HX seems to do better outside of single core in terms of these gains,
but this isn’t really enough results to make a conclusion, think of it more like a teaser.
You’re absolutely going to want to make sure that you’re
subscribed for my upcoming reviews and comparisons of all these new processors.
Now let’s jump back over to the U-series processors, which are designed for thinner
and lighter laptops. I found it interesting that three of the parts are going to be Zen 2 based.
Before even seeing performance results this just seems like a bad idea as performance is
clearly going to differ between Zen 2 and Zen 3, meaning it could be difficult to determine what
level of performance you’re going to get when buying a laptop just based purely on the name.
Something nice to see at least is that SMT is listed as on for all
options. The specs also list all processors with a thread count which is double the core count.
This is great news, because personally I had difficulty
remembering which chips had SMT enabled last gen, and now it’s just all of them.
AMD have again provided a bunch of Cinebench R20 results compared against their last gen
Ryzen 4000 chips. Now only the 5600U and 5800U are Zen 3, the rest are Zen 2, and this shows in
the single core scores as the Zen 3 options see a much larger boost in this workload.
The performance difference between old and new aren’t as big in the multicore score, regardless
of whether or not we’re using Zen 2 or Zen 3 5000 chips. That said, the 4700U, 4500U and 4300U don’t
have SMT, so this boost with the newer 5000 versions is probably mostly due to that change.
Again I’ve compared AMD’s provided results in red against results from laptops I’ve
personally tested in purple. That 5800U score right near the top is basically
the same as my 4800U multicore score in the Lenovo Slim 7, though there is a decent 15%
boost to single threaded score. As always, expect specific scores to
vary between laptop models. This might not necessarily be a best case for the 5800U.
AMD have also provided some comparisons with their top end U chips, the 4800U from last gen and new
5800U. In some tests the newer Zen 3 5800U isn’t that much better than last gen, it really depends
on the specific workload. It’s also doing better than the Intel i7-1165G7 too, granted that is a
quad core part from Intel, and I’m not completely sure how multicore dependent these tests are.
AMD has noted that availability will start from February, and based on this slide it’s also
looking like there are going to be even more Ryzen based laptops than ever before. Given AMD is still
getting on top of supply for Ryzen 5000 desktop, as well as chips for PS5 and Xbox, supply might be
tight, so we’ll have to keep an eye on how easy it will be to actually buy a Ryzen 5000 laptop.
Personally, I’m really looking forward to comparing these processors against
Intel 11th gen. Particularly against the new H series 6 and 8 core parts,
granted at the moment we have no idea when those are coming.
Make sure you’re subscribed for all of my upcoming videos CES laptop coverage.
There’s a lot more cool stuff on the way, in the meantime though,
you can check out some of my other CES videos over here, so I’ll see you over in one of those.