Well, folks, I’m finally here: After a series of delays, AMD has unveiled its shiny new laptop processor, the Ryzen 7040U series. Designed to power a new generation of ultra-thin devices, these chips could take laptop performance to a whole new level, and AMD is very confident.
Why do I say this? Well, this company doesn’t mince its words with its promotional material – we have head-to-head comparisons not only with Intel’s 13th-generation competing CPUs but also with Apple’s mighty M2 chip.
AMD doesn’t mince words: The Ryzen 7 7840U, the initial flagship APU of the new series, reportedly offers 9% better 3D rendering performance, 14% better responsiveness, and 72% better multithreading performance than standard M2. It’s what’s found in the latest MacBook Air; We can probably expect the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips to be found in this year’s MacBook Pro.
With up to 8 Zen 4 cores and integrated AMD Radeon 780M graphics, plus XDNA AI architecture, these new chips (formerly called “Phoenix”) are designed for the best ultrabooks on the market. With that in mind, they use really low amounts of energy. Even the flagship 7840U uses just 15W of power at its base, nearly half the base TDP of the competing Intel Core i7-1360P.
The RDNA 3 iGPUs are also vastly improved in this regard, seemingly crushing Intel’s integrated Iris Xe graphics, performing up to 139 percent better than the i7-1360P’s graphics. It’s 1080p on low settings, but still impressive for a system without a dedicated GPU!
There will be four new chips: the aforementioned Ryzen 7 7840U, the mid-range Ryzen 5 7640U and 7540U, and the affordable Ryzen 3 7440U. There is no Ryzen 9 chip yet, we don’t know if it is not planned or if AMD is reserving it for a later release.
The future of gaming laptops?
I’ve already pointed out that AMD’s new chips could deal a major blow to Nvidia and the midrange graphics card market as a whole, and while the performance numbers shown here don’t exactly blow my mind (show percentage comparisons instead of the actual frame rates say so), they are still very good.
AMD is betting on its integrated graphics, and I couldn’t be happier: I’ve long believed that midrange graphics cards should be a thing of the past, and processors like this are a step in the right direction.
After all, AMD already makes the chips that power our modern consoles, from Nintendo Switch to PS5. Most recently, the company unveiled its new Z1-series APUs, which will power Asus’ intriguing new gaming notebook PC: the ROG Ally.
Low-power processors with impressive integrated graphics could be the future of gaming laptops. If you’ve ever used a gaming laptop, you probably know that most of them are big, bulky, heavy machines. This is because they must incorporate a complete graphics card and not only that but also a cooling system, and a large-capacity battery.
Ditch the dedicated GPU and get laptops like the gorgeous Dell XPS 13 – sleek, light, and without the fan hiss of a powerful gaming rig. This is the future, friends. I’m sick of lugging around my old Razer Blade. I want something thinner and lighter, but now. Come on, AMD!