A few months ago, AMD teased their upcoming Ryzen 4000 CPUs for laptops. This was the next step forward since they have been giving Intel a hard time on the desktop front with their high-performance CPUs at all price brackets.
On the laptop side, Intel had almost total control of the market. Laptops with AMD were seen to be inferior to the ones running Intel. They were slower and were put into a chassis that was mostly plastic.
Well, in 2020, that is all about to change. The new AMD Ryzen 4000 CPUs are incredibly exciting since they offer high core counts and better performance for less money. This was clearly evident from yesterday’s announcements.
They started with the higher end 45W 4900H and 4900HS early this year which destroyed laptops running Core i9 9980HK processors, which was incredible. Videos were made of the first laptops running the Ryzen 4900HS which included the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. The G14 was able to destroy a gaming laptop running the 8 core Intel Core i9 9980HK while being significantly cheaper.
Impressive as it is, I was even more excited about the lower-end Ryzen Pro 4000 CPUs that sip less power (15W CPUs instead of 45W ones) but still offer up to 8 cores and a surprisingly good integrated GPU. AMD was quoting 29% increased single-threaded performance, 132% increased multithreaded performance and 13% more graphical performance compared to last-gen Ryzen Pro 3000 CPUs.
Last week, Lenovo announced a bunch of laptops running the lower-end Ryzen Pro 4000 CPUs. Ryzen Pro CPUs are targeted for enterprise customers. The Thinkpad E14 and E15 run the Ryzen 4700U processors which are 15W chips that have 8 cores and 8 threads. The best thing about them is that they will start at $639, which is insane.
Just a year ago, $639 would only get you a laptop with a quad-core 8th gen Core i5 processor or in some cases a 7th Gen dual-core processor. Now, laptop manufacturers are churning out AMD laptops with double or quadruple the core count at this price range, which is just insane. Add to the fact that these CPUs can game rather well makes me excited.
Dave2D also recently reviewed a $650 AMD powered Acer Swift 3 that runs the AMD Ryzen 4700U and it gives you an indication of the kind of performance you are getting with these processors at this price point.
If we are getting such good performance with 8 core AMD CPUs at the $600 mark, then I’m even more excited about the cheaper 4 core AMD CPUs , like the 4300U and the 4450U which will be such a great deal at even lower prices.
The problem for Intel
The onslaught by AMD on this segment is a big problem for Intel. They do not have 8 core 15W chips at this price range of around $600, they only have quad cores at most. The only 8 core CPUs they offer for laptops are the more power-hungry 45W chips found on expensive laptops. These 8 core Core i9 mobile CPUs have been beaten easy by the AMD Ryzen 4800HS.
The other big issue is that Intel seems like they are having problems moving to the next manufacturing process. They have been stuck on the 14nm process for 5 years now, while AMD is on the newer 7nm process.
Intel has also made it extremely confusing to differentiate their CPUs. They have 10th Gen “Ice Lake” CPUs that are on the 10nm process but they were found to perform worse than the 8th Gen “Whisky Lake” CPUs that were on the 14nm process. They also have other 10th Gen CPUs that are codenamed “Comet Lake” that are bundled together with Ice Lake yet they are on the 14nm process.
Intel seems to be quite confused right now and they have been caught unprepared again on the mobile front as AMD pushes their mobile CPUs to laptops. It will be great to see more and more AMD CPUs power laptops in the near future and will certainly bring great performance for less money.
