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AMD claims its Ryzen 3000 mobile chips let you have fun faster

Jon Martindale
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AMD debuted the first Ryzen 3000 processors, but these aren’t the hotly anticipated desktop monsters. These are the new Ryzen mobile APUs, combining Zen+ CPU cores with AMD Vega graphics for an experience that AMD claims can do everything Intel can, whilst making the fun happen far faster.

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The naming conventions used with AMD’s mobile chips can be a little confusing. They use the modern nomenclature of AMD’s latest and greatest but are built on last-generation technology. That doesn’t mean they are slow, but that’s why the 2019 release of the Ryzen 3750H and its fellow CPU debutantes are using a 12nm Zen+ process, rather than the upcoming 7nm Zen 2 architecture.

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Targeting all market segments with its new mobile chip lineup, including gaming, premium, mainstream, value, and intriguingly, Chromebooks, AMD’s new chip range is made up of the following:

Mobile APU Cores/Threads Process Node L2 & L3 Cache Base/Boost Frequency Vega GPU Cores GPU Frequency TDP
Ryzen 7 3750H 4/8 12nm 6MB 2.3/4.0GHz 10 1,400MHz 35w
Ryzen 7 3700U 4/8 12nm 6MB 2.3/4.0GHz 10 1,400MHz 15w
Ryzen 5 3550H 4/8 12nm 6MB 2.1/3.7GHz 8 1,200MHz 35w
Ryzen 5 3500U 4/8 12nm 6MB 2.1/3.7GHz 8 1,200MHz 15w
Ryzen 5 3300U 4/4 12nm 6MB 2.1/3.5GHz 6 1,200MHz 15w
Ryzen 3 3300U 2/4 12nm 5MB 2.6/2.6GHz 3 1,200MHz 15w
Athlon 300U 2/4 14nm 5MB 2.4/2.4GHz 3 1,000MHz 15w

Throughout that range, AMD is targeting average battery life of supporting notebooks of between 10 and 12 hours, as well as support for 4K streaming, and fast startup to emulate the kind of “Always Connected” experiences that are becoming more commonplace. They also sport AMD’s Vega graphics, but not Vega 20, as some suggested they might.

In all cases though, AMD is keen to push the idea that its chips are as good, if not better than, the competition at everything, especially the fun stuff.

“We have faster media editing, faster web browsing, and it’s a tie in productivity,” AMD’s senior technical marketing manager Robert Hallock said in a statement. “You get all the things done in the Office at the same speed as you would any other laptop, but when you’re done, the stuff you really want to be doing, the media editing, the web browsing, the having fun, that’s faster on AMD in 2019.”

AMD backed up these claims with some example frame rates for popular esports games. Rocket League, DotA 2, and Fortnite were all shown to be pushing or even exceeding 60 frames per second when played on low presets at 720P when running on an AMD Ryzen 7 3700U. In its own comparison, AMD showed that handily beating an Intel Core i7-8565U CPU in all games tested, though such comparisons should always be taken with a pinch of salt. Third-party tests without any inherent biases are always going to be more trustworthy.

AMD isn’t just relying on its onboard Vega graphics, though. It also showed off some solutions which would see its Ryzen 5 3550H and Ryzen 7 3750H paired up with more powerful dedicated graphics chips, like AMD’s Radeon RX 560X. These will still be entry-level gaming notebooks but will offer more performance capabilities than mainstream solutions.

Keeping on top of new games and software enhancements, AMD pledged that starting in the first quarter of 2019, all AMD graphics driver updates will be compatible with both dedicated graphics cards and mobile graphics chips. That should lead to vastly improved performance for AMD-powered gaming laptops with new releases.

A new market sector that AMD is targeting in 2019, is the Chromebook space. Traditionally dominated by Intel, AMD’s new Athlon A4 and A6 chips are said to be comparable at most tasks, and significantly faster in others. Since AMD laptops already provide a great value alternative to Intel in mainstream Windows laptops, it will be interesting to see what kind of impact such new CPU options offer Chromebook consumers throughout the year.

Although this is the official start of the Ryzen 3000 series, AMD did not reveal when we can expect the desktop counterparts will launch. It did, however, confirm that a wide range of new-generation Ryzen chips would be shown off at CES 2019.

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Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale
Computing Coordinator
Jon Martindale is the Evergreen Coordinator for Computing, overseeing a team of writers addressing all the latest how to…
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