AMD's new CPU revealed: 2021 laptops depend on it!

Unlike the traditional PC market, the mobile processor market in recent years has been extremely lively. Although Intel still firmly holds the top spot in the traditional PC market, in the mobile processor market, AMD's Ryzen 4000 series has risen strongly, successfully catching Intel off guard, and Apple's self-developed M1 chip has given netizens a new understanding of the performance and power consumption of thin and light notebooks.

Given the outstanding performance of AMD Ryzen 4000 series mobile CPUs, netizens are now most looking forward to the Ryzen 5000 series mobile CPUs. Finally, some time after the official release of AMD Ryzen 5000 series desktop CPUs, AMD officially announced that the company's CEO Lisa Su will hold a new product keynote speech on January 2, US time. We can basically be sure that AMD will launch the Ryzen 5000U and Ryzen 5000H series mobile processors based on the new Zen3 architecture at the press conference.

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Although the new product has not been released yet, some time ago, a whistleblower on the outside network released information about the Ryzen 5000 series mobile CPU. It is reported that the Ryzen 5000 series mobile CPU still includes two versions, the U series (low voltage) and the H series (standard voltage), for notebook products with different heat dissipation designs. The U series will include two versions of Zen2 architecture and Zen3 architecture, while the H series includes top-level performance chips with the suffix HX, which is expected to support unlocked overclocking for the first time.

First, let's look at the Ryzen 5000U series. As shown in the figure, users can choose the Cezanne-U series of the normal iteration of the Zen3 architecture, including the R7 5800U, R5 5600U, and R5 5400U. Compared with the Lucienne-U series of the Zen2 architecture, Cezanne has a higher positioning, a better core architecture, a better L3 cache capacity, higher CPU and GPU frequencies, and more GPU units.

In addition, users can also choose the Lucienne-U series of Zen2 architecture, including R7 5700U, R5 5500U, and R3 5300U. As previously revealed, the first two products are basically the "vests" of R7 4800U, R5 4600U and other products, and only R3 5300U is 4C8T, which was not available in the previous generation, adding a new option for cheap and thin notebooks. Although it is a "vest", the GPU of R5 5500U has been upgraded to 7 cores and a maximum of 1.8GHz, while the acceleration frequency of R7 5700U has been increased to 4.3GHz and the GPU frequency has been increased to 1.9GHz, which is also a small improvement.

Compared with the Ryzen 4000 series, which is all based on the Zen2 architecture, the product layout of the Ryzen 5000 series is indeed a bit messy. For ordinary netizens, you need to be more careful when buying Ryzen thin and light notebooks next year. Don't buy it for the Zen3 architecture CPU, but end up going home with a Ryzen 4000 series "vest" CPU.

Next, let's take a look at the Ryzen 5000H series. Although AMD has been making great strides in the thin and light notebook market in recent years, Intel still has a clear advantage in other areas such as gaming notebooks. Generally speaking, gaming notebooks don't pay too much attention to CPU performance, and discrete graphics cards will wipe out AMD's core graphics advantage, while Intel processors do have certain advantages under high pressure. However, with the arrival of the Zen3 architecture, AMD seems to want to further stir up the mobile market.

As a manifestation of AMD's ambition, the R9 5900HX was born. According to reports, this processor is the first overclockable mobile processor in AMD's history, with 8C16T, a base frequency of 3.3GHz, and an acceleration frequency of 4.6GHz. In terms of actual running points, the single-core score is 1423 points, and the multi-core score is 6912 points, which is 23% faster than the Intel Core i7-10750H in single-thread and 24% faster in multi-thread. The thermal design power consumption is currently unknown, but it is expected to break through 45W and directly reach the level of 65W.

In addition, the R9 5900HS is the only known 35W low-power version, featuring thin and light standard voltage, 8C16T, and a default frequency of 3.1-4.5GHz, which is 100MHz and 200MHz higher than the R9 4900HS respectively. R7 5800H and Ryzen 5 5600H have been upgraded in terms of architecture, CPU frequency, GPU specifications, etc. compared with their predecessors, which is really exciting.

New products emerge

In recent years, new products have emerged in the mobile processor market, and manufacturers such as Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Apple have all participated in the market, hoping to get a piece of the pie from Intel. It has to be said that AMD is definitely the trendsetter in the notebook market in recent years. The 6C12T R5 4600U and the 8C16T R7 4800U have greatly impacted the notebook market this year, especially the thin and light notebook market, which has almost changed the world, and it is difficult for Intel's 10th generation Core, which is still stuck in 4C8T, to turn around.

Thanks to the strong performance of the Zen 2 architecture Ryzen 4000 APU processor, the demand growth brought about by the epidemic, and Intel's current tight supply, AMD's share in the processor market has increased for eight consecutive quarters. According to statistics from market research firm Mercury Research, at the end of the third quarter of this year, AMD's processor share in the notebook field reached 20.2%, reaching a historical high.

In addition, the Apple M1 chip that came out this year has also attracted the attention of many netizens. Apple's self-developed M1 chip abandons the traditional X86 architecture and adopts the ARM architecture. It is built with TSMC's 5nm process technology and is equipped with an 8-core CPU, an 8-core GPU, and an integrated 16-core neural network engine. The Apple M1 chip using the ARM architecture has comprehensively improved performance, power consumption, and machine learning compared to previous Mac products equipped with Intel processors, bringing a new trend to the thin and light notebook market.

The problem with Apple's M1 chip is that the compatibility of the ARM architecture on the PC side is obviously not as good as that of the X86 architecture. Productivity is not simply writing documents, editing pictures, editing videos, etc. In the domestic market, people in many industries have a strong dependence on Windows, and many mapping, calculation, and industry software only support Windows 10 X86. Even if Microsoft opens support for Windows 10 ARM in the future, Win 10 ARM only supports 32-bit applications, which is not very practical.

According to a report by the well-known research organization Strategy Analytics, with the emergence of Apple's self-developed M1 chip, Apple's notebook computer shipments are expected to continue to soar in the fourth quarter. Personally, I believe that unless Apple can solve the compatibility issues of a large number of Windows X86 applications, notebooks equipped with Apple's M1 chip will only be niche products in the thin and light notebook market in the foreseeable future.

The future looks bright

Although according to the leaked information, the core graphics of AMD Ryzen 5000 series mobile processors have almost no upgrades, which may be suspected of squeezing the toothpaste. But for now, unless Intel is willing to make changes and abandon conservative product design, the main theme of the notebook market next year will still be "AMD is really good."

Yes, the new Zen 3 architecture of the Ryzen 5000 series still uses the 7nm process technology, but it is more advanced than Intel's 10nm SuperFin process. Compared with the first-generation Zen architecture, the Zen 3 architecture has a 2.4 times performance increase per watt, and the energy efficiency ratio is 2.8 times that of the i9-10900K. The new 8-core CCX design can directly share and access the 32MB L3 cache, further improving operational stability.

相比之下，作为处理器市场的霸主——英特尔，近些年来更多是在被动进行改变。从 14nm 到 10nm，英特尔的全新制程经过 5 年时间还没有普及，而产品设计更是食古不化。今年下半年发布的第十一代移动端酷睿处理器，居然全系采用 4C8T 的产品设计，导致 i7-1165G7 这种全新产品，在多核性能上甚至比不过 R5 4600U。

It now seems that the previously stable consumer PC processor field has been turbulent in recent years. Intel, which has dominated the processor industry for decades, is currently investing a lot of energy in high-tech fields such as AI, IoT, VR, and cloud computing, but has run into a bottleneck in its core processor business, and is showing a tendency to stagnate.

On the contrary, AMD has become more aggressive after launching the Zen3 architecture. The Ryzen 5000U/5000H series with a fully upgraded architecture will surely bring more surprises to users, and AMD is likely to continue to expand its share in the notebook market next year. If Intel wants to avoid the sword of Damocles hanging over its head, relying solely on the 10nm architecture may not be enough, and they don't have much time left.