AMD is officially announcing their Ryzen line of mobile processors. Formerly codenamed “Raven Ridge”, these CPUs bring a new level of efficiency and the latest in Vega graphics to the mobile sector. It also allows AMD to compete with Intel on the ultra-thin laptop segment.
AMD Ryzen Mobile Processors
AMD is introducing two new processors initially: The Ryzen 7 2700U and Ryzen 5 2500U. The “U” designation, stands for “ultra-thin”, offering 24-percent thinner option that previous generation models. Both CPUs have four-cores and 8-threads but differ in clockspeeds and Vega compute unit counts.
The Ryzen 7 2700U runs at 2.2GHz and boosts up to 3.8GHz with 10 Vega CUs. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 5 2500U runs at 2.0GHz and boosts up to 3.6GHz with 8 Vega CUs. Each processor uses the same Zen x86 cores with AMD SenseMI Technology processor-level intelligence.
The main difference is in the implementation of XFR or in this case, mXFR (mobile XFR). Each Ryzen mobile CPU has a configurable 15W TDP, making them super efficient and ideal for premium 2-in-1s and notebooks. The mXFR implementation, gives the mobile CPUs up to an additional 23% performance boost in benchmarks.
Also new for Ryzen mobile is Precision Boost 2, a new opportunistic algorithm which retires the 2-core vs all-core boost design. It offers 25MHz granularity, and a much more intelligent implementation than before. Precision Boost 2 also boasts a much more graceful roll-off and opens up better boost opportunities in real-world applications. This Precision Boost 2 feature will head to the desktop eventually.
Ready for Holiday 2017
No paper launches. These new CPUs are ready for key premium systems for a holiday 2017 release. However, AMD intends to expand options further in 2018 with a much wider range of notebook options. AMD also promises more integration with gaming-class hardware such as FreeSync soon.
Three models from Lenovo, Acer and HP are ready to go and equipped with these processors.
