All that AMD announced at CES 2021

Intel, however, had successfully maintained its lead in the IPC department up to this point. IPC, or Instructions per Clock, is a metric used to gauge a processor’s single-core performance. Games generally tend to run better on chips with better single-core capabilities. However, with the 5000 mobile series, AMD promises industry-leading IPC (better than Intel) combined with power-efficient and cool operation. Things are about to change, as System Integrators finally start pulling out their big guns, combining Ryzen 5000 series’s high-performance computing capabilities with powerful graphics cards from Nvidia, such as the GeForce GTX 3080.

We have already covered a leaked model from Asus, their yet-to-be-released Zephyrus G15 GA503QS, which confirms widespread speculations that SIs have finally started taking AMD seriously in the high-performance/gaming segment as well. AMD has made a spectacular comeback in a nutshell, rapidly driving forward motion and surpassing their competition within a brief period. On the other hand, however, things look grim for Intel. 

Why should you care about any of this? Intel was able to charge astronomical prices for their parts without competition while innovating at a snail’s pace, without any fear of retribution before 2017. With AMD back in the big picture and graphs and performance figures leaning more and more toward Team Red, we, the consumers, have been the biggest beneficiaries. The tremendous uplift in performance our money can buy today compared to 3 years back is nothing but the result of stiff competition injecting some much-needed innovation back into the industry.

The new Ryzen 5000 Mobile processors lineup has 13 new models, targeting the traditional U and H series market and many other sectors that AMD might be looking to expand. While the clock frequencies and power configuration would vary from model to model, all of the models would be featuring TSMC’s 7nm process node. So without further ado, let’s jump right into discussing a few more details regarding the same.

Core Design

The Ryzen 5000 Mobile processors share the same core design as the 5000 series desktop processors launched in November 2020. The Zen 3 microarchitecture now features an 8-core complex on a single chip having direct access to an expanded non-inclusive 16 MB L3 cache. This architecture ensures that every core has rapid and uniform access to the shared cache reducing memory latency, bolstering the number of instructions the CPU can execute per clock, resulting in significantly improved gaming performance. 4-core complexes used in previous-gen processors meant that it would have to follow longer paths before doing anything useful with the data. The total cache memory was also relatively limited. Thus, in a nutshell, with the new Zen 3 core design, these 4-core complexes have been replaced with a single 8-core complex, and the total shared L3 cache has been doubled compared to the Zen 2 core design, which is responsible for the majority of the performance uplift.

Product Lineup

The top-of-the-line Ryzen 9 5980HX would be featuring a 3.3 GHz base clock, a boost frequency up to 4.8 GHz, and is a gaming-oriented chip with a 45W+ TDP. AMD has also announced that their HX series processors, such as the 5980HX, would be unlocked and fully overclockable. The unlocking of the processor in a laptop environment, though nothing new, is still an exciting development. The various System integrators would now be able further to differentiate their products from the rest of their competition, depending on the market segment consideration. The H/HS/HX parts from AMD generally represent the best AMD has to offer, and we have compiled a list for the same below.

Every processor in the table above, excluding the Ryzen 5 5600H and the 5600HS, features an 8 core 16 thread design. The 5600H and the 5600HS, on the other hand, features a 6 core and 12 thread design.

What is the difference between the H, the HX, and the HS series parts? The HS parts were a new addition to AMD’s processor lineup following last year. They would deliver the same boost clocks and performance figures as the 45W H and HX series processors, but at a reduced power draw. System designs integrating the HS series chips would also need to be approved by AMD, a trend that seems to have fallen off slightly as of today. The H and HX series processors aren’t very different except that the HX series parts are unlocked and can be overclocked.

With the more mainstream U series processors, AMD seems to have reused the older Zen 2 architecture for some of these “5000” series parts, a decision perhaps made to improve the new-product-to-market time taken by AMD but confusing nonetheless. The U series parts are incredibly versatile as they deliver excellent performance from the most budget segments of the markets, all the way upto the most expensive ultrabooks. Their conservative TDP, generally limited to 15 Watts, ensures that they are a good fit for thermally constrained form factors, such as thin and light or ultra-compact notebooks.

The top dog belonging to this lineup is the Ryzen 7 5800U, a Zen 3 part. It features a 1.9 GHz base frequency accompanied by a 4.4 GHz boost clock, packs in 8 cores and 16 threads, all within a thermal budget of only 15 Watts. However, one must note that only the Ryzen 7 5800U and the Ryzen 5 5600U feature the Zen 3 core design. The remaining 5000 series U processors are Zen 2 refreshes.

In the table above, the Ryzen 7 5800U and 5700U feature 8 cores and 16 threads, the Ryzen 5 5600U and 5500U – 6 cores and 12 threads, while the Ryzen 3 5300U includes 4 cores and 8 threads.

Along with all this exciting news, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su is also promoting the Ryzen 7 5800U as the most efficient processor in the world to date, citing its capability to deliver 21.4 hours of battery life on a 53 Whr battery with 1080p video playback and WiFi-enabled, while scoring 17.5 hours in MobileMark 2018 battery life test. Details on screen brightness was, however, not available.

All of the fantastic hardware news mentioned above comes with other incredible tech news, new product launches, and outstanding innovations being showcased in CES this year. Other such products include the LG’s OLED Evo TV lineup, perhaps the brightest OLEDs in the world, along with their new LCD TVs featuring QNED technology, which can give traditional OLEDs a run for their money. And what’s more? New AMD Laptop GPUs based on the RDNA2 architecture is expected to be released in the first half of 2021! More details are unavailable, but be sure to stay tuned as we bring you more updates regarding the same.