It’s been a revival year for AMD. Its Ryzen chips thrust it back into the desktop arena — so much so that it practically forced Intel to dramatically ramp up the capabilities of its upcoming eighth generation Core CPUs. And with its RX Vega video cards, AMD finally had a way to compete against NVIDIA’s latest batch of GPUs. Now, the company is setting its sights on laptops with its upcoming Ryzen Mobile chips. And, as you might expect, they’ll feature integrated Vega graphics. AMD’s goal? To power ultrathin laptops that can still play a few rounds of Overwatch.
Although AMD is no stranger to laptops, it’s never been a market where the company truly shined. Last year’s seventh-generation APUs (its term for processors that combine CPUs and GPUs) helped it catch up with Intel. But with Ryzen Mobile, AMD is looking to leap far beyond the competition. The company claims it delivers desktop-class CPU performance, and its integrated Vega graphics are about as powerful as NVIDIA’s GTX950M dedicated GPU.
To start, AMD is launching two new mobile processors: the Ryzen 7 2700U and Ryzen 5 2500U. Both chips will pack in four cores with eight threads — just like Intel’s eighth-generation laptop processors. The higher-end Ryzen 7 will feature clock speeds between 2.2GHz and 3.8GHz, and it’ll pack in 10 Vega cores. The Ryzen 5, meanwhile, will see between 2GHz and 3.6Ghz speeds and eight Vega cores. In comparison, Intel’s new chips can reach up to 4.2Ghz, but its integrated graphics aren’t nearly as powerful.
Source: Engadget
