AMD has announced that its Ryzen Mobile processors (Raven Ridge) will be available in laptops for the holiday season. The processors feature Zen compute cores paired with Radeon "Vega" graphics cores in an SoC design. According to AMD, the upcoming Raven Ridge should be up to 44% faster in multi-threaded CPU performance and 161% more graphics performance than Intel's new Kaby Lake Refresh mobile processors.


The Ryzen mobile processors debut with two SKUs. Like for Intel processors, the "U" suffix stands for ultralights, but during the next year we should see more models. Both Ryzen APUs feature four cores and eight threads, and they sport a single Core Complex (CCX). Moving to a single CCX instead of the dual-CCX design currently available in the Ryzen desktop processors is a big step. The design allows a downsizing of the power and thermal. The die shot unveils that there are four-core CCX to the left and Vega graphics core on the right side.

Ryzen 7 2700U and 2500U feature four Zen cores and eight threads fed by 4MB of L3 cache. The processors feature a dual-channel memory controller that supports up to DDR4-2400. While the Ryzen 7 2700U comes with a base clock of 2.20GHz and a boost clock of 3.80GHz, the slightly slower Ryzen 5 2500U sports 2.00GHz base clock and 3.60GHz boost clock. In addition, the Ryzen 7 2700U features ten Radeon Vega CUs while the 2500U comes with eight CUs.

Performance wise, the upcoming Ryzen 7 2700U is 36% faster than the Core i7-8550U during the multi-threaded test on Cinebench R15. The Core i7-8550U wins in the single-threaded test, which is predictable due the design of the Kaby Lake architecture. Due to the Vega graphics cores, the 3D performance is overwhelmingly in AMD's favor. According to AMD, on 3DMark TimeSpy test the Ryzen 7 2700U is fast like a Core i7-7500U paired with a GeForce 950M.

Ryzen Mobile processors are another big step forward for AMD. At the moment the company has a single-digit market share in the mobile space, which usually ships more units than the desktop PC market. With Raven Ridge, AMD has a growth opportunity and we will surely keep an eye on it.







Source: AMD