AMD’s Ryzen 4000 “Renoir” launch in the laptop space might be even more significant than the mainstream desktop Matisse parts. This is because unlike the DIY market, the mobility market is a higher volume segment. You’ve got high-performance gaming laptops, low-power ultrabooks, convertibles, hybrids and everything in between. The audience is also not limited to just gamers, with a rather a vast consumer-base from professionals to content creators to mainstream users.
Today a benchmark has surfaced on the PassMark Database that shows the AMD Ryzen 3 4300U performing almost on par with the Intel Core i7-7700HQ. That chip was the Intel mobile flagship just a couple of generations back, and this isn’t the low power U variant like the 4300U, rather the high-performance chip meant for gaming and high-performance laptops.
The Ryzen 3 4300U is the lowest-end Renoir parts with four cores and eight threads with a base clock of 2.7GHz and a boost of 3.7GHz. The 7700HQ was Intel’s best mobility CPU just a few years back. Let that sink in. Comparing the Ryzen 3 4300U to the older Ryzen 5 2500U, the former is a good 15% faster than the Picasso part. It’s important to keep in mind that the 4300U isn’t the chip comparable to the 2500U. That would be the higher-tier Ryzen 5 4500U which comes with 6 cores and a boost clock of up to 4GHz. I’d put the 4500U at least 20-25% faster than the 4300U.
Looking at these results, it’s not hard to tell that things are going to get a lot harder for Intel very soon. And the laptop space is a lot more lucrative than the DIY segment. Losing here will cost team blue a pretty penny. Their response to Renoir isn’t significant either. Ice Lake and Tiger Lake are most likely going to be limited in volume while Comet Lake-H and U are just rebranded 14nm Coffee Lake parts, so no major improvements there. We’ll keep you posted as we hear more.
