Chipsets at CES- AMD and Nvidia mobile announcements

 

CES 2021 has wrapped up and today I want to talk about the new AMD Ryzen 5000 mobile series of processors and the new Nvidia 3000 mobile series of GPU's. AMD already released their 5000 series of desktop processors and Nvidia has released their desktop RTX 3000 series of GPU's. However, desktop is not exactly mobile, gaming laptops, mobile workstations, and other use cases are demanding increased power each year. To bring that desktop power to a different form-factor is a whole other issue, AMD and Nvidia both make excellent products, here's their latest in the mobile space. 

 
 

  AMD Ryzen 5000

AMD has been in 2nd place for most of its existence, with failed architecture, inefficiency, and overall slowness plaguing the AMD platforms. Ryzen changed all of that, for the first time in years AMD had a competing architecture that offered meaningful competition to intel's Core series, and with the Ryzen 4000 AMD beat intel in CPU and GPU. With a 7nm design AMD also was finally for efficient than intel, the Ryzen 5000 series is a continuation of AMD's newfound success, bringing more power than ever before. 

The 5000 series is split into 2 skews, the U series, and the H series. The U series being for regular Ultrabook's and are made to deliver performance along with efficiency for long-lasting battery life and productivity. The H series is meant for serious work and gaming, mostly gaming, with "S" and "X" suffixes to differentiate from other chip models with the same names; the suffixes meant to note greater performance.  

 
  

Let's start with the U series chips, the Ryzen 3, 5, and 7 respectively fill out the fill out the ranks of the U series of processors. The flagship U-series chip is the Ryzen 7 5800U, with 8 cores, 16 threads, 7nm process, and a 20 MB of cache this processor based on the new Zen 3 architecture is no slouch. The Ryzen 7 5800U has a base frequency of 1.9GHz and a turbo of 4.4GHz, meaning it can ramp up when the tasks demand it but continues to be efficient and speedy at low power, AMD is projecting 17.5 hours of mixed usage and 21 hours with basic video playback, impressive considering this is the only made-for-Ultrabook processor with 8 cores. 

The other Ryzen 5600U with 6 cores, 12 threads, a base frequency of 2.3 GHz, a turbo of 4.2 GHz, along with a 19MB cache and 7nm design. The other Ryzen 7 5700U, Ryzen 3 5300U. and Ryzen 5 5500U are all based on the older Zen 2 architecture meaning they still beat their predecessors from the 4000 series, but they simply aren't as brilliant as their Zen 3 cousins. So, how do they match against the best-in-category from intel?  

 
 

 

Image Credit: AMD

 
As we see above AMD compare their Ryzen 7 5800U and the intel Core i7-1165G7 along with a Ryzen 7 4800U thrown into the mix for good measure. The results are conclusive with the Ryzen 7 5800U taking the lead in most areas except Word, this does reflect intel's optimization for productivity and more niche use cases, however most other categories are decisive Ryzen victories. How do these processors improve over their 4000 cousins? 

Image Credit: AMD

 
As we see above AMD compares their Ryzen 7 5800U and the intel Core i7-1165G7 along with a Ryzen 7 4800U thrown into the mix for good measure. The results are conclusive with the Ryzen 7 5800U taking the lead in most areas except Word, this does reflect intel's optimization for productivity and more niche use cases, however most other categories are decisive Ryzen victories. How do these processors improve over their 4000 cousins? 

 
Here we see that even the Zen 2 5000 processors have substantial gains over their 4000 counterparts, it proves that the Ryzen 5000 U-Series can bring the heat while being efficient, adjusting to each situation. Overall, I can't wait to see more reviews and more devices centered around the U-series, AMD is making a play in the Ultrabook segment previously owned by intel, if they can extend battery life, if they can lower heat, I think AMD might find itself beating intel once again. Most of the mainstream has never heard of AMD and working with Lenovo, Microsoft, HP, Dell, and other OEM’s will help the masses realize that AMD exists. AMD has almost no brand recognition outside of Gaming and performance use cases, the 5000 U-Series will help AMD make its name known as something other than the “company that rivals intel”.  

 
 

 

Now let's talk about the H-Series, these are geared for gaming laptops, mobile workstations, and for creative laptops. There're made to bring max performance, heat, voltage, and other limitations of Ultrabook's thrown out the windows. Let's start with the new HX designation Ryzen, the Ryzen 9 5980HX. A monstrous processor with 8 cores, 16 threads, a base frequency of 3.3GHz, a turbo of 4.8GHz, a 7nm design, and a 45 watt+ power consumption this chip is the ultimate in mobile from AMD.

 It will be able to handle 4K gaming with ease (of course provided the GPU in said laptop is proficient enough); there's also a Ryzen 9 5900HX with the same unlocked power supply and 8 cores. The main difference between the 5980HX and the 5900HX is the turbo being 0.2GHz faster on the 5980HX. The HX series is an unleashed version of the HS designation with only a bit more bite but a lot more power, literally, the unlocked power supply will use more power because it can.  

 
 

The HS processors include Ryzen 7s, 9s, and 5s and you can find the full specs of all on the chart below provided by AMD. In this case the flagship being the Ryzen 9 5980HS, having 8 cores, 16 threads, same 7nm design, a base frequency of 3GHz, and a turbo of 4.8GHz. It does have a 35W power consumption so it will draw less power however it will also draw less power meaning it will be less powerful than it's HX brothers.  

 
 

Image Credit: AMD

When compared with intel AMD showed how the HS handles 11th gen and 10th gen with ease, AMD placed a Ryzen 9 5980HS against a Core i7-1185G7 and a Core i9-10980HK. Below we see intel catching up but ultimately failing in single-thread and Ryzen having a decisive victory in multi-thread, it shows how fragile AMD's lead is in performance because here the 7nm design won't help much. When dwelling in Gaming laptops a processor likely won't need to worry about thermal limits or thermal throttling allowing someone like intel to throw everything but the kitchen sink into a processor without qualms of heat or efficiency. AMD in the U-Series is riding on its 7nm design to make a difference and it does, but with H-series AMD needed to add an HX series to be able to do more with its power, here's to hoping AMD can keep its lead in mobile power. 

Image Credit: AMD

Nvidia RTX 3000 Mobile 

Speaking of Gaming Nvidia has released some of its GPUs for laptops such as the RTX 3080, RTX 3060, and RTX 3070 GPUs for mobile, meaning of course, Gaming Laptops. I'll start with the RTX 3080, it comes with the new Ampere architecture that should bring better performance and efficiency, it also has the potential to bring up to 16GB of GDDR6 RAM and should deliver 100FPS at 1440p. The 3080 and 3070 should also continue Nvidia's quest for Ray tracing with 4K being possible with both as well (at lower frame rates). To highlight the power of the 3080 mobile Nvidia displayed Microsoft flight simulator on a Razer laptop, it looked great and seemed to run smooth! Here's the video below. 

The Nvidia RTX 3070 brings 90FPS at 1440p and the 3060 brings 90FPS at 1080p. All three GPUs bring the new Max-Q 3rd gen design, made to be thinner and output less hear, this is an optimization geared toward laptops and continues to impress. The design helps companies such as Razer to make the stealth series of laptops that continue to impress. Another note is the Max-Q is promised to bring 2x the performance while using an AI engine to balance power when on and off battery. It also brings WhisperMode 2.0 that allows you to choose your fan's acoustic level, while this will affect your performance depending on what level you choose your fans to spin at, a win for those who would like a quieter gaming experience.  

 
 

Image Credit: Nvidia 

Image Credit: Nvidia 

Image Credit: Nvidia

My thoughts

The reason I decided to combine these separate topics is because these two things, the Ryzen 5000, the Nvidia 3000 series, both are widely known for gaming. Like it or not these two products are going to be used together and together they decide the new generation of gaming laptops. These Processors bring all the well, processing, you might ever need, and the GPUs bring the graphics that just destroy the earlier generation. When you combine these two products or even just one of them, we get masterpieces such as the ROG Zephyrs G14 from 2020 and others such as the Razer blade series that bring the experience to laptops.  

 
 

AMD and Nvidia are still rivals on the PC battlefield but in mobile both are still bringing their best. Working together to make the best product they can. 

 

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