News that AMD is bringing an unlocked processor to notebooks surfaced last year, starting with the the-topping 5900HX based on the new Zen 3 architecture. Now, it appears the chip is topping Passmark's laptop CPU charts, and the results are promising.
Of course, Zen 3 needs no explanation -- it's already available on desktops with retail availability slowly improving, but it's not come to notebooks yet. Of course, that will still take a while, and in the meantime, AMD's Zen 2 based 4000 series mobile CPUs have topped the charts. Until today.
Spotted by VideoCardz, the 5900HX now tops the Passmark top 10 Common Laptop CPUs list, jotting down an impressive multi-core score of 24,039. This is significantly higher than the previous chart-topper, the Ryzen 7 4800H, which has a score of 19,176 points -- that difference absolutely accounts for AMD's promises of a 19% IPC uplift.
Compared to Intel's top 45W chip, the 5900HX offers significantly higher performance, too. The blue team's closest competition is the Core i9-10980HK at the same TDP, but that chip 'only' scores 16,594 points -- which is a bit concerning considering it packs the same number of cores and threads and operates at the same TDP.
AMD's 'Cezanne' 5900HX is the company's most powerful upcoming laptop CPU, featuring 8 cores, 16 threads, and an unlocked multiplier for mobile overclocking. The chip was previously also spotted besting even Intel's desktop-class i7-10700K, which is no accomplishment to scoff at. The chips' base clock sits at 3.3 GHz, with single-core boost clocks up to 4.6 GHz, and it packs a 45W TDP.
It's not clear exactly when AMD's Ryzen 9 5900HX will come to laptops, but we expect sightings to be rare and expensive when they do. AMD is currently suffering from manufacturing shortages through TSMC, and that situation isn't expected to improve anytime soon.
