Vendors Finally Pair Ryzen CPUs and High-End GPUs In Laptops

Asus ROG Zephyrus G15

Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (Image credit: Asus)

AMD's Ryzen 4000 (Renoir) processors may be mobile powerhouses, but for reasons unknown, laptop vendors were reluctant to pair the Zen 2 chips with high-end graphics cards. Ryzen 5000 (Cezanne), on the other hand, appears to have won over manufacturers as there are already retailer postings of upcoming laptops (via Tum_Apisak) with options that span up to a GeForce RTX 3080.

Pinnacle, a South African IT distributor, has listed Asus' refreshed ROG Zephyrus and Strix gaming laptops with Ryzen 5000 processors. These are examples of some of the potential configurations that will hit the market when Ryzen 5000 is officially released.

Current Ryzen 4000 processors are based on AMD's Zen 2 cores and TSMC's 7nm FinFET node. While the manufacturing process won't change, Ryzen 5000 should usher in the Zen 3 microarchitecture for mobile devices. Zen 3 did wonders for AMD's desktop Ryzen processors by bringing in notable IPC (instruction per cycle) enhancements, and we expect nothing less on mobile.

AMD Ryzen 5000 Laptops

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ModelProcessorMemoryGraphics CardStoragePart Number
ROG Zephyrus G15Ryzen 9 5900HX32GBGeForce RTX 30801TB SSDGX551QS-93210B0T
ROG Zephyrus G15Ryzen 9 5900HX32GBGeForce RTX 30702 x 512GB SDDGX551QR-932512B0T
ROG Zephyrus G14Ryzen 9 5900HS16GBGeForce RTX 3060 Max-Q1TB SSDGA401QM-91610G0R
ROG Strix 17.3Ryzen 9 5900HX32GBGeForce RTX 30701TB SSDG733QS-93210B0R

It is no surprise that the Ryzen 9 5900H will carry the flagship totem for the Ryzen 5000 lineup. The APU wields a similar eight-core, 16-thread setup as its predecessor, the Ryzen 9 4900H. However, preliminary benchmarks have exposed the octa-core chip with a 16MB L3 cache, two times more than the L3 cache on existing Ryzen 4000 parts.

For reference, AMD's H-series processors typically adhere to a 45W TDP, while the special-binned HS-series are held to a lower 35W envelope. When Asus first announced the Ryzen 4000 family, Asus was the first to feature the HS-series in its Zephyrus G14 laptop. This generation seems no different from the last as the new Zephyrus G14 will rock the Ryzen 9 5900HS.

The Ryzen 9 5900HX broke its cover recently, but the Zen 3 chip's secret remains to be unraveled. It's plausible that the Ryzen 9 5900HX is just a faster variant of its H-series counterpart or that AMD may have finally unlocked the multiplier for enthusiasts to overclock the processor, like what Intel allows with its HK-series SKUs.

Ryzen 5000 Laptops (Image credit: Pinnacle)

If Pinnacle's information is accurate, the Zephyrus G15 offers the best configurations. Leveraging the Ryzen 9 5900HX, the 15.6-inch gaming laptop is available with a GeForce RTX 3070 or RTX 3080 graphics card. Since the retailer didn't specify otherwise, these should be the standard mobile versions and not the Max-Q or Max-P variants. In any event, it's an enormous upgrade, considering that the present Zephyrus G15 is stuck with underwhelming graphics options, such as the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q or GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q.

The Zephyrus G14 presently features GeForce SKUs, spanning from a GeForce RTX 1650 up to the GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q. The new version will arrive with the GeForce RTX 3060 Max-Q.

No one has any idea of when AMD will release Ryzen 5000, but the sudden appearance of benchmark submissions and retailer listings point to an imminent launch. CES 2020 is coming up, and AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su is scheduled to deliver the keynote speech. It would be the ideal venue to announce the mobile Zen 3 chips since the desktop counterparts are already out.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • TCA_ChinChin
    It's about time. Thank god OEMs finally have the balls to put AMD in actual high-end systems.
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    TCA_ChinChin said:
    It's about time. Thank god OEMs finally have the balls to put AMD in actual high-end systems.
    It's not about balls, it's about the costs of developing and support multiple platforms as well as OEM vendor support which AMD has a terrible track record for in the mobile space.
    Reply
  • samopa
    Did Nvidia already rerleased RTX3080 and RTX3070 mobile version ?
    Reply
  • damfs
    the Ranoi APUs only have 8x pcie3.0 so over rtx2070 wasn't possible , that's the reason why OEM did not match it with a high-end GPU
    Reply
  • MasterMadBones
    spongiemaster said:
    It's not about balls, it's about the costs of developing and support multiple platforms as well as OEM vendor support which AMD has a terrible track record for in the mobile space.
    Don't forget that Renoir was limited to PCIe 3.0 x8, so some of the higher end GPUs wouldn't always perform as well on AMD laptops as they would on Intel.
    Reply
  • Xajel
    I was waiting for Lenovo Legion Slim 7 with Ryzen 4800/4900H & RTX 2060 Max-Q. It's the almost perfect laptop for me. Sadly, it was supposed to launch in October, but it's now Dec. and nothing out there except in mid Nov. it appeared in Lenovo's psref database but only in few European countries. I wish they only made it this limited because of how stupidly close it became to the next gen. APU's and GPU's. I mean having this in November and two months later we have a much better APU's and GPU's is just plain stupid.
    Reply
  • gggplaya
    I question how well the mobile RTX3xxx series will stack up against the mobile Radeon 6xxx series. Especially given the higher tdp required to achieve clocks that'll compete with the AMD counterparts. The Ryzen/Radeon 6xxx combo might be the best choice for mobile gaming. We'll have to wait and see.
    Reply