AMD Brings Zen 3 to Business with Ryzen 5000 Pro for Laptops

AMD is moving its mobile Ryzen 5000 processors into business with Ryzen 5000 Pro, the company announced today. The new series consists of three chips, the Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U, Ryzen 5 Pro 5650U and Ryzen 3 5450U, and AMD claims the processors will show up in 63 laptop designs this year, including laptops from Lenovo and HP.

All three processors are on AMD's Zen 3 architecture and 7nm process. (In fact, they are almost exactly identical, except for cache, on specs with the consumer-focused Ryzen 7 5800U, Ryzen 5 5600U and Ryzen 3 5400U)

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In benchmarks released by the company, it compared the top-of-the-line, Cezanne-based AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U to Intel's 28W Core i7-1185G7 "Tiger Lake" part. 

AMD admitted to a 3% loss against the Core i7 in single-threaded performance (measured in Cinebench R20) but showed 65% gains in Cinebench R20 multi-thread and Passmark 10 CPU Mark, as well as Geekbench 5's multi-core (single-core scores weren't listed). In these tests, Intel's chip was housed in a Dell Latitude 5420 with 32GB of RAM at 3,200 MHz and a 512GB SSD from SK Hynix, while the Ryzen Pro was in a reference platform with 16GB of LPDDR4 RAM at 4,266 MHz and a 512GB Samsung 970 Pro SSD. 

In productivity, the two tied in Microsoft Word and the Edge browser in AMD's tests, but the Cezanne chip came out between 4% and 23% in other productivity benchmarks. Those tests switched the Intel laptop to an MSI Prestige 14 Evo with a 28W TDP, 16GB of RAM at 4,267 MHz, and a Kingston SSD of unspecified size. The AMD machine remained the reference design. 

Just to show off, AMD also picked some benchmarks comparing the Ryzen 5 Pro 5650U and the Core i7-1185G7, where its chip outperformed Intel in Passmark 10 CPU Mark (+25%), Geekbench 5 multi-core (+26%), PCMark 10 Apps (+4%) and PCMark 10 Benchmark (+20%). This round of testing also used the MSI Prestige 14 Evo and the reference design. 

Compared to the Latitude with Intel Core i7-1185G7, AMD claims that the Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U is up to 10% faster while running a 49-participant Zoom call and running the PCMark 10 applications benchmark. 

For battery life, AMD compared to previous generation Ryzen Pro chips, suggesting the 7nm process helps the new Ryzen 7 reach 17.5 hours on Mobile Mark 2018's general computing test. 

The company is touting new security features for this year. AMD Shadow Stack is at the hardware level to prevent malware. It's part of the Secured Core PC program, which Microsoft announced with Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm in late 2019, and also meets the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology's Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS). 

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To mark the launch, AMD is also showcasing six laptops coming from partners HP and Lenovo. The HP Probook Aero 635 G2 and HP Probook x360 435 G8 will be exclusive for 2021, and the Lenovo ThinkBook 16) is listed as an "AMD exclusive creator platform." The company also listed the HP EliteBook 845 G8, ThinkPad T14S and ThinkBook 14S as highlighted notebooks.