AMD has announced a new range of chips for laptops and desktop computers, including the AMD Ryzen 7040 series designed to compete with Apple’s M1 Pro and M2 chips in ultrathin laptops.
The highest-end chip in the series is the Ryzen 9 7940HS, which boasts eight cores, 16 threads, and boost speeds of up to 5.2GHz. AMD CEO Lisa Su claimed that this chip is up to 30% faster than the M1 Pro and 34% faster in multiprocessing workloads than the M1 Pro, and 20% faster than the M2 in AI tasks.
In addition to this, the AMD Ryzen 7040 series is said to offer 30+ hours of video playback in ultrathin laptops and is 50% more energy efficient in AI tasks compared to the M2.
AMD also highlighted the built-in Ryzen AI, a dedicated AI engine embedded in the processor, which the company claims makes chips configured with it 20% faster in AI tasks than the M2.
To demonstrate the performance of its new chip, AMD compared the rendering of an object in the Blender application on an M1 Pro, a high-end Intel chip, and the Ryzen 9 7940HS. In the time-lapsed video shown at the event, the M1 Pro lagged behind the Ryzen 9 7940HS in rendering the object.
AMD’s claims were made against a MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro, 32GB of unified memory, and 1TB of SSD storage running macOS Monterey. It’s worth noting that the M1 Pro is over a year old and that rumors suggest Apple will announce new high-end chips, the M2 Pro and M2 Max, in the near future for updated 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models. The AMD Ryzen 7040 series will be available in commercial laptops from March 2023.
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