It looks like AMD may have a new laptop processor designed to take on Intel’s 10th-gen Core i7-10710U Comet Lake hexa-core processor and Core i7-1065G7 Ice Lake quad-core chip with Iris Plus graphics.

When AMD introduced the Ryzen 4000 line of mobile processors in January, the chip maker promised we’d see 15-watt chips up to the Ryzen 7 4800U for thin-and-light laptops, and 35-45 watt chips up to the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H for high-performance laptops 15-watt chips.

But last month AMD added the Ryzen 9 4900H chip to its high-performance lineup, offering a premium option with support for higher CPU frequencies. Now it looks like a previously unannounced Ryzen 9 4900U for thin and light laptops may be on the way as well.

Details are scarce at the moment, but @TUM_APISAK recently spotted some benchmark results for what appears to be an early prototype of the new chip and the folks at Tom’s Hardware put things in context.

The new chip appears to be an 8-core/16-thread processor with a 1.8 GHz base frequency, 8MB of L3 cache, and a GPU with 8 execution units and a speed of 1.75 Ghz… much like the Ryzen 7 4800U.

But we don’t know what the boost speeds are, and it’s possible that the final version of the chip could have additional cache or other features. It’s unlikely that AMD would slap Ryzen 9 branding on a chip that can’t outperform its top Ryzen 7 sibling.

Whether the new chip will be able to outperform Intel’s latest laptop processors remains to be seen — I’ve been testing an Intel Frost Canyon NUC mini-desktop computer with a Core i7-10710U processor for the last few weeks, and I’m actually quite impressed with the performance of this 15-watt chip.

I’ll have a full review soon, but the NUC outperforms my Dell Vostro 15 laptop with a 45-watt Core i7-9750H hexa-core Coffee Lake processor in many tests. It’s possible that the differences are at least partially due to the thermal differences between a desktop that’s 2 inches high and a notebook that’s closer to 0.7 inches. But it’s still impressive to see what a 15 watt processor can do.

Intel Core i7-10710U benchmarks (Intel Frost Canyon NUC)

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One reply on “Unannounced AMD Ryzen 9 4900U chip coming to premium thin and light laptops?”

  1. I’m looking forward to a Ryzen 7 4800H in a NUC size form factor. Fan can get loud, as long as it don’t thermal throttle. Thermal throttling is for laptops.

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