AMD Brings Zen 3 CPU Architecture to Chromebooks With Ryzen 5000 C-Series

AMD is paving the way for more powerful Chromebooks by bringing its Zen 3 architecture to the Google-powered laptops. 

The result is the Ryzen 5000 C-Series chips, which will start arriving in Chromebooks slated to launch in June and July. 

The most powerful chip in the family is the Ryzen 7 5825C, which AMD claims is the world’s first high-performance 8-core x86 processor for Chromebooks. It features a max boost speed of 4.5GHz, 20MB of cache, and eight built-in GPU cores. 

The new CPU family represents a sizable upgrade from the Ryzen and Athlon 3000 C-Series from two years ago, which were built on the older Zen+ and Zen architecture and featured only 6MB or 5MB of cache. 

“We knew we wanted to bring the most performance in a Chromebook to market. So we are bringing up to eight high-performance cores to this space,” says Robert Hallock, AMD's director of technical marketing.

The 5000 C-Series will mainly end up in premium Chromebooks with top-of-the-line features, Hallock adds. AMD also provided benchmarks that show the Ryzen 7 5825C outperforming the older 3000 C-Series, especially on multi-tasking and with graphics performance.  

The company also compared the Ryzen 7 5825C to Intel’s “Tiger Lake” four-core i7-1185G7 processor, which launched in 2020 and has been used in some high-end Chromebook models. The benchmarks show the Ryzen 7 5825C can offer up to 7% and 25% improvement in web browsing and multitasking, respectively, which doesn’t seem like a lot. 

But according to AMD, the Ryzen 5000 C-Series will draw far less power than Intel’s competing chips. One benchmark from the company showed the Ryzen 5 5625C offered up to a 94% improvement in battery life over Intel’s i5-1135G7, another Chromebook processor.

“So if you are looking for a Chromebook in 2022 that has the best battery life, but also the best performance, then your only choice is AMD,” Hallock says.

Although demand for Chromebooks has plummeted, AMD still sees an opportunity to sell them across multiple commercial areas, such as small businesses, healthcare, and frontline workers.

The Ryzen 5000 C-Series will appear in a new 14-inch Chromebook from HP called the Elite C645 G2, which is slated to arrive in June starting at $559.  

HP Elite C645 G2

HP designed the product for hybrid office employees. The Elite C645 G2 comes with a 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi 6E, and an optional 4G modem.

The Ryzen 5000 C-Series will also appear in a 14-inch convertible laptop from Acer, the Chromebook Spin 514, which is slated to arrive in July with a starting price at $599.

Chromebook Spin 514

The $599 model will include the Ryzen 3 5125C chip, 8GB of dual-channel LPDDR4X SDRAM, and 128GB of PCIe Gen 3 NVMe SSD storage.