AMD: New Ryzen 7040U Chips Can Best Intel’s Raptor Lake, Apple’s M2

AMD is preparing a new batch of Ryzen chips designed for ultrathin laptops that promise to beat  rival silicon from both Intel and Apple. 

AMD's Ryzen 7040U series will arrive across four chips built with Zen 4 architecture starting this month, with availability ramping throughout the quarter.

According to the company’s own benchmarks, the CPUs can best Intel’s Core i7-1360P “Raptor Lake” chip for thin laptops and Apple’s M2 processor for MacBooks.

The 7040 name may sound familiar. At CES 2023, the company debuted the Ryzen 7040 HS series, which also target ultrathin laptops. The chips can also reach at least 5GHz in boosted clock speeds, but run at a higher TDP from 35 to 45 watts. 

The 7040U series, on the other hand, runs at a lower TDP, from 15 to 30 watts. On the downside, the chips feature lower base and max clock speeds. But the most powerful chip in the series, the Ryzen 7 7840U, can still reach up to 5.1GHz in boost speeds. 

(Credit: AMD)

AMD is marketing the chips as offering the fastest performance in their class for both productivity and content creation. To demonstrate this, the company’s benchmarks claim the Ryzen 7 7840U can offer a 29% to 128% performance increase over Intel’s Raptor Lake chip when it comes to application-related tasks, such as web browsing and media encoding. 

(Credit: AMD)

The Ryzen 7 7840U also outperformed Apple’s M2 chip, although to a lesser degree, according to AMD's tests. 

(Credit: AMD)

The other feature of the Ryzen 7040U series is the integrated graphics. The chips will come with Radeon 700M built-in GPUs, which now boast even higher clock speeds and improved power efficiency over the RDNA3 architecture. As a result, AMD claims the 7040U chips can offer a 30% to 139% performance increase in PC games compared to Intel’s i7-1360P chip. 

(Credit: AMD)

Team Red adds: “The Ryzen 7040U series take AMD efficiency even further with smart power management designed to deliver the longest possible time unplugged.” The chips also contain a dedicated AI-based processor, but the company didn’t offer any performance benchmarks.

Framework, the company behind upgradable laptops, says it will adopt the Ryzen 7040U chips in a AMD-powered notebook scheduled to arrive as early as Q3. 

“We're using Ryzen 5 7640U and Ryzen 7 7840U processors, both of which offer incredible CPU and GPU performance. These are both pre-orderable today(Opens in a new window),” Framework said(Opens in a new window) in a blog post. The pre-built model starts at $1,049.  

Stay tuned for our reviews when we can really put AMD’s upcoming chips to the test. The company will also likely reveal more at the Computex show in Taipei, which starts May 30.