AMD says new Ryzen 7040 chips beat Intel (and Apple) in thin-and-light PCs

Enlarge / The 7040U series has four different CPUs, mostly separated by the number of CPU and GPU cores. (credit: AMD)

Today AMD announced additional details about its new Ryzen 7040U series of laptop chips, which bring the company’s newest Zen 4 CPU architecture and RDNA 3 integrated graphics into thin-and-light laptops. Though just part of AMD’s (often-confusing) Ryzen 7000 laptop lineup, the 7040U processors will be the ones to hold out for if you want to maximize performance without stepping up to a larger laptop with a dedicated GPU.

AMD has delayed the announcement of these chips twice. AMD announced in mid-March that systems would begin shipping in April, and it’s currently the beginning of May. One of the laptop makers offering a Ryzen 7040-series laptop, Framework, won’t actually be shipping its preorders until sometime in Q3, though the larger PC companies will presumably be able to get things to market a bit sooner.

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  AMD published a number of broad, flattering performance comparisons. Here, AMD compares itself to the i7-1360P, which isn’t quite Intel’s fastest CPU for these kinds of PCs. [credit:
  AMD ]

For most apps and games, the most relevant thing about the Ryzen 7040 chips is the improved CPU and GPU performance. The top-end Ryzen 7 7840U combines 8 CPU cores running at speeds of up to 5.1 GHz and a Radeon 780M GPU with 12 RDNA 3 cores. The Ryzen 5 7640U has 6 CPU cores running at up to 4.9 GHz and a Radeon 760M GPU with 8 cores. The Ryzen 5 7540U has the same 6 CPU cores but with a lower-end Radeon 740M GPU with 4 cores, while the Ryzen 3 7440U combines the same Radeon 740M GPU with 4 CPU cores.