minimum: AMD has announced that the mobile Ryzen 7045HX series will be available starting today. Codenamed Dragon Range, the series is the first to use AMD chip technology to hit 16 cores and is wickedly fast.
Dragon series It is a direct port of the desktop series to the mobile form factor and has the same CPU configurations: 16 cores, 12 cores, 8 cores, and 6 cores. Apart from the 7945HX, they all have configurable TDPs that start in the 45-75W range and boost to around 5GHz on “single-threaded intermittent workloads” of 3+GHz base clocks.
The 7945HX requires its own power chip: an unprecedented minimum of 55-75W. It has 16 cores – twice the number of cores of the previous generation flagship, the 6900HX – along with a boost clock of 5.4GHz and 80MB of onboard L2 and L3 cache. For comparison, the 6900HX squeezed a 4.9GHz boost clock and 20MB of cache into a 45W envelope.
Dragon series
| model | cores/threads | base/hour reinforcement | L2 + L3 cache | cTDP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| R9 7945HX | 16/32 | 2.5 / 5.4 GHz | 80 MB | 55-75 + W |
| R9 7845HX | 12/24 | 3.0 / 5.2 GHz | 76 MB | 45-75+ watts |
| R7 7745HX | 8/16 | 3.6 / 5.1 GHz | 40 MB | 45-75+ watts |
| R5 7645HX | 6/12 | 4.0 / 5.0 GHz | 38 MB | 45-75+ watts |
AMD normative 7495HX vs. 6900HX a while back and found that it performed 41 percent to 211 percent better in a mix of applications. In Cinebench R23, it was 22 percent faster in the single-threaded test and 123 percent faster in the multi-threaded test. AMD also compared its mainframe to the 16-core i9-12900HX and found that the 7495HX was 18% to 169% faster in various benchmarks which was slightly favorable to the 7495HX.
But now AMD has shared some fairer comparisons between the 7495HX and one of Intel’s new CPUs, the i9-13950HX. It features eight p-cores and 16 e-cores, and clocks slightly higher than the Ryzen part at 5.5GHz. It also draws around 55W by default but can be configured to jump up to 157W under load. AMD tested the two CPUs in 31 titles and found that the 7495HX performed better in 26 of them and was 10 percent faster on average.
Performance benchmarks from vendors like AMD are always subject to bias and mobile parts have particularly variable performance due to their many configuration options and their reliance on cooling. AMD seems a bit arrogant calling the 7945HX “the world’s most powerful mobile processor” but we’ll concede it’s a contender for the title.
OEMs can start selling laptops equipped with the 7945HX, 7845HX, 7745HX, and 7645HX this weekend. AMD expects them to start appearing on shelves by the end of the week. The first models on the market are the M16 and M18 from Alienware, the Scar G17 and Zephyrus Duo from Asus, and the Legion 5 Pro and 7 Pro from Lenovo. More models will follow in the coming months, including those from MSI, as well as more mobile CPUs from AMD.
