AMD’s latest Ryzen chips best Snapdragon X Elite on AI
After Microsoft bet on Qualcomm for the first generation of "Copilot+ PCs," AMD is stepping up with the Ryzen AI 300 series of chips, which have greater AI power than the Snapdragon X Elite. The battle to develop AI for Windows laptops is on.
Battery life is a major factor in the switch to Windows on Arm, but AI also plays a role. This is made possible by the Snapdragon X Elite's potent NPU, which hits 45 TOPS. That is a high threshold for the number of operations per second that the NPU can process.
Now, AMD beats that, according to the company.
The business claims that the new AMD Ryzen AI 300 series can manage 50 TOPS. This outperforms the Snapdragon X Elite, which implies that laptops using these new CPUs are eligible for Microsoft's extra features, like "Recall," as Copilot+ PCs.
The AI emphasis on these new Ryzen chips, which are the first to use AMD's "Zen 5" architecture, is mostly focused on laptops. The Ryzen 9000 series chips will be the new chips on other machines. AMD clarifies:
- This new NPU, which is based on the new AMD XDNA 2 architecture, has three times the AI engine performance of the second generation of AMD Ryzen AI and 50 TOPS of AI processing power, exceeding the specifications of the Copilot+ AI PC. These processors, which are powered by the new "Zen 5" architecture, have 50% more on-chip L3 cache memory and up to 12 high-performance CPU cores with 24 threads than the previous generation of "Zen 4" processors designed for thin and light laptops. This third generation Ryzen AI Series laptop offers the best in intelligent, responsive, and private laptop computing with its powerful AI architecture and supercharged performance for exceptional gaming and productivity.
The performance of this new processor series will be improved overall, but AMD is just describing the laptop battery life as "excellent" and "without compromise."
The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is a 12-core processor with a 5.1GHz boost clock speed, while the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 is a 10-core processor with a 5.0GHz boost clock speed. AMD's most potent desktop processor to date is the Ryzen 9 9950X, a 16-core processor with a 5.7GHz boost.
When it comes in July, the Zenbook S 16—which will make use of the Ryzen AI chips—will be among the first Copilot+ PCs powered by AMD, according to Asus. With Ryzen 9 AI 365 and 24GB of RAM, pre-orders are now available for $1,399 only.
These new CPUs will also be available for purchase from HP, Lenovo, MSI, and other Asus laptop manufacturers, including ROG.