AMD's new Ryzen notebook chips pack Radeon Vega graphics

AMD has announced its latest chips designed for ultrathin notebooks. Combining its Ryzen CPU and Vega graphics architectures on a single accelerated processing unit (APU), AMD claims that the two new chips are the "world's fastest" processors for ultrathin notebooks.

The new lineup is made up of the Ryzen 7 2700U and the Ryzen 5 2500U. In terms of specs, AMD says that the top-end Ryzen 7 is equipped with four cores, eight threads, and 10 Vega compute units, all running at 2.2GHz base and 3.8GHz boost. The Ryzen 5 chip, on the other hand, packs four cores, eight threads, and eight Vega compute units, running at 2.0GHz base and 3.6GHz boost.

Compared to its previous mobile processors, AMD says that these new chips pack up to three time the CPU performance, 2.3 times the GPU performance, and consume up to 58 percent less power. In terms of the competition, AMD claims its Ryzen 7 2700U can achieve up to three times the performance of the Intel Core i7 8550U on 3DMark. Similarly, AMD is claiming its Ryzen 5 2500U can achieve twice the performance of the Intel Core i5 7200U in 3DMark. That's looking good, but we'll have to wait for independent benchmarks to have a complete picture.

AMD says that systems powered by its Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 mobile processors will be available "in the coming weeks" from partners like Acer, HP, and Lenovo. More systems are expected from Dell and other manufacturers in 2018.

Why the new Ryzen chips will benefit AMD and Intel users