Chipmaker AMD claims that its new laptop chip, the Ryzen 7840U, can outperform Apple’s M2 chip – though it provides no proof of this. The chip is destined to be used in upcoming laptops from Acer, Framework, HP, Lenovo, and Razer.
No benchmarks are provided by AMD to support its claims, and there’s no information on battery life, which is another major strength of Apple’s M-series chips …
Ryzen 7840U
The Ryzen 7840U is the company’s top-end laptop chip, designed to provide the ultimate in performance.
AMD supplies only a very vague bar chart with claims about comparative performance in a range of application categories with vague titles like “image editing” (below). There’s no indication of which apps are being compared, let alone for which tasks.
The Verge is being kind to the company when it says the claims are “fairly vague.”
AMD claims the new chip can give Apple a run for its money, besting the 2022 MacBook Air’s M2 processor in “application performance” by up to 75 percent and taking on the Intel Core i7-1360P by even more than that in both productivity and graphics, as you’ll see stated fairly vaguely in the charts.
The site suggests that AMD may not even know what the real-world battery life is like, as all of its tests have so far been run only on a reference board, not in a laptop. But given that Apple prioritized power efficiency every bit as much as raw power, it’s likely to be a tough compare for the company.
In contrast, we have plenty of benchmarks and real-life usage data for Apple’s M2 chip.
Apple’s M2 chips not only excel as mobile processors, but also in desktops. Our own Fernando Silva found that even the base M2 Mac mini was a powerhouse, and an incredible deal for the money.
I used iMovie to edit a 12-minute YouTube video that used 4k 60FPS footage, with five layers of video and three layers of audio. I also stabilized the footage, added filters, and added text. The video was rendered in real time, there was no lag or spinning wheel of death. You can watch my two-week later review and see just how fast the M2 Mac mini was able to export the video
This is the ultimate bang-for-your-buck computer on the market right now. The sheer power per dollar, if that is even a metric, has to be the best we’ve seen in years.
So while I’d be delighted to see some realistic competition for the M2 chip – to push Apple ever further – I’ll pay more attention to AMD’s latest chip when we’ve seen independent benchmarks and battery-life stats.
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