AMD takes aim at Intel with new 2nd-gen Ryzen Pro and Athlon Pro mobile processors

AMD is at it again, this time releasing four new mobile processors, three 2nd-gen Ryzen Pro parts, and a single Athlon Pro part. All the processors feature built-in Radeon Vega graphics, and all have a TDP of 15W, making them ideal for ultrathin mobile devices.

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The four new processors are as follows:

AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 3700U

• 4-core/8-thread
• 4.0GHz/2.3GHz
• Radeon Vega 10 Graphics
• 15W TDP

AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 3500U

• 4-core/8-thread
• 3.7GHz/2.1GHz
• Radeon Vega 8 Graphics
• 15W TDP

AMD Ryzen 3 Pro 3300U

• 4-core/8-thread
• 3.5GHz/2.1GHz
• Radeon Vega 6 Graphics
• 15W TDP

AMD Athlon Pro 300U

• 2-core/4-thread
• 3.3GHz/2.4GHz
• Radeon Vega 3 Graphics
• 15W TDP

Compared to the Ryzen 7 Pro 2700U, the new Ryzen 7 Pro 2700U offers modest performance increases across the board on the usual benchmarks that you'd expect.

But it's compared to equivalent Intel silicon that the real performance improvement shows up, with the Ryzen 7 Pro 2700U showing a strong lead against Intel's i7-8650U in the Cinebench NT CPU test and the 3DMark 11 graphics test.

The AMD chips also show a significant performance gap in real-world tests for software applications such as Adobe Photoshop, 3DS Max, and medical visualization.

On the power front, AMD claim that the new chips enable up to 12 hours of battery life, and 10 hours of video playback, but it's always important to bear in mind that battery life can be significantly skewed by workloads.

AMD's new chips also feature a range of security features across the whole range. Fore protection against boot kits there's the Secure Boot feature, enhanced OS security to protect against system attacks, and memory encryption to protect against memory attacks.

In fact, AMD is the only company to offer full memory encryption as a standard feature, with Intel choosing to only offer some security and management features on higher-end (and higher-priced) silicon.

"HP is committed to raising the bar for powerful and secure commercial devices with cutting edge PC innovations," said Andy Rhodes, Global Head Commercial Personal Systems, HP Inc. "HP is proud to offer the broadest AMD portfolio in the industry with top performance, security, and reliability to business users everywhere."

"As work-life integration goes mainstream and people seek increasing flexibility in their lifestyles, they need accessible tools to stay productive and entertained anytime, anywhere," said Jerry Paradise, vice president, Lenovo Commercial Product Portfolio. "Lenovo is pleased to partner with AMD to offer commercial users mobile experiences that balance performance and portability to power the modern workforce, and excited to extend the partnership to our latest premium ThinkPad series notebooks coming soon."

AMD Athlon PRO and Ryzen PRO chips

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