After targeting the consumer market, AMD is trying to expand its reach into business laptops by releasing the Ryzen Pro 7040 series.
The company announced the chips today alongside the desktop-focused Ryzen Pro 7000, which is also targeting commercial PCs.
Expect the Ryzen Pro 7040 to appear in “more premium” Windows 11 business notebooks and mobile workstations, AMD says. The company is marketing the chips as powerful enough to fulfill all the needs of a modern workforce, including the ability to power AI-based applications, such as image- and audio-editing software.
The chips represent a significant upgrade over the Ryzen Pro 5000 series, which were released in 2021, but couldn’t hit 5GHz in boost clock speeds. Four of the chips in the new generation can now hit 5GHz or higher clock speeds.
But it looks like the Ryzen Pro 7040 series is pretty similar to AMD’s consumer-focused Ryzen “Phoenix” 7040 and lower-powered 7040U processors, which were released earlier this year.
In many cases, the clock speeds are the same, with the chips built along the same 4-nanometer Zen 4 architecture, and featuring built-in Radeon graphics. However, the total cache can be different. For example, the most powerful chip in the Pro series, the Ryzen 9 Pro 7940HS, only has 24MB of total cache, compared to the 40MB in the consumer-focused Ryzen 9 7940HS. Meanwhile, the U series is focused on powering thin and light laptops.
Five of the chips in the Pro series also contain a dedicated “Ryzen AI engine” to handle AI-based workloads. The only one that doesn’t is the lowest-tier Ryzen 5 Pro 7540U chip.
The resulting processors promise to offer better performance and longer battery life than both Intel silicon and Apple’s MacBook-based chips. “The AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 7840U processor offers up to 18% higher CPU performance and up to 15% better battery life while video conferencing, compared to an Apple M2 Pro processor,” the company claims.
For desktops, AMD is releasing three chips in the Ryzen 7000 Pro line, which also feature the company’s Zen 4 architecture, but were manufactured using TSMC’s 5-nanometer process.
“Built on the AMD Socket AM5 platform, these processors offer support for the latest technologies, including DDR5 memory, up to PCIe 5.0 storage, and ultra-fast WiFi 6E,” it says.
In addition, the chips can also hit boost clock speeds at over 5GHz while featuring built-in Radeon graphics. AMD adds: “Beginning this month, enterprise customers will be able to purchase Ryzen Pro processor-based systems from top PC vendors including HP and Lenovo.” But there's no word on the exact price ranges for the products.
