AMD launches Ryzen 5000 series mobile CPUs at CES 2021

AMD expects more than 150 laptops to use Ryzen 5000-series CPUs this year

AMD announced its news Ryzen 5000-series mobile CPUs at its CES 2021 keynote on Tuesday, with CEO Lisa Su describing them as "the most powerful PC processors ever built". The new CPUs, designed for laptops and ultrabooks, join the 5000-series desktop CPUs AMD launched in November.

The new processors are divided into two different categories, H-series and U-series, for different audiences. The H-series is intended for gaming and content creation, while the U-series is for light, ultraportable notebooks. Each category also contains different tiers: Ryzen 3, Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9.

Most of the 5000-series are based on the company's 7nm Zen 3 architecture, with the exception of a few U-series models.

AMD has kept the H and HS suffixes in the H-series (from the previous 4000 series), and introduced a new high-end HX designation. The regular H-series processors have a 45W TDP, while the HX versions can exceed that. The HS chips are lower-power models with a 35W TDP.

The leading processor in the H-series is the Ryzen 9 5980HX, featuring eight cores and 16 threads. It offers 3.3GHz clock speeds and boost frequency of 4.8GHz. The Ryzen 9 5900HX has similar specifications, but with 4.6GHz boost frequency.

AMD claims that its Ryzen 9 5980HS outperforms Intel's Core i9-10980HK on Cinebench R20 in both single-thread and multi-thread performance.

On the U-series side is the Ryzen 7 5800U - a low-power CPU operating within a 15W thermal design. It features eight cores and 16 threads, with peak boost frequency of 4.4GHz. The card can perform 'most tasks' faster than the Intel Core i7-1185G7, outperforming it by a factor of 1.23 on PCMark 10.

The Ryzen 7 5800U provides 21.4 hours of battery life on a 53Wh battery during 1080p video playback with Wi-Fi on, according to AMD.

The Ryzen 7 5800U and Ryzen 5 5600U CPU (six cores, 2.3GHz clock speed base, 4.2Ghz Turbo, 12 threads) are based on the Zen 3 architecture. Other processors in the U-series are Zen 2-based.

AMD expects more than 150 notebooks with Ryzen 5000 mobile processors to ship this year. Availability for these systems is expected to start this February.