AMD Ryzen 6000 Series Laptops – Top 9 features

AMD announced new Ryzen 6000 CPUs and Radeon graphics for laptops. Here are top 9 features of AMD Ryzen 6000Series Laptops you need to know about.

We have already compared Intel Core i3 vs amd ryzen 3, Intel core i5 vs AMD Ryzen 5 and Amd Ryzen 7 vs Intel Core i7 processors in our posts and AMD is slightly better then Intel on low budget.

1. The Zen 3+ architecture

The new architecture called zen 3 plus as its name suggests is that the zen 3 plus is not a brand new design. But it is still the best CPU upgrade it can have up to 8 cores and 16 Threads. But the real issue here is moving to a 6-nanometer production process with a lot of power management features.
The N6 will lead to better overall efficiency and excellent performance.

Since the CPU should be able to hit higher consistent boost frequencies more often on the efficiency side we could see laptops that can go up to 24 hours of battery life which is just insane. Now moving to six nanometers also allows for higher transistor density. And with some of that space-saving, AMD is finally reserving some space or some dye space for a better GPU. 

2. RDNA2

Kicking vega to the curb and adding RDNA2 graphics to their laptop APUs, I can’t even describe how big of a deal this is. I mean it’s huge you might have noticed that in a Ryzen 5000 u laptop reviews intel’s xe graphics could consistently beat vega. And with alder lake’s enhanced design coming this year AMD desperately needed something to compete.

So here comes their latest architecture with more cores faster speeds and a quantum leap forward for performance. And how much was the previous generation held back by VGA? Well, a whole lot guys I mean sure AMD says this is just one generation but vega has more lives than a cat. And it’s been around for years now with the switch to RDNA2. These new processors can pretty much double the gaming performance.

3. DDR5 RAM

Speaking of performance AMD is also moving to ddr5 and that’s a bit of a risk. Since we’ve already seen that because of its looser timings ddr5 needs ultra-high clock speeds to match ddr4. It might be a bit different on the laptop side but the bigger concern here is ddr5’s availability problems. Because they aren’t expected to get any better until the second half of 2022 at the earliest.

That’s one of the main reasons why all the lake is backward compatible with ddr4. But with zen 3 plus it’s ddr5 or just nothing and I’m actually wondering if that’ll lead to some major availability problems for 6000 series laptops 

4. USB 4 Support

Z3 also has usb4 support which finally brings a high bandwidth interface capable of up to 40 gigabits per second to AMD laptops. Another nice thing about usb4 is that it allows for PCI tunneling which means technically companies can finally start developing external GPU docks that are compatible with ultra-thin Ryzen laptops 

5. Beter PCI-E

The PCI-E interface is also getting an upgrade too. Not many people picked this up but the Ryzen 5000 series laptop processors were only working on gen 3 which is why we never saw gen 4 and mini drives in them. Now the whole back end is moving to gen 4, which is really nice. So with all the groundwork laid out let’s actually look into what AMD is actually launching here.

6. AMD Ryzen 6000 U Series Laptops

I want to start with u series and unfortunately, there isn’t much here just the 6800u and the 6600 you get the new zen 3 plus design with rdna2. While the rest of the lineup is just a rehash of the previous generation with a 100 megahertz increase here and there.

And yeah vega is still around I’m actually really disappointed here. Because it’s one of the areas that AMD really needed a proper top-to-the-bottom lineup to compete against our lake. But it’s just not the case but there’s some hope with those brand new processors. Because along with zen 3 plus they also get higher clock speeds. And that ends up leading to the seventh point here which is a lot better performance for the 6800u versus the 5800u.

Only time will tell how they’ll stack up against alder lake. But it sure it could start and it points towards some big things for zen 4 laptop launch next year

7. AMD Ryzen 6000 H Series Laptops

Meanwhile, the new h-series also get the zen 3 plus treatment with RDNA graphics. And better boost clocks than the 5000 h processors for the most part. Though bass frequencies stick to the same speeds as before. And I really have to wonder if this is going to be enough to compete against the higher-end Intel processors. But like I said before the six-nanometer process and all the new power management technologies should result in a lot more consistency. And hopefully, that’ll lead to better performance as well.

8. Smart Shift Eco

Next up is the new smart shift eco-technology that’ll be available in laptops with AMD CPUs and GPUs running alongside one another. And the idea here is that once it detects your running on battery it’ll actually automatically turn off the power-hungry discreet card. And switch completely to the integrated graphics.

Now sure that will mean a huge cut in terms of performance but at least you won’t be chugging down battery power. Plus this is supposedly user-controlled. So if you still want that discrete GPU running at 100 on battery there is that option too. 

9. Smart Access Graphics

The last thing I want to talk about is smart access graphics. And this one needs a bit of an explainer. You see in most hybrid graphics situations on laptops the discrete GPU runs its outgoing display signal through the integrated graphics. So that allows automatic switching between the two. So the high-power graphics card can be used in things like gaming. While the igp takes over situations that need more power savings. Now on paper that sounds great but there is a catch it actually ends up causing a fair bit of latency and lower frame rates.

So what smart access graphics does is supposed to fix that by automatically shifting the display signal between the discrete and integrated graphics. Now a lot of you might think that this sounds a lot like a mug switch. And you’re right but instead of using a toggle switch like traditional mux, it looks like AMD will now be able to sort of do this on a hardware level sort of like what Nvidia did with advanced Optimus. 

OUR VERDICT

So that pretty much wraps up 9 facts that you needed to know about these new Ryzen 6000 series of processors. And I’ve got to say it looks like 2022 is a really good year for laptops. But a lot of it hinges on one thing. And that’s availability because history has proven that Ryzen laptops offer huge performance. But actually getting hands-on one has always been well not as easy as it should be in 2021.

The Ryzen laptop lineup didn’t have much competition. Because people were generally happy to wait a bit longer for the devices. But what will happen this year with all the lakes being so competitive. I guess AMD just needs to pump out those processors asap. Because they just haven’t made it easy on themselves. There’s a new manufacturing process and ddr5 which are big unknowns when it comes to availability.

You can actually see AMD hedging their bets by cutting down their u series to just two processors. And having the rest sort of backfilled by rebranded 5000 series. Meanwhile, if you look at intel they don’t seem to have any problem with supplying alder lake to their partners. And you know they can always switch to ddr4 if there are any availability problems.