AMD has announced a new top-end mobile CPU, the Ryzen 9 4900H. Set for release this spring, the 8 core, 16 thread chip has a base clock of 3.3GHz boosting up to 4.4GHz on a single core. It also has 8 graphics cores running at 1750MHz, as opposed to the previous highest ranked model, the 4800H, which has 7 graphics cores running at 1600MHz. The new 4900H maintains the same TDP of 45W, though.
AMD has had an incredible few years with its Ryzen CPUs, making serious inroads in a space dominated by Intel. While Intel still has a lead when it comes to gaming, for anyone who does anything else with their machines, AMD's Ryzen CPUs should certainly make it to the short list, or even take precedence, thanks to having more cores to play with.
There's one area that has traditionally been a tough nut for AMD to crack though, and that's laptops. AMD has had competitive chips before, especially at the cheaper end of the scale, but where it has managed to get in laptops, they have tended to be unexciting machines, and haven't had a real impact. That's changed this year with its latest mobile CPUs, and multiple laptop manufacturers have been showing off AMD 4000 H-Series builds first. The announcement of the Ryzen 9 4900H is a clear sign that AMD is confident that it has a future in laptops.
I'm still waiting to get my hands on some of these news Ryzen 4000 H-Series laptops, as some of the launch models have seen delays, but I'll be sure to report my findings just as soon as possible.