AMD starts deliveries of Ryzen Pro 6000 processors for laptops

AMD starts selling its Ryzen Pro 6000 processors for laptops today. They were already announced at CES in January. HP and Lenovo are the first laptop manufacturers to use the new CPUs in their models.

Like the Ryzen 6000 consumer processors, the new Ryzen Pro chips use Zen 3+ cores for the CPU part and the RDNA2 architecture for the integrated GPU. Zen 3+ should be a bit more economical, partly due to the introduction of an optimized production process from TSMC, while RDNA2 represents a huge step in GPU performance compared to the igpus used so far based on the five-year-old Vega architecture.

Under the name AMD Pro, the processors in the Ryzen Pro series have various additional security features at the software, firmware and hardware level. In addition, the laptops can be managed remotely and the processors are guaranteed to be available for two years. New is the integration of a security processor that complies with the Microsoft Pluton standard, which must be able to withstand a second-level FIPS 140-3 certification. Intel and Qualcomm are also working on processors with Pluton, but AMD is the first to have a product on the market.

Lenovo uses the new chips, among other things, in its ThinkPad Z laptops, which will be available in 13″ and 16″ variants. As part of what AMD calls its ‘best ever laptop manufacturer partnership’ calls, this series includes a custom Ryzen 7 Pro 6860Z processor, which would be fully ‘power-optimized’ for these specific laptops. The ThinkPad Z also has a full-HD webcam, an OLED screen and a touchpad that works with haptic feedback.

HP comes with a whole range of EliteBook G9 laptops in sizes of 13, 14 and 16 inches. The battery life of these laptops in particular should be very good, which AMD reinforces by pointing to the result of an EliteBook 865 G9 laptop in the MobileMark 2018 database. Equipped with a Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U, the notebook lasted over 26 hours on a single battery charge.

In addition to the Ryzen Pro 6000 processors, AMD is also introducing a trio of new models in the 5000U series, with slightly higher clock speeds than the existing offering. Effectively, it concerns the Pro versions of the refreshes that AMD also released for the consumer market at the beginning of this year.

All new Ryzen Pro processors in the Ryzen 6000 and 5000 series