AMD Is Working On Extreme Gaming Laptops For 2023 With New CPU

In the year 2020, AMD surprised tech enthusiasts with its gaming laptop coming top of the year for the first time ever. Until the release of the Asus Zephyrus G14, AMD CPU and AMD GPU had been running in circles without a laptop topping the competition. Ever since the year, 2020 AMD laptops exceeded in value in price. Several months afterwards, AMD is set with eyes systems higher than mid-range gaming machines. According to reports, AMD recently revealed a new CPU with the codename “Dragon Range” is in the works, the new CPU is aimed at redefining the “pinnacle of gaming performance” with the “highest core, thread and cache ever” you’ll ever find around.

According to Robert Hallock, AMD director of technical marketing, the new CPU lineup is exclusively at 55W TDP and up — enough power that they’ll “largely exist in the space where gaming laptops are plugged in the majority of the time.

The laptops are said to aim at being at least 20mm (0.78-inches) thick, while the 35-45W “Phoenix” line is aimed at machines thinner than that same mark. Both are said to be part of the same AMD Ryzen 7000 series, based on the same Zen 4 architecture, and unfortunately, both devices won’t arrive until 2023 — Zen 4 will begin its life as the desktop exclusive “Raphael” later this year, according to the chart.

According to The Verge, AMD’s new Dragon Range laptops are estimated to be notably more power-efficient than other laptops that might be in the competing timeframe. The new laptop will take up the “HS” suffix for CPUs — the same as the Ryzen 9 4900HS which impressed us at 35W in that 2020 Asus Zephyrus — but hinted that we shouldn’t take the higher TDP as a sign that they’ll totally be ditching power efficiency for performance.

It is not clear all that the new CPUs have to deliver that most gaming laptops necessarily need as AMD won’t release all the details just yet, given that graphics chips, not CPUs, are generally where most of the gaming oomph comes from these days. CPU speed does matter, particularly when you’re trying to feed a high refresh rate monitor (which may soon go up to 500Hz) with lower-resolution frames — and the kind of gamer who buys an “extreme gaming laptop” might care about even a slight advantage in FPS.

Hallock further discloses that the new chips are an opportunity the company is considering could pursue alongside thin-and-light gaming. “The performance per watt story you’ve been hearing from us will continue into the future as well,” he says.

Starting from next quarter, AMD has revealed that, it will most likely break out gaming into its own financial segment, with revenue from semi-custom parts like PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam Deck chips joining desktop and laptop Radeon graphics — all part of the single gaming business. For now, Ryzen wouldn’t be making it into the segment though, rather a “Client” one: the company will reportedly shed more light at an analyst day in June.