AMD Claims New Laptop Chip Is 30% Faster Than M1 Pro, Promises Up to 30 Hours of Battery Life

At CES this week, AMD announced a suite of new chips for notebooks and desktop computers, with one notable announcement being the company's new AMD Ryzen 7040 series of processors for ultrathin notebooks that will compete with Apple's M1 Pro and M2 chips.

m1 pro chip
The AMD Ryzen 7040 series of chips are "ultrathin" processors based on the 4nm process, and the highest-end chip part of the family is the Ryzen 9 7940HS. The Ryzen 9 7940HS has eight cores, 16 threads, and 5.2GHz boost speeds. Announcing the new chip, AMD CEO Lisa Su made bold claims about its performance, saying it's up to 30% faster than Apple's ‌M1 Pro‌ chip. In specific tasks, AMD claims the chip is 34% faster in multiprocessing workloads than the ‌M1 Pro‌ and 20% faster than the ‌M2‌ in AI tasks.

amd event m1 pro
One cornerstone of Apple silicon is energy efficiency, and in that area, AMD claims the new AMD Ryzen 7040 series will offer 30+ hours of video playback in ultrathin notebooks. Built directly into the series of chips is Ryzen AI, a dedicated AI engine embedded in the processor. AMD chips configured with Ryzen AI are 20% faster in AI tasks than Apple's ‌M2‌ chip while being 50% more energy efficient, according to the company.

To showcase the new chip's performance, AMD compared the performance of a high-end Intel chip, the ‌M1 Pro‌, and its new Ryzen 9 7940HS processor rendering an object in the popular application Blender. In the time-lapsed video shown on stage, the ‌M1 Pro‌ lags behind the Ryzen 9 7940HS in rendering the object.
amd event m1 pro 2
AMD says it made its performance claims against a MacBook Pro with ‌M1 Pro‌, 32GB of unified memory, and 1TB of SSD storage running macOS Monterey. The ‌M1 Pro‌ is not Apple's highest-end and most powerful chip for laptops, which is the M1 Max, and AMD did not compare its chip to the ‌M1 Max‌.

It's worth noting that the ‌M1 Pro‌ is over one year old, while AMD's Ryzen 7040 series will start becoming available in commercial laptops in March 2023. In the coming months, rumors suggest Apple will announce its next generation of high-end chips, the ‌M2‌ Pro and ‌M2‌ Max, which will build on the performance of the ‌M1 Pro‌ and ‌M1 Max‌ for updated 14-inch and 16-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ models.

Related Roundup: MacBook Pro
Buyer's Guide: MacBook Pro (Neutral)
Related Forum: MacBook Pro

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Top Rated Comments

WiiDSmoker Avatar
33 months ago

fans still going to be blowing 100% during idle
You got proof or just spreading FUD? Get this nonsense out of here.

But instead, no, y’all gotta attack, when this should be a great thing that drives competition and doesn’t allow Apple to sit around and make idle improvements.
Score: 116 Votes (Like | Disagree)
bevel Avatar
33 months ago
This is great news. Hopefully a little competition will speed things up a bit. I want Apple to at least see someone when they look in the rear-view-mirror
Score: 70 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MayaUser Avatar
33 months ago
When absolutely everybody is comparing themselves with Apple....you know whos the trend maker
Score: 46 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Juicy Box Avatar
33 months ago
If anything, it looks like Apple Silicon has really increased competition between the chipmakers. This is a great thing, something that was badly needed a decade ago.


It's worth noting that the M1 Pro is over one year old, while AMD's Ryzen 7040 series will start becoming available in commercial laptops in March 2023. In the coming months, rumors suggest Apple will announce its next generation of high-end chips, the M2 Pro and M2 Max, which will build on the performance of the M1 Pro and M1 Max for updated 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
If the M2 max comes out and outperforms AMD’s Laptop chip, then I would consider that the competition has caught up to Apple sooner than we thought they would.

If the new M2 max comes out and it lags behind AMD‘s laptop chip, that’s pretty bad for Apple, in my opinion.
Score: 46 Votes (Like | Disagree)
seanmills1020 Avatar
33 months ago
AMD knows full well that the Blender app is unoptimized for the Mac.

Starting with version 3.1 I believe, Blender uses Metal for GPU rendering on Apple Silicon Macs, but it is still playing catch-up with the Windows version.
Score: 30 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MayaUser Avatar
33 months ago
Up to 30 hours ..maybe in sleep mode
Score: 27 Votes (Like | Disagree)