AMD's Ryzen 8040 series gives it an edge on a huge competitor

AMD is already launching the second generation of its AI PC laptop and desktop chipsets with the AMD Ryzen Pro 8040 series mobile processors and AMD Ryzen Pro 8000 series desktop processors.

As our focus here at Laptop Mag is laptops, we're mostly interested in the AMD Ryzen Pro 8040 series mobile processors. What you may not know is that the AMD Ryzen Pro 7040 series processors are fully functional AI PCs. So the 8040 series chipsets are actually AMD's second generation of AI silicon.

The Ryzen Pro 8040 offers 30% greater performance compared to competition, integrated AMD Ryzen AI, RDNA 3 graphics, and WiFi 7 technology. They're ideal chips for both workstations and business laptops.

AMD Ryzen 8040 series laptops — What you need to know

Boasting up to 16 TOPS on the AMD Ryzen AI NPU, these new processors will be the most advanced x86 processors. So they'll be competing directly against the Intel 14th Gen and Intel Ultra chipsets. Intel's 14th gen CPUs don't have a dedicated NPU, while the Intel Ultra platform offers only 10 TOPs of NPU performance. So the Ryzen 8040 series will give AMD an early edge against Intel.

As an ARM processor, the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is not part of AMD's comparison. That makes sense, as Qualcomm boasts a total of 45 TOPs on its upcoming ARM chipsets. Of course, while the Snapdragon X Elite can run Windows x86 programs, it does so through an emulator. So there will be a bit of a performance slowdown in that case, but not quite enough to close that TOPs gap between the Snapdragon X Elite and the Ryzen 8040. Depending on when Qualcomm gets its new silicon out the door and into people's hands, AMD may just need to focus on Qualcomm as its main AI competition instead of Intel.

And when it comes to getting your hands on the new AMD AI silicon, AMD Ryzen 8040 series laptops will be available from manufacturers like HP and Lenovo starting in Q2 2024. Which could be as late as June of this year.