What just happened? Laptops based on AMD's Ryzen Mobile 7040 series CPUs are now rumored to launch in late April. The report comes almost a month after AMD officially announced that the release of the first notebooks powered by the Ryzen Mobile 7040HS series has been delayed to April "to align with platform readiness and ensure the best possible user experience." The devices were originally expected to debut in March.
The new launch time frame for AMD's next-gen laptop APUs comes from tipster Golden Pig Upgrade Pack, who posted the rumored new dates on Chinese social media website, Bilibili. According to the posts, devices powered by the Ryzen 9 7840HS will launch April 30, while those rocking the low-power 7840U will debut May 1.
AMD announced its Ryzen Mobile 7040HS series APUs (codename 'Phoenix') at CES 2023 in Las Vegas, where it unveiled a slew of new products, including the Radeon RX 7000 laptop GPUs. The Phoenix APUs are meant for thin and light gaming notebooks, and are part of the company's 2023 CPU lineup that also includes 'Raphael' for desktops and 'Dragon Range' for enthusiast gaming laptops.
The Ryzen 7040HS series includes three SKUs, including the flagship Ryzen 9 7940HS, which features 8 cores and 16 threads, with a boost clock of up to 5.2 GHz. Then there's the Ryzen 7 7840HS, which also comprises an octa-core, 16-threaded chip, but has a boost clock of up to 5.1GHz. Finally, there's the Ryzen 5 7640HS, which has 6 cores, 12 threads, and a boost clock of up to 5.0GHz.
The 7040 series chips come with Zen 4 CPUs and RDNA3 iGPUs, along with a dedicated AI processing block, which is a first for AMD. While the RDNA3 is likely to be a major draw for buyers, there could be some disappointment in store for people who have been craving a capable integrated graphics solution in gaming laptops.
Earlier this year, AMD downgraded the GPU clock speeds by 200MHz for all three announced Ryzen 7040 chips. As per the revised listings, the iGPU clock speeds in the Ryzen 9 7940HS were downgraded from 3GHz to 2.8GHz, while the Ryzen 7 7840HS went from 2.9GHz to 2.7GHz. As for the Ryzen 5 7640HS, it is now only expected to have a 2.6GHz iGPU instead of the 2.8GHz listed earlier.
AMD never explained why it made the changes, but online speculation suggest that it was done to enable the APUs to run at their advertised TDPs. Either way, despite the downgrade, the Ryzen 7040 lineup is expected to offer more than decent gaming performance, which could convince many casual gamers to pick up laptops powered by these chips.
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