A real Core i5 competitor: AMD Ryzen 7 3750H strikes hard against the Intel Core i5-9300H

Before the advent of Ryzen, Intel was essentially uncontested in the mobile CPU space where the 15 W Core U-series and 45 W H-series reigned supreme. AMD's Excavator architecture was an embarrassment against even the low-end Core i3 family in terms of performance and performance-per-Watt. This all changed two years ago when AMD launched its mobile Zen U-series to better compete against Intel in the 15 W segment.

Two years later, AMD has finally launched its Zen H-series to compete against the Intel 45 W H-series commonly found on gaming laptops. Initial benchmarks from our Asus ROG GA502 test unit reveal that the quad-core Ryzen 7 3750H is almost neck-to-neck with Intel 8th gen and even 9th gen quad-core Core i5 SKUs in multi-threaded loads. Our comparison charts below show the Ryzen 7 3750H is within just 5 percent of the average Core i5-8300H CPU in our database taken from 17 different laptops. It compares favorably against the newer Core i5-9300H as well since the performance boost from Intel 8th gen to 9th gen is only marginal in most cases.

If jumping to the hexa-core Core i7 series, however, AMD's quad-core solution is about 30 percent slower in multi-thread loads. It's clear that AMD is aiming for the mid-range gaming market and not the enthusiast space with its current iteration of mobile H-series Ryzen.

Our benchmark results also reveal a few other tidbits about the Ryzen 7 3750H. Namely, performance is only about 8 percent higher than the lower-end Ryzen 5 3550H in multi-thread loads and about 16 percent slower than the average Core i5-8300H in single-thread loads. Because of the latter, applications optimized for just a single core will launch a bit more slowly on a Ryzen laptop. There is little reason to choose a Ryzen 7 3750H laptop over a Ryzen 5 3550H laptop if performance-per-dollar is priority.

There are very few laptops shipping with mobile Ryzen 5 3550H or Ryzen 7 3750H options as of this writing. Asus has two to three models available while Acer is expected to offer at least one SKU later this year. Expect our full review on the Asus ROG GA502GU with Ryzen 7 3750H and GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q soon.