AMD Ryzen 7 7730U & Ryzen 5 7530U initial benchmarks - Zen 3 is still competitive

The two models Ryzen 7 7730U as well as Ryzen 5 7530U are basically old chips, because the specs are identical to the previous models Ryzen 7 5825U and Ryzen 5 5625U, respectively (but with 200 MHz higher single-core clock). This means they use 8 Zen3 cores (7 nm) combined with the old iGPUs RX Vega 8 and RX Vega 7. Our review devices are the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 14 G8 and Flex 5 16 G8, where the CPUs can consume up to 48 Watts.

Our benchmarks clearly shows that the new models are (as expected) pretty much identical to their predecessors. Both the Ryzen 7 6800U and the Intel chips have an advantage in single-core scenarios, but the "new" Zen3 models are holding up pretty well in multi-core tests. Longer tests like Cinebench R23 Multi even show that the Ryzen 7 7730U is actually not much slower than Intel's latest and greatest Raptor Lake Core i7-1360P.

It is even more interesting when we look at the Cinebench R15 Multi loop. It obviously depends on individual laptops and their capabilities to maintain high Turbo clocks, but modern Intel CPUs in particular usually show a significant performance drop after the first run. The Ryzen 7 7730U is actually faster than the brand-new Core i7-1360P in the R15 Multi loop. However, the Ryzen 7 5825U in the HP Envy x360 was even a bit faster.

The smaller Ryzen 5 7530U also performs well and is faster than the Core i7-1255U in the Surface Pro 9 and is also just a bit slower than the Core i7-1260P in the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Carbon.

The two Ryzen 7000 CPUs can utilize high power limits in the current test devices, so the efficiency is not particularly good. The Zen3 SoCs are roughly on par with the Intel competition, but the Ryzen 7 6800U with the Zen3+ cores is much more efficient in the multi-core tests.

The GPU benchmarks do not offer any surprises since we are pretty familiar with the two iGPUs Radeon RX Vega 7 and RX Vega 8. The RX Vega 7 is slightly ahead of the current Intel Iris Xe Graphics with 80 EUs, and the Vega 8 cannot quite keep up with the faster Iris Xe Graphics (96 EUs). The integrated Radeon 680M, however, is much faster.

The "old" new Zen3 CPUs from AMD still offer decent performance in the beginning of 2023. The multi-core performance in particular is still competitive and even Intel's latest Raptor Lake mobile processor does not have a significant advantage. This is also the case for the integrated GPUs; the Iris Xe Graphics G7 with 96 EUs is a bit faster than the Vega 8, but both chips are on a very low performance level overall, so the difference does not really matter.

The Zen3 CPUs are still a good choice, especially for inexpensive laptops, but we have to criticize AMDs current product line-up. We don't really know how a consumer is supposed to know what to choose considering the the large table above. The Zen3+ SoCs like the Ryzen 7 7735U are probably the most interesting models since they are based on the very good Ryzen 7 6800U from last year, which was not widely available. The new Zen4 U-series chips are still not here and we do not expect that the availability will be very good.