AMD Ryzen 7040U series of laptop processors now official with a Radeon 780M iGPU

AMD's Phoenix-based Ryzen 7040U series of laptop processors were initially intended for release earlier this year. While some of them showed up here and there in leaked benchmarks, there was no launch date in sight. Now, AMD has finally lifted the covers off its new processors and an equally impressive iGPU.

The Ryzen 7040U series consists of four SKUs- the Ryzen 7 7840U, Ryzen 5 7640U, Ryzen 5 7540U and Ryzen 3 7440U. The U in their name confirms a TDP of 15-30 Watts. We've already seen the first two chips in action under the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme and Ryzen Z1 moniker, alongside the Asus ROG Ally. The entire lineup comes with an RDNA3-based Radeon 780M iGPU. You can read more about it in our detailed analysis.

AMD compares its flagship Phoenix CPU (Ryzen 7 7840U) with the Raptor Lake-based Intel Core i7-1360p, which is puzzling, as the better-specced Core i7-1370p would have made for a better candidate. Nonetheless, the company claims it is anything between 29% to 128% faster than its Intel counterpart in a variety of workloads. Similarly, the APU is 5% to 75% faster than the Apple M2.

Lastly, the Ryzen 7 7840U and Ryzen 5 7640U also ship with a dedicated AI chip. While it doesn't have any real-world uses now, it is advertised to work with Windows 11's Studio Effects at a later date. Unfortunately, AMD hasn't specified exactly when laptops powered by the Ryzen 7040U series will hit shelves. It is entirely possible that we could see it in action alongside a handheld console before laptops.