AMD Athlon Silver 3050U vs AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 3500U vs AMD Ryzen 3 3250U

AMD Athlon Silver 3050U

The AMD Athlon Silver 3050U is a mobile processor for thin and light entry level laptops. It is based on the Picasso series (e.g. Ryzen 3000U APUs) and offers two Zen cores clocked at 2.3 to 3.2 GHz without SMT (two threads at once) and 4 MB of L3 Cache. The integrated graphics card is called Radeon RX Vega 2 and offers only 2 CUs (128 shaders) clocked at up to 1,100 MHz.

In Chromebooks, AMD calles the APU AMD Athlon Silver 3050C, but with the exact same specifications (and performance).

Performance

We have not tested a single system built around the 3050U, as of August 2023. Expect the chip to be just a few percentage points slower than the Athlon 3150U (two Zen cores, 4 threads, up to 3.3 GHz). This kind of performance should suffice for most day-to-day tasks but not much more than that.

Power consumption

This Athlon series chip has a default TDP of 15 W (also known as the long-term power limit). Laptop makers are free to change that to anything between 12 W and 25 W with clock speeds and peformance changing accordingly as a result. Either way, that's a tad too high to allow for passively cooled designs.

Last but not the least, the APU is built with a 14 nm process leading to poor, as of early 2023, energy efficiency.

AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 3500U

The AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 3500U is a mobile SoC for business laptops that was announced in April  2019. It combines four Zen+ cores (8 threads) clocked at 2.1 - 3.7 GHz with a Radeon RX Vega 8 graphics card with 8 CUs (512 Shaders) clocked at up to 1200 MHz. Specified at 15 Watt TDP, the SoC is intended for thin mid-range laptops. Compared to the similar consumer variant Ryzen 5 3500U, the PRO model features additional management and security features (e.g., full memory encryption) and longer warranty / availability.

The Picasso SoCs use the Zen+ microarchitecture with slight improvements that should lead to a 3% IPS (performance per clock) improvements. Furthermore, the 12nm process allows higher clock rates at similar power consumptions.

The integrated dual-channel memory controller supports up to DDR4-2400 memory. As the features of the Picasso APUs are the same compared to the Raven Ridge predecessors, we point to our Raven Ridge launch article.

AMD states that the Picasso APUs are about 8% faster than the predecessors. Therefore, the Ryzen 5 3500U should be ahead the Ryzen 5 PRO 2500U (2 - 3.6 GHz) and nearly on par with the Ryzen 7 PRO 2700U (2.2 - 3.8 GHz).

AMD Ryzen 3 3250U

The AMD Ryzen 3 3250U is an entry-level, dual-core APU that was announced in 2020. The Ryzen features two Zen cores (SMT is enabled for a total of 4 threads) running at 2.6 GHz to 3.5 GHz and a Radeon RX Vega 3 graphics adapter (3 Compute Units = 192 unified shaders) running at up to 1,200 MHz. The specifications are similar to the older Ryzen 3 3200U, with the lower peak operating temperature of Ryzen 3 3250U (95 °C versus the 105 °C) being the only difference between the two.

AMD Ryzen 3 3250C is a special edition of Ryzen 3 3250U designed for use in Chromebooks. The specifications and performance figures appear to be identical between the two.

Architecture

Unlike the costlier Ryzen 5 3500U, Ryzen 3 3250U is not Zen+ based. It makes use of the ageing Zen architecture and is manufactured on the same 14 nm TSMC process as Ryzen 2000-series laptop-grade processors. This has several repercussions; the limited RAM support is one of them. DDR4-3200, DDR4-2933, DDR4-2666 modules are not supported here. It's just the DDR4-2400, DDR4-2133 and lower on.

The CPU has several PCI-Express 3.0 lanes and is thus compatible with NVMe SSDs (read/write rates will be limited to 3.9 GB/s) as well as discrete graphics cards. Ryzen 3 3250U gets soldered permanently on to the motherboard (FP5 socket interface) and is thus not user-replaceable.

Click here for more information on the Raven Ridge product family.

Performance

As far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned, this Ryzen series chip directly competes with the Core i3-10110U, Core i3-1110G4 and also the Athlon Gold 3150U. While the 3250U is certainly not a powerhouse, mundane tasks such as web browsing and casual gaming pose little problem to it, as of early 2022.

Graphics

The Vega 3 is fairly close to Intel's UHD Graphics 620 as far as performance and capabilities go. The graphics adapter supports UHD 2160p monitors at 60 fps, and it can HW-decode VP9, AVC, HEVC, MPEG-2 and other popular video codecs. The latest AV1 codec is not supported, though. Such a video will have to be decoded via software, with the limited CPU horsepower imposing a hard limit on the resolution that can be played back without stuttering.

The Vega will allow for a bit of light gaming; F1 2021 runs well at 720p / Low, to give you an example. Quality RAM will allow for higher frame rates and the opposite is true as well; please keep in mind that Vega 3 has no VRAM of its own.

Power consumption

Energy efficiency isn't great here. The Ryzen is built with a 14 nm manufacturing process leading to low, as of early 2023, energy efficiency.

The APU has a default TDP, also known as the long-term Power Limit, of 15 W. Laptop makers are free to reduce that value a little, with 12 W being the lower limit, or give it a noticeable bump (up to 25 W are possible). Clock speeds and performance will change accordingly as a result.

While not as power-hungry as the Ryzen 3 3100 or any other desktop chip, the R3 3250U is still not likely to ever feature in a passively cooled laptop, tablet or mini-PC.