First AMD Zen+ Ryzen 5 3550H gaming laptop now shipping, review in progress

When AMD announced its Zen+ CPU refresh at CES 2019, one of the first laptops mentioned sporting the new technology was the Asus TUF FX505 series. The TUF brand is Asus' budget-mainstream gaming category in contrast to the enthusiast ROG brand which is fitting for the cost-conscious Zen family of mobile processors. Now that the Asus TUF FX505 just launched, we'll be able to provide our usual performance rundown on the new Ryzen 5 3550H CPU in the coming weeks.

The 35 W Ryzen 5 3550H competes directly with the 45 W Intel Core i5-8300H as both are quad-core processors targeted at affordable gaming laptops. The AMD CPU is essentially a Ryzen 5 3500U but with a much higher TDP envelope for sustaining faster clock rates under load.

A higher-end quad-core Ryzen 7 3750H will also be available, but it will not be a direct competitor to the Core i7-8750H since the latter is a hexa-core CPU. AMD appears to be comfortable offering only budget-mainstream mobile Ryzen SKUs at the moment in contrast to the enthusiast desktop Ryzen lineup.

Our biggest fear about the FX505DY is that Asus will be pairing the new Ryzen 5 3550H with the two-year old Radeon RX 560X GPU. We're not expecting gaming performance to be the best from this inexpensive laptop, but we're hoping that the GPU won't bottleneck the CPU, either. Check back soon for our full review on the system.