Is AMD stagnating? Why Ryzen 400 series is partly a flop

While Intel has long been a forerunner in delivering minimal improvements between generations, AMD appears to be gradually following suit. One great example is the Ryzen AI 7 450 found in the Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5 14, which we recently reviewed. In most scenarios, both its CPU and GPU performance are barely any better than those of its predecessor, the Ryzen AI 7 350. It even produced worse results in some tests, though a few percentage points can reasonably be attributed to the margin of error in our measurements.

Nevertheless, many consumers – especially less tech-savvy ones – will expect more from a supposedly new product generation. In the case of the Ryzen AI 7 450, this stagnation is hardly surprising once you look at its specifications. It still features eight Zen 5 cores, with clock speeds increased by only 100 MHz. RAM support has also been improved marginally (now up to LPDDR5-8533), though this is rarely noticeable in everyday use.