AMD Ryzen 7 3700U vs AMD Athlon Silver 3050U

AMD Ryzen 7 3700U

The AMD Ryzen 7 3700U is a mobile SoC that was announced in January 2019. It combines four Zen+ cores (8 threads) clocked at 2.3 - 4 GHz with a Radeon RX Vega 10 graphics card with 10 CUs (640 Shaders) clocked at up to 1400 MHz. Specified at 15 Watt TDP, the SoC is intended for thin mid-range laptops. In Chromebooks, AMD calles the APU AMD Ryzen 7 3700C, but with the exact same specifications (and performance).

The Picasso SoCs use the Zen+ microarchitecture with slight improvements that should lead to a 3% IPC (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.

The performance of the Ryzen 7 3700U is heavily depending on the TDP settings and the cooling solution of the laptop. The average 3700U at the time of writing is only as fast as a older Ryzen 5 2500U (in our performance rating). This comes from the differences of performance in different laptops. For example, the ThinkPad E595 offers a miles better short and long-term CPU performance compared to the HP Envy x360 (see Cinebench R15 loop below). Compared with Intel CPUs, the Ryzen 7 is on par with a Core i5-8250U on average, but e.g. in the E595 it can be matched with higher end Intel counter parts. However, even the slow examples offer enough performance for demanding multi tasking.

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) or the same dual core die of the desktop Athlon 3000 and offers two Zen or Zen+ cores clocked at 2.3 to 3.2 GHz without SMT (two threads at once) and 4 MB L3-Cache. The integrated graphics card is called Radeon RX Vega 2 and offers only 2 CUs (128 Shaders) clocked at up to 1000 MHz. The TDP is configurable between 12 and 25 Watt (15 Watt nominal).

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

The performance should be slightly below the AMD Athlon 300U and Athlon Pro 300U due to the lower clock speeds and missing SMT. Also the GPU offers one CU less and should be significantly slower.