AMD Ryzen 7 8840U vs AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370

AMD Ryzen 7 8840U

The Ryzen 7 8840U is a powerful laptop processor (APU) of the Hawk Point family. This isn't an entirely new APU; instead, the R7 8840U is a rebadged R7 7840U with higher clock speeds on the Ryzen AI NPU. Its eight Zen 4 cores run at 3.3 GHz to 5.1 GHz and are SMT-enabled for a total of 16 processing threads. The great Radeon 780M iGPU is responsible for 3D processing and similar duties.

Architecture & Features

Hawk Point family chips are powered by the Zen 4 architecture, much like Phoenix and Dragon Range family chips are. That's not to say there is no difference between the three. With Hawk Point, AMD is betting big on generative AI; these chips are promised to deliver an up to 40% increase in generative AI performance over 7040 series APUs making apps like DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Photoshop more powerful than ever before.

Unlike Zen 3, Zen 4 features AVX512 support and, thanks to a plethora of other improvements including larger caches/registers/buffers across the board, is slated to deliver a double-digit IPC improvement over the former.

Elsewhere, the 8840U has 16 MB of L3 cache and support for super-fast DDR5-5600 and LPDDR5x-7500 RAM. The chip is compatible with USB 4 and thus with Thunderbolt. It comes with 20 PCIe 4 lanes, giving fast NVMe SSD up to 7.8 GB/s of throughput.

Systems built around the 8840U are designed to run 64-bit Windows 11, 64-bit Windows 10, or Linux. Please note that this processor is not overclockable and neither is it user-replaceable. It gets soldered to the motherboard for good instead (FP7, FP7r2, FP8 socket interfaces).

Performance

Since the 8840U is a 7840U in disguise, it's safe to expect it to be about as fast as the Core i7-12650H, as far as multi-thread performance is concerned. This means the chip is fast enough to make 99% of consumers happy, as of December 2023.

Your mileage may vary depending on how high the CPU power limits are and how competent the cooling solution of your system is.

Graphics

The Radeon 780M has 12 CUs (768 shaders) purring away at up to 2,700 MHz. This is exactly the right iGPU for people looking for a bit more horsepower than what Intel's aging Xe options can provide. The Radeon will let you use up to 4 monitors with resolutions as high as SUHD 4320p and it will also HW-decode and HW-encode the most widely used video codecs (including AV1, HEVC and AVC) without breaking a sweat. In terms of gaming, the thing is good enough for 1080p and medium-to-low settings, as of late 2023.

Your mileage may vary depending on how high the CPU power limits are, how competent the cooling solution of your system is, how fast the RAM of your system is (there is no dedicated VRAM here).

Power consumption

This Ryzen 7 series chip has a long-term power limit (default TDP) of 28 W. Laptop makers are free to change that value significantly, with values as low as 15 W and as high as 30 W greenlighted by AMD. Either way, an active cooling solution is a must for any system powered by this chip.

The 8840U is built with TSMC's 4 nm process for high, as of late 2023, energy efficiency.

AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370

The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is a powerful Strix Point family processor that debuted in June 2024. The APU comes with 12 CPU cores running at 2.0 GHz to 5.1 GHz, the 16 CU RDNA 3+ Radeon 890M graphics adapter and the 50 TOPS XDNA 2 neural engine. Other noteworthy features include PCIe 4, USB 4 and LPDDR5x-8000 RAM support.

Of the 12 CPU cores, 4 are full Zen 5 cores and 8 are smaller Zen 5c cores. The latter run at significantly lower clock speeds than the former.

Architecture and Features

Strix Point family APUs are powered by Zen 5 and Zen 5c microarchitecture cores, the latter being a slightly slower, smaller and more energy-efficient version of the former. One of the differences between Zen 5 and Zen 5c is cache size; Zen 5 cores have larger caches to work with. According to AMD, Zen 5 delivers a 16% IPC improvement over Zen 4 thanks to branch prediction improvements and other refinements.

Elsewhere, the HX 370 supports LPDDR5x-8000 and DDR5-5600 RAM, and is natively compatible with USB 4 (and therefore Thunderbolt). It has PCIe 4.0 support for a throughput of 1.9 GB/s per lane, just like its 8000 series predecessors did. The integrated XDNA 2 NPU delivers up to 50 INT8 TOPS for accelerating various AI workloads.

Performance

Given the IPC improvement, we expect 4 Zen 5 cores combined with 8 Zen 5c cores to perform about as well as 16 Zen 4 cores meaning there is a real chance of the HX 370 dethroning the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D. We'll make sure to update this section once we get our hands on a laptop powered by the HX 370.

Graphics

The Radeon 890M is the most powerful iGPU that AMD has on offer right now. It features 16 RDNA 3+ architecture CUs (1024 unified shaders) running at up to 2,900 MHz. We expect the graphics adapter to deliver gaming performance good enough for playing 2023 and 2024 games in 1080p (Low detail settings).

Naturally, the 890M is capable of driving four SUHD 4320p60 monitors. It can also efficiently encode and decode the most popular video codecs including AVC, HEVC, VP9 and AV1. The latest addition to that list, the VVC codec, is not supported unlike it is with Intel Lunar Lake chips.

Power consumption

The HX 370 is supposed to have a base TDP of 28 W, with laptop makers free to crank it up to up to 54 W. Which they will most likely do to maximize performance.

The 4 nm TSMC process that the CPU cores are built with make for decent, as of mid 2024, energy efficiency.