AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6860Z vs AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U vs AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 6650U

AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6860Z

The AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6860Z is a processor for thin and light laptops based of the Rembrandt generation. The R7 6850U integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 3+ microarchitecture. They are clocked at 2.7 (guaranteed base clock) to 4.7 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (16 threads). The chip is manufactured on the modern 6 nm TSMC process. The Ryzen 7 PRO 6860Z is the professional version of the consumer R7 6800U with additional management features and the Microsoft Pluton Security processor. Compared to the similar Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U, the 6860Z offers a 50 MHz higher Turbo clock speed for the processor cores and the TDP is specified at 28 Watt (6850U can go down to 15 Watt).

The new Zen 3+ is a refresh of the Zen 3 architecture and should not offer a lot of changes. The chip itself however, offers a lot of new features, like support for USB 4 (40 Gbps), PCI-E Gen 4, DDR5-4800MT/s or LPDDR5-6400MT/s, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth LE 5.2, DisplayPort 2, and AV1 decode.

The processor performance is very similar to the Ryzen 7 6800U and Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U and clearly better than the old Ryzen 7 5800U thanks to the improved clock speeds. The average Intel Core i7-1280P is only slightly faster, although there can be clearly faster models thanks to the higher core count (depends on the cooling and TDP settings).

A big novelty is the integrated GPU Radeon 680M, that is now based on the RDNA2 architecture and offers 12 CUs at up to 2.2 GHz. It should be the fastest iGPU of all at the time of announcement.

The TDP of the APU is specified at 28 Watts. The power efficiency should be very good, thanks to the improved 6nm process and additional power saving features in the 6000 series.

AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U

The AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U is a processor for thin and light laptops based of the Rembrandt generation. The R7 6850U integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 3+ microarchitecture. They are clocked at 2.7 (guaranteed base clock) to 4.7 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (16 threads). The chip is manufactured on the modern 6 nm TSMC process. The Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U is the professional version of the consumer R7 6800U with additional management features and the Microsoft Pluton Security processor. Compared to the similar R7 6850H, the 6850U offers a lower base clock speed and a lower TDP.

The new Zen 3+ is a refresh of the Zen 3 architecture and should not offer a lot of changes. The chip itself however, offers a lot of new features, like support for USB 4 (40 Gbps), PCI-E Gen 4, DDR5-4800MT/s or LPDDR5-6400MT/s, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth LE 5.2, DisplayPort 2, and AV1 decode.

A big novelty is the integrated GPU Radeon 680M, that is now based on the RDNA2 architecture and offers 12 CUs at up to 2.2 GHz.

Performance

The average 6850U in our database is in the same league as the Core i5-1340P, the Core i7-1360P and also the Ryzen 7 5825U, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned. This is a really fast chip, as far as 2023 consumer laptops go.

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

Power consumption

This Ryzen 7 has a default TDP of 15 W to 28 W, the expectation being that laptop manufacturers will go for a higher value in exchange for higher performance. Either way, this is a little too high to allow for passively cooled designs.

The APU is built with TSMC's 6 nm process for great, as of early 2023, energy efficiency.

AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 6650U

The AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 6650U is a processor for thin and light laptops based of the Rembrandt generation. The Ryzen has six out of a possible eight cores based on the Zen 3+ microarchitecture. They are clocked at 2.9 (guaranteed base clock) to 4.5 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (12 threads). The chip is manufactured on the modern 6 nm TSMC process. The Ryzen 5 PRO 6650U is the professional version of the consumer R5 6600U with additional management features and the Microsoft Pluton Security processor. Compared to the similar R5 6650H, the 6850U offers a lower base clock speed and a lower TDP.

The new Zen 3+ is a refresh of the Zen 3 architecture and should not offer a lot of changes. The chip itself however, offers a lot of new features, like support for USB 4 (40 Gbps), PCI-E Gen 4, DDR5-4800MT/s or LPDDR5-6400MT/s, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth LE 5.2, DisplayPort 2, and AV1 decode.

Performance

The average 6650U in our database is very close to the Core i7-1260P and the Core i7-10870H, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned. This is a really good result, as of late 2022.

Thanks to its decent cooling solution and a long-term CPU power limit of 32 W, the ThinkPad T16 G1 is among the fastest laptops built around the 6650U that we know of. It can be about 20% faster in CPU-bound workloads than the slowest system featuring the same chip in our database, as of August 2023.

In the 6000 series, AMD finally switched to the current RDNA 2 graphics architecture for the iGPU. The 6650U only offers the small Radeon 660M with 6 of the 12 CUs enabled and 1.9 GHz max. clock rate.

The TDP of the APU is specified at 15 - 28 Watts (default). The power efficiency should be very good, thanks to the improved 6nm process and additional power saving features in the 6000 series.