AMD is now rolling out its lower-clocked Ryzen 9 7940HX & Ryzen 9 7840HX "Dragon Range" CPUs for high-end gaming laptops.
AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX "Dragon Range" CPU Features A 200 MHz Lower Clock But Aims To Make High-End Gaming Laptop More Affordable
Last year, it was reported that AMD was working on lower-clocked SKUs within its Dragon Range-HX CPU lineup. These laptop CPUs retain the high-end Zen 4 core architecture and offer up to 16 cores but come with a slightly lower clock frequency. The aim is to utilize all the Dragon Range CPU dies for gaming laptops and offer slightly more affordable designs.
Starting with the specifications, ASUS has listed a new configuration of its TUF Gaming A16 laptop which is now listed with the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX CPU. This CPU features the same 16-core and 32-thread configuration with 64 MB of L3 cache while the boost clock is now rated at 5.2 GHz. This is a -200 MHz clock speed difference versus the Ryzen 9 7945HX which has been serving the laptop HX segment.
A -200 MHz clock speed isn't much of a difference and while the power/thermal limits remain the same, one thing that we can expect from the Ryzen 9 7940HX CPU laptops is slightly lower prices versus the 7945HX variants. This is good for users who want fast 16-cores within a portable system. The other option is to get Intel's 13th Gen or 14th Gen Raptor Lake-HX CPUs but those do run hot and consume more power. AMD's Zen 4 architecture is a proven design when it comes to efficiency leadership so we can expect the same to be the case from the new entrants.
The AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX 16-core and the Ryzen 9 7840HX 12-core are expected to show up in more configurations down the road. For the fastest gaming performance, the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D remains the best option in AMD's diverse range of high-performance laptop CPUs. Considering the 3D V-Cache action that we have seen on the AM5 and AM4 platforms, we can expect further 3D V-Cache variants on the laptop segment later this year.
AMD Ryzen 7045 "Dragon Range" Laptop CPUs:
| CPU Name | Family | Process Node | Architecture | Cores / Threads | Base / Boost Clock | L3 Cache | iGPU | iGPU Clock | TDP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D | Dragon Range-H | 5nm | Zen 4 | 16/32 | 2.3 / 5.4 GHz | 128 MB | Radeon 610M (RDNA 2 2 CU) | 400 MHz | 55W+ |
| AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX | Dragon Range-H | 5nm | Zen 4 | 16/32 | 2.5 / 5.4 GHz | 64 MB | Radeon 610M (RDNA 2 2 CU) | 400 MHz | 55-75W+ |
| AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX | Dragon Range-H | 5nm | Zen 4 | 8/16 | 2.3 / 5.2 GHz | 64 MB | Radeon 610M (RDNA 2 2 CU) | 400 MHz | 55-75W+ |
| AMD Ryzen 9 7845HX | Dragon Range-H | 5nm | Zen 4 | 12/24 | 3.0 / 5.2 GHz | 64 MB | Radeon 610M (RDNA 2 2 CU) | 400 MHz | 45-75W+ |
| AMD Ryzen 7 7840HX | Dragon Range-H | 5nm | Zen 4 | 12/24 | 3.0 / 5.0 GHz | 64 MB | Radeon 610M (RDNA 2 2 CU) | 400 MHz | 45-75W+ |
| AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX | Dragon Range-H | 5nm | Zen 4 | 8/16 | 3.6 / 5.1 GHz | 32 MB | Radeon 610M (RDNA 2 2 CU) | 400 MHz | 45-75W+ |
| AMD Ryzen 7 7645HX | Dragon Range-H | 5nm | Zen 4 | 6/12 | 4.0 / 5.0 GHz | 32 MB | Radeon 610M (RDNA 2 2 CU) | 400 MHz | 45-75W+ |
News Source: HXL (@9550pro)
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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