The Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 AMD model is growing green with envy as the spotlight will no longer shine on its alluring processor. A new Surface device in the family -- the upcoming Surface Book 3 -- might be electrified by an AMD chip -- a much more powerful one, too.
The 15-inch variant of the Surface Laptop 3 turned heads as it was the first Microsoft device to be juiced up by an AMD Ryzen mobile processor and Radeon RX Vega 11 graphics. The Redmond-based tech giant boasted it was the fastest mobile processor AMD has ever made.
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When we tested both the AMD and Intel versions of the 15-inch Surface Laptop 3 earlier this year, we found that its Intel iteration was much faster.
The Surface Laptop 3 for Business -- equipped with an Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor -- scored a 19,298 on the Geekbench 4.3 overall performance test, which trampled the 11,612 score achieved by the AMD-powered Surface Laptop 3 (Ryzen 5 3580U).
Now, there may be a new AMD Ryzen 4000-powered Surface device for us to test, and this time, it should keep pace with Intel.
Hardware leaker @_rogame (via TechRadar) spotted a listing in the 3DMark 11 database that implies the upcoming Surface Book 3 will sport an AMD Ryzen 5 4500U APU paired with a Radeon RX 5300M mobile graphics card.
I found a weird hardware combination An all AMD laptop with Ryzen 5 4500U & what appears to be an RX 5300MGPU vendor is Advanced Micro Devices for both iGPU & dGPU so it's an AMD test laptopAdd to that the new Microsoft Laptop with 4500UI think this is Surface Book 3 pic.twitter.com/ELsppJo7PPMarch 18, 2020
The hardware spy speculated that the powerful AMD APU may appear on the upcoming Surface Book 3.
The AMD Ryzen 5 4500U is a six-core processor based on AMD's latest 7nm Zen 2 architecture with a 2.3 GHz base clock and 4 GHz boost speeds. The chip is also paired with a GPU that runs up to 1,500 MHz.
Latest rumors say the 2020 Surface Book 3 is slated to be released alongside the Surface Go 2 in the spring, but with COVID-19 concerns climbing, there's a chance the launch date will be pushed back.
It's easy to theorize that Microsoft will continue working with AMD for a Surface device successor, but of course, we won't know for sure until the Redmond-based tech giant unzips its lips and spills the beans on future AMD plans.
Compared to its previous generation, AMD Ryzen 4000 chips reportedly have a 15% increase of inter-process communication, a 59% jump in graphics performance and improved efficiency levels for ultraslim laptops.
Should this APU power a future Surface device as speculated, we can't wait to experiment with it in our labs to find out if it lives up to AMD's impressive claims.
