AMD might have delayed the launch of its much-awaited Ryzen 9000 processor lineup, but it has been releasing other interesting processors in the meantime.
According to some speculations, AMD had plans to release a Zen 4 mobile processor without the AI NPU component. The rumors turned out to be true, as AMD has released the Ryzen 7 8745H processors in China.
As mentioned, this APU does not include an AI-powered NPU, but half of its specifications are the same as those of the Ryzen 7 8845HS. The processor will power Lenovo’s new laptop, the Lenovo XiaoXin 14 Pro.
The NPU-less Ryzen 7 8745H falls slightly behind the Ryzen 7 8745HS
The new Hawk Point APU comes without the NPU, which is the Neural Processing Unit responsible for AI acceleration. Apart from this, the Ryzen 7 8745H features the same components as the Ryzen 7 8845HS.
This means the processor is based on the Zen 4 architecture with 8 cores and 16 threads. Further, the processor comes with a 16 MB L3 cache and 8 MB L2 cache. The iGPU is also the same, which is the RDNA 3 card Radeon 780M that has 12 computing units. As per AMD’s official specs, both processors have a default TDP of 45W.
Even though the APUs seem to appear very similar on the surface, the clock speeds and performance seem to be slightly different, with the NPU-less processor lagging behind. The new Ryzen 7 8745H has a boost clock speed of 4.9GHz, which is less than the 5.1GHz speed offered by the 8845HS.
The graphics performance also seems to be slightly lower here. The NPU-less chip offers clock speeds of 2.6 GHz, which is a bit lower compared to the 2.7 GHz offered by the 8845HS.
Apart from this, AMD has other CPUs releasing later this year, with the most significant release being the Ryzen 9000 lineup. After the delay, the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X, along with Ryzen 9 9900X, will hit the shelves on August 15th, and the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X will be rolled out on August 8th.
