AMD Ryzen 7 4980U vs Apple M3 Max 16-Core vs AMD Ryzen 5 4680U

AMD Ryzen 7 4980U

The AMD Ryzen 7 4980U is a Renoir family processor designed for certain Microsoft Surface systems. 4980U has eight Zen 2 cores clocked at 2.0 GHz (base clock speed) to 4.4 GHz (Boost) with thread-doubling SMT tech enabled for a total of 16 threads. The chip is manufactured on the modern 7 nm TSMC process and partly thanks to that AMD promises a 2x improvement in performance-per-Watt over Ryzen 3000 series mobile CPUs.

Architecture

The Zen 2 microarchitecture has brought a sizeable per-thread performance boost compared to the outgoing Zen+ parts. Renoir product family is also the first to introduce 8-core ULV processors to laptop market, keeping power consumption within reasonable limits. This AMD processor family is very impressive from most perspectives. One of the disatvantages to keep in mind is the lack of PCI-Express 4 support, meaning these blazing-fast NVMe SSDs will be limited to 3.9 GB/s tops.

Ryzen 7 4980U is designed to work with quad-channel LPDDR4 memory at up to 4,267 MHz. 8 MB of Level 3 are present in this chip. The Ryzen 7 gets soldered straight to the motherboard (FP6 socket) and is thus not user-replaceable. Please go to our Renoir hub page for more information on the product family.

Performance

The 4980U is the fastest U-class Ryzen 4000 series chip. As such, its clock speeds are 200 MHz higher (both the base one and Boost one) than what the Ryzen 7 4800U has.

It is thus hardly surprising that the average 4980U in our database is in the same league as the Ryzen 7 5800U and also the Core i7-1260P, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned.

Graphics

In addition to its eight CPU cores, the Ryzen 7 also features the Radeon RX Vega 8 graphics adapter with 8 CUs (= 512 shaders) at up to 1,950 MHz. This iGPU is compatible with FreeSync and DirectX 12 and is able to HW-decode AVC, HEVC, VP9-encoded videos (no AV1 support here). Vega 8 is capable of outputting UHD 2160p60 video signal to several monitors and, similar to Intel's Iris Xe (80 EUs), is good enough for a bit of light gaming on the go, provided one is content with sub-1080p resolutions and low/medium quailty presets.

Power consumption

The APU has a default TDP, also known as the long-term power limit, of 15 W; much like it is with other U-class Ryzen 4000 chips, AMD is fine with laptop makers (Microsoft, in this case) changing that value to anything between 10 W and 25 W.

The 7 nm TSMC process this Ryzen 7 is built with makes for above average, as of mid 2022, energy efficiency.

Apple M3 Max 16-Core

The Apple M3 Max (16 Core) is a system on a chip (SoC) from Apple for notebooks that was launched towards the end of 2023. It integrates a new 16-core CPU with 12 performance cores with up to 4.06 GHz and 4 efficiency cores with 2.8 GHz. There is also a slimmed-down 14-core variant with a 30-core GPU.

Thanks to the higher clock rates and architectural improvements, the processor performance is also significantly better than the M2 Max in benchmarks and can keep up with the fastest mobile CPUs (such as a Core i9-13900HX).

The M3 also integrates a new graphics card with dynamic caching, mesh shading and ray tracing acceleration via hardware. In the top model, all 40 cores of the chip are used and support up to 5 displays simultaneously (internal and 4 external).

GPU and CPU can jointly access the shared memory on the package (unified memory). This is available in 48, 64 and 128 GB variants and offers 400 GB/s maximum bandwidth (512 bit bus).

The integrated 16-core Neural Engine has also been revised and now offers 18 TOPS peak performance (compared to 15.8 TOPS in the M2 but 35 TOPS in the new A17 Pro). The video engine now also supports AV1 decoding in hardware. H.264, HEVC and ProRes (RAW) can still be decoded and encoded. Like its predecessor, the Max chip offers two video engines and can therefore encode and decode two streams simultaneously.

Unfortunately, the integrated WLAN only continues to support WiFi 6E (no WiFi 7), unlike the small M3 SoC thunderbolt 4 is also supported (max 40 Gbit/s).

The chip is manufactured in the current 3nm process (N3B) at TSMC and contains 92 billion transistors (+37% vs. Apple M2 Max). Under load, the CPU part consumes up to 56 watts, the chip can use a total of 78 watts.

AMD Ryzen 5 4680U

The AMD Ryzen 5 4680U is a semi-custom APU of the Renoir family designed for Microsoft devices. The 4680U integrates six CPU cores based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture clocked at 2.2 GHz (base) to 4 GHz (Boost) with SMT support for a total 12 threads. The two advantages a 4680U has over the older Ryzen 5 4600U are its higher base clock speed and a faster iGPU.

Architecture

The chip is manufactured on the modern 7 nm TSMC process and in part thanks to this fact, AMD advertises a 2x performance per watt improvement over the 12 nm Ryzen 3000 mobile processors. The built-in dual-channel memory controller supports LPDDR4-4266 RAM. Furthermore, 8 MB of L3 cache can be found on the chip.

Just like the other mobile Ryzen 4000 CPUs, a 4680U supports PCI-Express 3.0. Please go to our Renoir processor hub page for additional information on the product family.

Performance

Multi-thread performance is most comparable to the Ryzen 7 4700U and the Core i5-10500H, the latter being a much more power-hungry chip. This makes the Ryzen a more than decent CPU for most tasks, as of early 2022.

Graphics

In addition to the six CPU cores, the APU also integrates a DX 12 compatible Radeon RX Vega 7 graphics adapter with 7 CUs (448 unified shaders) at up to 1,500 MHz. The Vega iGPU will have no trouble HW-decoding AVC, HEVC and VP9 videos, but the newer AV1 codec will only be decoded via software. In terms of gaming, we are looking at an MX150-level performance. Pretty much all games released in 2020 can be played on low to medium settings in 720p on this graphics adapter.

Power consumption

This Ryzen 5 series chip has a default TDP (also known as the long-term power limit) of 15 W, a value that laptop makers - Microsoft, in this case - are free to change to anything between 10 W and 25 W, with clock speeds and performance changing accordingly as a result. Indeed, we saw the CPU consume roughly 23 watts when subjected to our usual stress testing routine.

The 7 nm TSMC process this Ryzen is built with makes for very decent, as of mid 2022, energy efficiency.