AMD promises some great things with its new Ryzen 4000 series mobile processors, claiming the world's first 7nm x86 mobile processor and world's first 8-core/16-thread processor for ultrathin laptops.

To give it a better perspective on improvements, AMD's CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, started with a 2x performance-per-watt gain number, explaining that around 30 percent comes from IPC and design improvements, and the rest from 7nm process gains.

Compared to the 2nd gen Ryzen 3000 series mobile processors, the new generation will no only include 2x performance-per-watt improvements but also get LPDDR4x memory support, up to 5x power state entry/exit latency, and up to 20 percent lower SOC power.

3rd gen Ryzen 4000 will come in U-, H- and Pro-series versions

As noted earlier, the AMD Ryzen 4000 series mobile processors will be available in U-series, H-series, and Pro-series versions, targeting different market segments. The U-series are aimed at ultrathin consumer laptops, the H-series goes for gaming and creator laptops market segments, and the Pro-series targets ultrathin professional laptops.

The biggest launch is expected in the ultrathin consumer laptop with AMD announcing a total of five Ryzen 4000 U-series SKUs, including the 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 4800U flagship. Impressively, the entire Ryzen 4000 U-series hits nominal 15W TDP, with OEM configurable TDP between 12W and 25W.

The flagship Ryzen 7 4800U is an 8-core/16-thread SKU, clocked at 1.8/4.2GHz, has 12MB of cache and comes with 8 Radeon graphics cores, clocked at up to 1750MHz. AMD was keen to note that this is the world's highest-performance ultrathin laptop processor and compared it to Intel's Core i7-1065G7, showing higher performance all across the charts, including single-thread performance win of 4 percent, multi-thread performance gains of 90 percent, and graphics performance win of around 28 percent.

The lineup also includes Ryzen 7 4700U, two Ryzen 5 SKUs, Ryzen 5 4600U and the Ryzen 5 4500U, and the lone Ryzen 3 4300U SKU. The entry-level Ryzen 3 4300U also packs 4-cores/4-threads, 2.7/3.7GHz clocks, 6MB of cache, and comes with 5 Radeon graphics cores clocked at up to 1400MHz.

The H-series goes after the gaming laptop market

Alienware/Dell veteran, Frank Azor, who is now the Chief Gaming Architect at AMD, joined the stage at CES 2020 keynote to talk about the gaming side of AMD's new mobile processors, and the 3rd gen Ryzen 4000 H-series SKUs is all about gaming.

So far, AMD unveiled two Ryzen 4000 H-series SKUs, the Ryzen 7 4800H and the Ryzen 5 4600H, both 45W TDP SKUs. The Ryzen 7 4800H has 8-cores/16-threads, works at 2.9/4.2GHz, has 12MB of cache, and packs only 7 Radeon graphics cores clocked at 1600MHz, which is not that of a surprise considering these will usually be paired up with dedicated mobile GPUs, maybe something from the announced Radeon RX 5600M and RX 5700M lineup, both coming in the first half of 2020.

AMD compared the Ryzen 7 4800H with Intel's Core i7-9750H and the desktop Core i7-9700K, showing impressive performance gains from its flagship gaming mobile CPU.

Plenty of notebooks coming in 2020, some already shown at CES 2020

Probably the biggest win in the whole 3rd gen Ryzen 4000 mobile processors announcement is that AMD claims it will have the first laptops on shelves in Q1 2020 and over 100+ systems coming in 2020, which will put a lot of pressure on Intel in that lucrative market segment.

Some of these design wins for AMD have already been announced at CES 2020, including the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7, a 14-incher with Ryzen 7 4800U, and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, 14-inch gaming laptop with Ryzen 4000 H-series CPUs.

AMD hopes it will get these to retail/e-tail shelves as fast as possible as those same shelves are now filled with Intel-based laptops.