Before the Intel fanboys get their knickers in a twist and say that AMD is comparing its next-generation processors to Alder Lake, Intel's last-generation parts, instead of the latest 13th Generation Raptor Lake chips, we should point out that at the time AMD wrote the marketing material it did not have access to Raptor Lake-powered chips. The documents are dated December 2022 however, they do include some interesting figures.
The Ryzen 9 7945HX, which AMD touts as "the world's most powerful mobile processor," is the flagship SKU for Dragon Range. The Ryzen 9 7945HX delivers between 18 to 169 per cent higher performance than the Core i9-12900HX in AMD's tests. Multi-core performance is the Ryzen 9 7945HX's forte. In single-core performance, however, the Ryzen 9 7945HX is only two per cent faster (Cinebench R23 1T) than the Core i9-12900HX.
Regarding the generation-over-generation uplift, the Ryzen 9 7945HX provides between 41 to 211 per cent more performance than the Ryzen 9 6900HX. It's evident that the Zen 4 cores on the former bring significant performance gains over the last-generation chip. In addition, consumers can experience single-core and multi-core improvements (measured with Cinebench R23) of up to 22 per cent and 123 per cent, respectively.
The Ryzen 9 7945HX integrated graphics are substantially faster than the Ryzen 9 6900HX. With low settings, AMD measured improvements between 29 to 62 per cent at 1080p. The Ryzen 9 7945HX has the Radeon 610M with two RDNA 2 CUs clocked at up to 2.2 GHz, while the Ryzen 9 6900HX sports the Radeon 680M with 12 RDNA CUs maxing out at 2.4 GHz. The Ryzen 9 7945HX has an inferior iGPU, so the higher gaming performance is because of the Dragon Range's Zen 4 cores rather than the graphics unit.
As you would expect, consumers can expect superior performance across the Dragon Range stack compared to Alder Lake. AMD's selection of Intel chips for the remaining comparisons is interesting. While the company uses the Core i9-12900HX, it prefers to compare the Ryzen 7 7745HX and Ryzen 5 7645HX to the Core i7-12700H and Core i5-12500H, respectively. AMD could have easily used the Core i7-12650HX or Core i5-12600HX.
According to AMD, the Ryzen 7 7745HX outperforms the Core i7-12700H by up to six per cent in single-core workloads and up to 25 per cent in multi-core workloads. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 5 7645HX should be faster than the Core i5-12500H, offering seven per cent higher single-core performance and nine per cent better multi-core performance.
The first gaming laptops with Dragon Range will launch this month. So far, we know of the Alienware m16 and m18, Asus Strix, and Lenovo Legion devices that will leverage AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 7495HX processor. We can expect more announcements in the coming weeks.