AMD announced its Ryzen 4000 U-series chips for laptops in January, but the lineup doesn't include any Ryzen 9 models. However, a Ryzen 9 4900U was spotted on UserBenchmark by hardware leaker @TUM_APISAK , pointing to a future CPU for thin-and-light laptops.
The chip should be based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture and take advantage of TSMC's 7nm FinFET manufacturing process. Like any other U-series part, the Ryzen 9 4900U is shown rated with a 15W, but it also features a cTDP (configurable thermal design power) between 10W and 25W.
This Ryzen 9 4900U in question shares the same configuration as the already announced Ryzen 7 4800U. You can expect the upcoming flagship to arrive with eight cores , 16 threads and 12MB of total cache . At the end of the day, the higher clock speeds on the Ryzen 9 4900U will ultimately set it apart from the Ryzen 7 4800U.
Specs
| Processor | Cores / Threads | Base / Boost Clock (GHz) | L3 Cache (MB) | Graphics Cores / EUs | Graphics Frequency (MHz) | TDP (W) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD Ryzen 9 4900U* | 8 / 16 | 1.8 / 2.35 | 8 | 8 | 1,750 | 15 |
| AMD Ryzen 7 4800U | 8 / 16 | 1.8 / 4.2 | 8 | 8 | 1,750 | 15 |
| Intel Core i7-10710U | 6 / 12 | 1.1 / 4.7 | 12 | 24 | 1,150 | 15 |
| Intel Core i7-1065G7 | 4 / 8 | 1.3 / 3.9 | 8 | 64 | 1,100 | 15 |
*Specifications are not confirmed.
The scores from the UserBenchmark submission suggest that the leaked Ryzen 9 4900U is very likely an engineering sample. The Ryzen 7 4800U outscores the unreleased chip's numbers by a fairly substantial margin. Only the Ryzen 9 4900U's single-core result is closer to expectations.
Engineering samples aren't true indicators for final specifications. Furthermore, software typically has a hard time reporting unreleased hardware correctly. For what it's worth, UserBenchmark detected the Ryzen 9 4900U with a 1.8 GHz base clock and 2.35 GHz average boost clock; however, the Ryzen 7 4800U has a 4.2 GHz boost clock, so the Ryzen 9 4900U is expected to come with an even higher boost clock, such as 4.3 GHz or more.
Benchmark Results
| Test | AMD Ryzen 9 4900U | AMD Ryzen 7 4800U | Performance Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-Core | 136 | 138 | 1.5% |
| 2-Core | 198 | 274 | 38.4% |
| 4-Core | 383 | 537 | 40.2% |
| 8-Core | 538 | 840 | 56.1% |
The UserBenchmark entry doesn't give any hints on the Ryzen 9 4900U's integrated graphics solution, but there shouldn't be any surprises here. The Ryzen 7 4800U is equipped with eight Vega cores ticking up to 1,750 MHz. The setup will probably transfer over to the Ryzen 9 4900U, unless AMD decides to beef up the clock speed a little.
In Intel's camp, there's the Intel Core i7-10710U hexa-core Comet Lake-U part and i7-1065G7 quad-core Ice Lake chip, which are the respective flagships of their lineups. On paper, the Ryzen 9 4900U has the advantage over the two Intel chips, based on core count alone. However, we won't understand the octa-core chip's real performance until AMD confirms it and it starts showing up in laptops -- which, considering the appearance of these benchmark results, shouldn't be far off.