If AMD's Fire Range 9000HX CPUs weren't enough, the company has now quietly announced its new "Dragon Range Refresh" Ryzen 8000HX chips primed for gaming laptops — but you'll find not much has changed compared to its previous generation.
AMD revealed four new Ryzen 8000HX chips, coming with up to 16 CPU cores, 32 threads, up to 5.4GHz boost clock speeds and 75W TDP. These are designed to "deliver desktop-level performance" in gaming laptops, with Zen 4 architecture giving performance boosts.
With "Refresh" being in the name, these new AMD CPUs are an update over the 7000HX chips, with the 8000HX CPUs catering more for RTX 50-series laptop GPUs. Although, a quick look at specs show that while these chips may be slightly faster, they're also largely unchanged over last-gen chips.
CPU | Cores / Threads | TDP | Boost clock | Graphics cores | Cache |
AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX | 16 / 32 | 55-75W | Up to 5.4 GHz | 2 | 80MB |
AMD Ryzen 9 8940HX | 16 / 32 | 55-75W | Up to 5.3 GHz | 2 | 80MB |
AMD Ryzen 7 8840HX | 12 / 24 | 45-75W | Up to 5.1 GHz | 2 | 76MB |
AMD Ryzen 7 8745HX | 8 / 16 | 45-75W | Up to 5.1 GHz | 2 | 40MB |
From the CPU cores to base clock speeds, these refreshed Dragon Range chips are more or less the same as the Ryzen 7000HX series. They also arrive with the same integrated Radeon 610M graphics, although since these will be paired in the latest gaming laptops, like a newly listed Asus ROG Strix G16 sporting a Ryzen 9 8940HX CPU (via VideoCardz), rigs won't need to rely on this.
It's also worth noting that these don't come with Ryzen AI capabilities and aren't based on faster Zen 5 architecture, like AMD Ryzen AI Max chips. These chips are another alternative for gaming laptops to come equipped with. As it stands, you can expect plenty of performance from Ryzen 8000HX series chips, especially with the flagship model.
Primed for desktop-level gaming
Despite a lack of changes, the AMD Ryzen 8000HX refresh are still CPUs that are repurposed desktop-level processors, and putting them in upcoming gaming laptops is sure to bring two things: better performance to suit RTX 50-series GPUs and (hopefully) a more affordable price compared to other laptop chips.
The 8000HX lineup is set for a global launch in laptops, so we're sure to see more pop up as we see more premium gaming notebooks arrive, including in RTX 5090, 5080 and 5070 Ti laptops.
For now, we'll have to see how these chips perform in laptops, especially when compared to Intel Core Ultra 200HX series CPUs and AMD's own Strix Halo processors with Ryzen AI Max.
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