The Surface Laptop 4, despite not using the Ryzen 5000 mobile platform, should still be a strong choice, with up to eight cores and sixteen threads in the Ryzen 7 4980U found in the review unit. The extra graphics core only exists on the Ryzen 5 model though, bumping it to 7 graphics units from 6, whereas the Ryzen 7 model is just a frequency bump. This close partnership with AMD continues with the Surface Laptop 4, with semi-custom versions here as well. A more mature process, and lessons learned over the time manufacturing, would allow AMD to meet these demands easier than on day one of a new platform.įor the Surface Laptop 3, Microsoft designed semi-custom processors for their laptop, with the Microsoft Surface Edition Ryzen APUs being the fastest models available, and with an extra graphics unit for both the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7. Also, Microsoft has tagged AMD with providing “custom” processors for the Surface Laptop 4, which would likely be a supply issue when the chip is just coming off the fab. With 2020 being the year that it was, it is very possible that they were planning on launching this in late 2020, but due to the pandemic globally, they were not able to hit that goal. There are a whole host of reasons why they would have chosen to go this route. As already discussed, Microsoft has not gone with the latest and greatest Cezanne Ryzen platform for the Surface Laptop 4 but are instead using the Ryzen 4000 series Renoir APU from 2020. On the AMD front, Microsoft has expanded the AMD choices to include the 13.5-inch model this time, whereas for Surface Laptop 3, only the 15-inch model was offered with Ryzen.

Microsoft recommends these choices for customers needing the highest single-threaded performance, and they also offer them with the most memory at up to 32 GB.

On the Intel front, Microsoft outfits the Surface Laptop 4 with the latest Intel 11th Gen Tiger Lake platform, with Core i5-1145G7 and Core i7-1185G7 options.

The biggest change from the Surface Laptop 3 to the new Laptop 4 is what is under the hood.

Ryzen 5 surface laptop 4