AMD launches Zen 4-powered Ryzen 7000 PRO Series for laptops and desktops

With Ryzen 7000 fast approaching the one-year mark, AMD has finally decided to release its business-focused Ryzen PRO 7000 models. These PRO chips have not only arrived late compared to Intel's 13th-generation vPro CPUs (which came out in March), but are even late by AMD's own standards, as Ryzen PRO has typically launched no later than a few months after the main models.

Ryzen PRO 7000 injects some business features into Ryzen 7000

In case you've never heard of it, Ryzen PRO is AMD's counterpart to Intel's vPro, offering different SKUs that come with software and hardware features that enhance security and general IT management aspect, and sometimes some performance and power tweaks since business computers usually don't need the full horsepower of something like a Ryzen 9 7950X.

For laptops, AMD is disclosing six PRO SKUs, three from the higher-end 7040HS series, and three from the efficiency and battery life-focused 7040U series. You may be wondering whether AMD's Ryzen 7000 mobile naming shenanigans carry over to Ryzen PRO 7000. Although AMD didn't specify any Ryzen PRO 7030 models, they are mentioned briefly in AMD's presentation as being available in some upcoming laptops. If you work in some company's IT department, beware, and remember that Ryzen 7040 and 7030 are not the same thing, and only the former has Ryzen AI capabilities.

The Ryzen PRO 7000 series for desktops is much smaller, and also marks the first time AMD is only relying on its high-end silicon for desktop PRO chips. With previous generations of Ryzen, the high-performance desktop chips didn't have integrated graphics, and APUs with fewer cores and less cache had to be offered since many business desktops don't come with discrete graphics. However, as Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs have integrated graphics (albeit very weak ones), AMD can get away with just launching three higher-end SKUs this time.

These are all essentially PRO-branded versions of the 7900, 7700, and 7600, down to the clock speeds and TDPs. Again, business PCs generally don't need the kind of horsepower offered by X-class CPUs (which aren't all that faster than non-X models anyways). Additionally, it doesn't seem like V-Cache CPUs are going to be making an appearance in the Ryzen PRO 7000 series, which is expected as V-Cache is really only useful for games and not much else.

AMD didn't specify when laptops and desktops using Ryzen PRO 7000 would be available, but it did show off some laptops that would be available later this year. Lenovo's Thinkpad Z13 and Z16 are available exclusively with Ryzen PRO 7000, and both Lenovo and HP laptops are specifically named as using Ryzen PRO 7040 and Ryzen PRO 7030.