AMD Mendocino Tested, Ryzen 3 7320U APU With Zen 2 & RDNA 2 Cores Is Up To 20% Faster Than Valve’s Steam Deck
Last month, AMD introduced its Mendocino APUs which are aimed at the “everyday computing” laptop segment. These APUs are designed for high-end gaming or content creation workloads & the main focus is to deliver the most basic computing needs to users in a platform that offers big battery times. The lineup is placed at the tail end of the Ryzen 7000 CPU family and includes three segments, Ryzen 5, Ryzen 3, and Athlon CPUs. In today’s benchmark, we take a look at the AMD Ryzen 3 7320U “Mendocino” CPU which features 4 cores and 8 threads. The CPU is based on the Zen 2 core architecture and carries 4 MB of L3 and 2 MB of L2 cache. The CPU has a base clock of 2.40 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. It also has an RDNA 2 iGPU and features 2 Compute Units or 1 WGP (Work Group Processor), running at 1.9 GHz clocks. The CPU will have a rated TDP of 8-15W. Just yesterday, we got to see its bigger sibling in action.
AMD Ryzen 7000 Laptop CPU SKUs:
So coming to the performance metrics, the entry-level AMD Ryzen 3 7320U “Mendocino” CPU scored 1043 points in single-core and 3909 points in multi-core tests. Considering how everyone was comparing the Mendocino APUs to AMD’s Aerith SOC featured on Valve’s Steam Deck, we decided to use it for comparison. Valve Steam Deck Performance In Geekbench 5: In single-core, the Mendocino CPU performs around 20% faster and it is also around 5% faster in multi-threaded benchmarks. This is a decent result but it makes the Aerith SOC feel even better considering it has a nominal operating range between 4 & 15W. The AMD Ryzen 3 7320U Mendocino CPU does offer higher clocks for both the Zen 2 and RDNA 2 cores so better performance is to be expected. But when it comes to overall gaming performance, the Steam Deck will be miles ahead thanks to its 4 times higher RDNA 2 core count. Another crucial thing to consider is that both the Valve Steam Deck handheld console & the entry-level Mendocino laptops have a starting price of $399 US. So AMD is delivering almost similar performance at similar price points in two different platforms. News Source: Benchleaks
