Lenovo-Exclusive AMD Ryzen PRO 7 6860Z APU comes with Higher Clock Speeds than Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U

Lenovo debuted the ThinkPad Z13 notebook at CES earlier this year, which featured an AMD Ryzen PRO 7 6860Z APU. Lenovo, an AMD partner, has confirmed the specifications of this…

By Nivedita Bangari

June 3, 2022

2 min read

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Lenovo debuted the ThinkPad Z13 notebook at CES earlier this year, which featured an AMD Ryzen PRO 7 6860Z APU. Lenovo, an AMD partner, has confirmed the specifications of this APU, which appear to be similar to those of the Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U.

During the CES event, AMD and Lenovo announced that the Ryzen 7 PRO 6860Z was created specifically for Lenovo’s ThinkPad Z13 notebooks. The chip itself is described as a ‘Power-Optimized’ variation that is the result of an industry-first partnership. AMD didn’t reveal any details at the time, but the final specifications are now available on the company’s product page.

So, the AMD Ryzen PRO 7 6860Z APU is an 8-core, 16-thread processor based on the Zen 3+ and RDNA 2 core architectures. It has a Radeon 680M integrated graphics processor.

The APU, being a power-optimized model, should have the same spec range as the Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U, but with a slightly higher clock speed of 4.725 GHz versus the Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U’s 4.700 GHz. It isn’t a significant improvement, but with some aggressive power-tuning onboard, it should provide some impressive efficiency numbers.

AMD also showed off the Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 with the Ryzen 7 PRO 6860Z APU in a brief performance demonstration

The laptop’s (Lenovo Thinkpad Z13) exact setup comprises 2x 16 GB LPDDR5-6400 memory, a 1 TB SSD, Windows 11 Pro, and the 30.0 GPU driver. This is in comparison to Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which has an Intel Core i5-1260P CPU with a boost clock of up to 4.7 GHz and a maximum turbo power draw of 64W. 2x 8 GB LPDDR5-5500 RAM, 1 TB SSD, Windows 11 Pro OS, and Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics are included in the Intel laptop.

In comparison to the Intel Alder Lake laptop, the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6860Z APU outperformed the Intel Alder Lake laptop by up to 25% in Cinebench R23, and 20% in 3DMark Time Spy, and up to 50% in Passmark 10.

Furthermore, the AMD laptop operates cooler and consumes less power, resulting in incredible battery life, which is critical for any business platform. In terms of cost, the Lenovo Thinkpad Z13 will start at $1549 US, while the Z16 will start at $2099 US.