Acer Swift 3 SF315-41

AMD’s Ryzen makes the move to mobile

- Jeremy Laird

Since forever is a long time to wait, but that’s effectively how far back you have to go to find a decent mobile CPU from AMD. In other words, it’s debatable whether AMD has ever made a truly competitive laptop chip. Yes, AMD’s mobile processors based on the Bobcat core were OK for budget devices, but Intel’s domination has been even stronger in laptops than it already was on the desktop.

Or at least until Ryzen came along and proved how complacent Intel has become. But that’s just desktop, right? This is mobile and, at last, Ryzen has made that transition to laptops, and we can finally tell you whether it’s as big a game changer in the portable market as it has already proven to be on the desktop. Well, that was the plan, courtesy of the Acer Swift 3. On paper, it’s the ideal system for weighing up the relative pros and cons of the latest mobile CPUs from AMD and Intel.

That’s because it’s one of the very few mobile rigs offered with both AMD Ryzen and Intel Core processors. Yes, variables remain, including the motherboard, but the really critical bits, such as the screen, chassis, and battery, are shared by both variants, providing about as level a playing field as you’re ever going to get.