XMG Releases The First Gaming Laptop With An AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D And It's A Beast
In our Ryzen 7 5800X3D review, we dubbed AMD's Zen 3 processor with a fat stack of cache as the "king of PC gaming." It even manages to keep pace with and sometimes beat the new crop of Zen 4 processors in a spattering of games. And now for the first time since its release, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is being offered in a laptop form factor. Well, technically.
XMG is serving up the Ryzen 7 5800X3D as a configurable CPU in its Apex 15 Max laptop, which is essentially a desktop replacement. You inevitably trade portability and especially battery life with these kinds of systems, though it's not exactly an anvil, either—it measures 361 x 258 x 32.5 mm (~14.21 x 10.16 x 1.28 inches) and weighs 2.6 kg (~5.73 pounds).
It's comparatively thick and stout by today's standards for sure, but we'd argue the dimensions are respectable for a desktop setup wedged into a laptop form factor.
Anyway, the star of the show is the Ryzen 7 5800X3D. which is one of five Zen 3 processor options spanning the Ryzen 5 5600X all the way up to the 16-core/32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X. These are all socketed desktop CPUs and are not soldered to the motherboard.
What makes the Ryzen 7 5800X3D so special is the addition of 64MB of stacked 3D V-cache on top of 32MB of traditional 2D L3 cache. That gives the chip a generous 96MB of L3 cache (plus 4M of L2 cache). Other specs include an 8-core/16-thread configuration with a 3.4GHz base clock and 4.5GHz max boost clock.
The GPU selection is a bit more modest—buyers can select between a GeForce RTX 3060 (6GB GDDR6) or GeForce RTX 3070 (8GB GDDR6), both in mobile form. There are no GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, 3080, or 3080 Ti options, unfortunately.
For RAM, the Apex 15 Max comes stock with 16GB (2x8GB) of DDR4-3200 memory, which users can downgrade to a single 8GB module (we wouldn't recommend going that route) or upgrade to 32GB or 64GB of DDR4. On the storage front, XMG offers a range of SSDs from 500GB to 4TB in capacity across a pair of M.2 slots, and there's a 3.5-inch bay for an HDD as well.
Other features include Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless connectivity, an RGB keyboard, a 15.6-inch 1080p display with a fast 240Hz refresh rate, and various I/O on the read and sides. The Apex 15 Max is available now in the UK starting at €1,379.
