AMD has introduced a host of new CPUs in its current-gen Ryzen 7000 series, targeting a variety of laptop segments. Additionally, the company showed off its new Radeon RX 7000 series laptop GPUs and announced the new XDNA architecture for AI processing, which will eventually find its way into everything from the company’s dedicated accelerators to data centers and Consumer PCs. AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su delivered the keynote address at the opening of CES 2023, speaking about the demands of computing in our world today and the growing adoption of AI, saying AMD is uniquely positioned to take advantage of it.
AMD maintains the lead with thinner, lighter and more energy efficient laptops. The company has started using a new product naming convention, where the first digit of the product number indicates the generation, the second indicates relative performance within a series, and the third indicates which Zen architecture generation it is based on. Suffixes continue to denote performance targets, with the U series designed to run at 15W to 28W in thin and light laptops, the mainstream HS series running at 35W to 45W and the high performance HX models in gaming and Pro laptops run at 55W+.
Starting with the most notable CPU models, the new Ryzen 7040 series is the first to feature integrated Ryzen AI hardware based on the new XDNA architecture. AMD claims this is “the world’s first integrated AI engine on an X86 processor.” With up to four simultaneous AI streams, these new CPUs are able to multitask AI workloads and also offload AI processing from the CPU and GPU, resulting in significant power savings. AMD claims its new offerings are up to 50 percent more efficient than those Apple M2 SoCs integrated neural engine.
A decoder like this will help buyers who may be confused by AMD’s new naming scheme
Benefits include significantly reducing the impact of AI workloads on battery life and keeping data on the device rather than uploading it to a cloud service for processing. AMD suggests that in the future, AI on PC will allow for improved visual quality in games and the emergence of much more polished non-playing characters. Real-time security and predictive user interface customizations are other predicted uses.
Microsoft EVP and Chief Product Office Panos Panay took the stage with Su at the keynote to discuss future uses of Ryzen AI, as well as current use cases such as real-time noise reduction, portrait blur, eye contact correction, and automatic framing in video calls.
The AMD Ryzen 7040 series is based on the Zen 4 core architecture with integrated RDNA 3 graphics. These CPUs are made on a 4nm process and AMD is predicting a battery life of 30 hours. The top-of-the-line Ryzen 9 7940HS has eight cores, 16 threads and a boost speed of 5.2GHz. AMD claims it’s between 11 percent and 39 percent faster than the Apple M1 Pro. The mid-range Ryzen 7 7840HS has eight cores and 16 threads, and AMD claims that it’s between 23 percent and 106 percent better than an Intel Core i7-1280P when it comes to content creation workloads. The first laptops with Ryzen 7×40 CPUs will start shipping in March 2023.
Different CPU series within the same generation address different market segments
The high-end Ryzen 7045 series is based on the Zen 4 architecturewith the same designs as Desktop Ryzen 7000 CPUs. It is made in a 5nm process. The flagship Ryzen 9 7945HX has 16 cores and 32 threads, 80MB total cache memory, a boost speed of 5.4GHz and a TDP target of 55W+. Below that is the Ryzen 9 7845HX with 12 cores and 24 threads, while the Ryzen 7 7745HX has 8 cores and 16 threads. There is also a Ryzen 5 7645HX with 6 cores and 12 threads. The platform supports DDR5 RAM, PCIe 4.0. and WiFi 6E.
These CPUs are aimed at gamers and developers who need performance for multitasking, 4K video editing or 3D rendering. AMD also claims a huge leap in mobile gaming performance, delivering up to 18 percent better single-threaded performance and up to 78 percent faster all-threaded performance than the Ryzen 6900HX in Cinebench. The first laptops with 7045 CPUs will ship in February 2023, with Alienware, Asus and Lenovo confirming that they will be among the first brands to do so.
Further down the stack, AMD’s Ryzen 7035 and 7030 series CPUs are based on the Zen 3 architecture, and there’s also a new entry-level Ryzen 7020 series based on Zen 2.
AMD also introduced new GPUs for laptops. The Radeon RX7600M XT and Radeon RX7600M target the gaming segment, while the Radeon RX7700S and RX7600S are optimized for thin and light laptops. All four GPUs are based on the RDNA3 architecture and use 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. Laptops from Alienware, Asus, Lenovo and other OEMs with these GPUs will go on sale in February. Later this year, the company will introduce Smartshift RSR (Radeon Super Resolution), which improves performance by offloading upscaling calculations from the GPU to a Ryzen CPU.
Join us for the latest from the Consumer Electronics Show on Gadgets 360 CES 2023 hub.
