AMD is preparing Ryzen 5000 APUs for laptops, but not all will be Zen 3-based

[Avro Arrow]

This is a really dumb move considering that they JUST managed to get their numbering corrected by skipping the Ryzen 4000-series desktop SKUs. I have to assume that this decision is a result of (a lack of) production capacity caused by the heavy demand for Ryzen 5000 CPUs and Radeon 6000 GPUs.

 

[ET3D]

Why does AMD use Vega and not use RDNA in their APUs? Is RDNA not suitable for an APU or is there a different reason?

I think it's mainly time to market. Vega is known, well optimised, and where AMD needed to improve was in CPU performance. We'll see RDNA 2 in the future, but Vega is simply a safe bet.

Let's just wait on the benchmarks. The 4000 series mobile chips were very different from the desktop chips so I'm assuming that perf/$ scaling across the 5000 series will be ok.

Zen 3 offers quite a performance boost over Zen 2 at the same clocks. The rumoured clocks in the list posted in this news item aren't different enough to compensate for that.

 

[Puiu]

I think it's mainly time to market. Vega is known, well optimised, and where AMD needed to improve was in CPU performance. We'll see RDNA 2 in the future, but Vega is simply a safe bet.



Zen 3 offers quite a performance boost over Zen 2 at the same clocks. The rumoured clocks in the list posted in this news item aren't different enough to compensate for that.

the 4000 series mobile chips are of a monolithic design which helped improved perf/W a lot. it depends a lot on what AMD is going to do with the 5000 series on mobile.

 

[Wizwill]

You can be an apologist for deceptive marketing practices if you wish but some turds gave no clean end. Screwing buyers, discretely or openly is not acceptable to most of us.

MSI's troubles are self-caused

 

[Bamda]

I have never purchased a CPU based on its name, only its performance. So I could care less what it's called just show me the benchmarks.

 

[tamantha71]

What I would like to see is a laptop that uses AMD desktop hardware like Alienware and Origin do for Intel. That way, hopefully, I can get a current laptop (probably Zen2) and then replace the CPU and GPU when they are available. Price is no issue...the hardware is what I'm looking for.

 

[Nathan Gamble]

But what 'gen' a processor belongs to is completely arbitrary. What matters is the performance/$, and given Zen3 has a ~16% larger die than Zen2 (https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-5000...gh-res-die-shots-close-ups-pictured-detailed/) it is highly likely Zen3-based Cezanne will be larger than Renoir and therefore more costly to manufacture. So it makes sense that AMD separate Cezanne to the higher tier models and leave Renoir at the lower tier models.

It's also got twice as much cache as Renoir, so Cezanne will definitely be a larger die. Hopefully Lucienne includes some of the improvements of Zen 3 rather than being a straight rebrand of Renoir.

 

[Nathan Gamble]

Just do your research when you buy anything, if you don’t and you get burned that’s on you not the company who sold it.

Not everyone has the time to do that for everything they buy. Companies should at the very least make it easy for customers to distinguish their products by using consistent naming schemes.

 

[Nathan Gamble]

Why does AMD use Vega and not use RDNA in their APUs? Is RDNA not suitable for an APU or is there a different reason?

RDNA scales a lot better at the high-end, but GCN (e.g. Vega) is more compact, so can fit more CUs in a smaller space. Compare the transistor count of the RX 580 to the 5500 XT which has almost the same performance. If the RX 580 was die-shrunk to 7nm it would be both smaller and faster than the 5500 XT (though it would use more power).
Going down to even smaller GPUs, performance would swing even further in favour of GCN due to GCN's less-linear scaling, to the point where Vega 8 is much faster than any RDNA GPU that you could fit in the same amount of silicon. RDNA2 would be much better than RDNA1, but it wouldn't be worth the investment for AMD to make it work better than GCN in mobile APUs where you're memory bottlenecked anyway. It's short deadlines, limited budgets, minimal reward in the best case, and a significant chance that it wouldn't even be better than what they already have.

 

[Makste]

What I would like to see is a laptop that uses AMD desktop hardware like Alienware and Origin do for Intel. That way, hopefully, I can get a current laptop (probably Zen2) and then replace the CPU and GPU when they are available. Price is no issue...the hardware is what I'm looking for.

Origin PC Upgrades the NS-15 Laptop to Zen 3: Up to a Ryzen 5 5950X and 64GB of Memory | Hardware Times

Origin has upgraded it NS-15 laptop to AMD’s newly launched Ryzen 5000 CPUs, featuring up to a Ryzen 9 5950X (16C/32T) with a boost clock of 4.9GHz in a 15″ form factor. The NS-15 has a 15.6″ FHD display, with a refresh rate of 144Hz. You can configure the laptop with any of the Ryzen …

www.hardwaretimes.com

There's what you are looking for

Oops

Origin PC's NS-15 Workstation Laptop Is Ryzen 9 5950X Ready

16 Zen 3 Cores in a 15.6-inch form factor

www.tomshardware.com

"Editor's note, Nov. 10, 11:42 a.m. ET: Origin has informed Tom's Hardware that the listing of the Ryzen 5000 series processor was an error involving its website configurator, and that it is not offering any laptops with the 5000 series chips. The original story is below."