AMD made a semi-custom SoC for the Chinese gaming market

[Shawn Knight]

Why it matters: AMD's new Zen and Vega-based SoC won't have a direct impact on gamers outside of China but some are seeing it as a solid indicator of things to come with regard to the next PlayStation and Xbox.

AMD on Friday announced it has created a semi-custom Zen and Vega-based SoC for the Chinese gaming market.

The hardware, commissioned by Chinese manufacturer Zhongshan Subor, features a four core / eight thread Ryzen CPU clocked at 3.0GHz alongside 24 Radeon Vega compute units running at 1.3GHz mated to 8GB of GDDR5 memory.

The semi-custom chip will be used to power a new gaming PC and an upcoming console for the Chinese market, AMD said. The PC was recently demonstrated at ChinaJoy, the largest gaming and digital entertainment expo in Asia and China, and is scheduled to launch later this month. Subor’s gaming console, which will feature the same hardware as the PC but with a custom operating system, is expected to arrive by the end of the year.

AMD said the new SoC is a great example of its semi-custom strategy where they take existing IP and tailor it to meet the specific needs of a customer.

The chip’s semi-custom nature likely means it won’t be made available to other manufacturers. Similarly, AMD didn’t mention availability outside of China. That said, it does demonstrate AMD’s commitment to the semi-custom strategy and could serve as a building block for the next generation of console hardware from Microsoft and Sony.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/75806-amd-made-semi-custom-soc-chinese-gaming-market.html

 

[Vulcanproject]

That is an interesting configuration. On paper the raw GPU performance would be similar to a PS4 Pro, but with vastly superior CPU performance.

 

[Sausagemeat]

So it’s stronger than the current APUs? If so then it’s a shame this hasn’t seen domestic markets in the West as a stand-alone AM4 chip. Whilst the graphics performance of AMDs new APUs is a clear improvement on anything we’ve seen before, I didn’t really think it was fit for purpose for a modern gaming machine.

 

[mosu]

Zen working with GDDR5? Are there any tests or benchmarks?

 

[ET3D]

So it’s stronger than the current APUs? If so then it’s a shame this hasn’t seen domestic markets in the West as a stand-alone AM4 chip. Whilst the graphics performance of AMDs new APUs is a clear improvement on anything we’ve seen before, I didn’t really think it was fit for purpose for a modern gaming machine.

This is coupled with GDDR5 RAM, which is makes it impractical as an APU. In general, I'd say that a GPU-heavy APU doesn't make much sense outside of specialised hardware like consoles. A multi chip module such as the Intel+AMD one makes a little more sense.