AMD CES 2022 Pre-Show Teaser: Ryzen 6000 Series Mobile Processors with RDNA2 & DDR5 Tech
by Ryan Smith on January 3, 2022 8:01 PM EST
Ahead of tomorrow’s big CES keynote, AMD is offering a spoiler of sorts for one of their product announcements. As it turns out, one of AMD’s forthcoming products, the Ryzen 6000 Series Mobile processor lineup, is receiving a CES innovation award. And since those awards are being announced this evening, ahead of the show, so too is the Ryzen 6000 Mobile series.
While AMD is clearly saving the bulk of the details for tomorrow’s presentation, for this evening they are revealing a few key details. First and foremost, AMD’s latest generation of mobile APUs is getting a significant upgrade in terms of graphics support, with AMD (finally) replacing the Vega GPU architecture with their current-generation RDNA2 GPU architecture. Along with supporting numerous additional graphics features – namely, the DirectX 12 Ultimate feature set – RDNA2 also introduced some significant energy efficiency and computational throughput improvements to AMD’s GPU architecture, which has made AMD’s latest generation of discrete parts among the most competitive in generations.
Curiously, no similar mention is made of the underlying CPU architecture. However, since we’re not expecting Zen 4 until later this year, it stands to reason that these new mobile chips are based around the Zen 3 CPU architecture, just like the current Ryzen 5000 chips.
| AMD Ryzen Mobile APU Generations | ||||
| AnandTech | CPU Arch | GPU Arch | Memory Types | Year |
| Ryzen 6000 Mobile | Zen 3? | RDNA2 | DDR5 / LPDDR5? | 2022 |
| Ryzen 5000 Mobile (Cezanne) | Zen 3 | Vega | DDR4 / LPDDR4X | 2021 |
| Ryzen 4000 Mobile (Renoir) | Zen 2 | Vega | DDR4 / LPDDR4X | 2020 |
AMD’s brief announcement also touts support for newer memory standards, specifically “DDR5 technologies.” All of AMD’s current-generation APUs are currently based around DDR4/LPDDR4, so the move to DDR5 will offer a significant boost to total memory bandwidth, something that should pair very well with the increased iGPU capabilities of the Ryzen 6000 Mobile parts. Notably, LPDDR5 isn’t explicitly mentioned alongside DDR5, but this is clearly a less-than-complete detailing of the chips’ architecture.
Finally, the award announcement also confirms that the new Ryzen processors will integrate a Microsoft Pluton-architecture hardware security processor. As well, the chips come with what AMD is calling “AI-audio processing,” which we’ll no doubt hear more about tomorrow.
And with that, we’ll have more tomorrow. Join us at 7am PT (15:00 UTC) for our live blog coverage of AMD’s CES 2022 keynote, where we should hear all about the Ryzen 6000 Mobile series and more.
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AbRASiON - Monday, January 3, 2022 - link
ALL the processors should come with a basic GPU option. There are those of us who are enthusiasts but don't play games, we do exist, honest.It'd be nice to buy a 5900x or even 5950x and have capable multiple-monitor output for web browsing, photo editing and youtubing. Sadly anyone buying AMD rigs has had to buy a GPU along with their CPU lately (and the models which do come with a GPU are weaker)
ikjadoon - Monday, January 3, 2022 - link
I believe all Zen3 mobile APUs (5600/5800/5900 HS / HX / H + 5600U + 5800U) all came with iGPUs, so there shouldn't be any changes. AMD's always added iGPUs to mobile CPUs.//
Re: Zen3 desktop CPUs. I agree. The APU versions are often released much later and with somewhat worse clocks for whatever reason (e.g., 1T Boost | 5600G: 4.4 GHz , while 5600X: 4.6 GHz).
Intel does this one specific thing noticeably better: the F (non-iGPU) CPUs are cheaper, the exact same clocks (base, boost, TDP), and they're released concurrently with normal iGPU models.
Hul8 - Monday, January 3, 2022 - link
"For whatever reason"?The APUs use entirely different chips optimized for *both* performance and power-efficiency (rather than being skewed towards performance, like on desktop), since the vast majority of the APUs go to mobile.
Intel also has separate silicon for mobile and desktop; it's just that they include an iGPU in their desktop parts design as well.
Duwelon - Monday, January 3, 2022 - link
While they are a nice-to-have, I'm of the opposite view, I was very glad they didn't put an iGPU in their latest and greatest CPUs when I built my 5950X rig in 2020, because it would have either ballooned the price or more likely, hurt performance of the Zen3 cores which is all my use-case cared about.Intel has an iGPU in every CPU they sell pretty much to consumers, even non-GPU models have it disabled on the die, consuming a ton of space that could have gone to more cores or more cache or a more heat-efficient layout.
mode_13h - Tuesday, January 4, 2022 - link
> consuming a ton of space that could have gone to more cores or more cache> or a more heat-efficient layout.
There was once a thought that more apps would harness the iGPU's superior compute power. Anyway, in recent desktop CPUs, the iGPU is a much smaller proportion of the die than in the Skylake generation. And games can still harness it for AI or physics, even if you have a dGPU.
Duwelon - Tuesday, January 4, 2022 - link
> And games can still harness it for AI or physics, even if you have a dGPUDoes any game actually do so though?
mode_13h - Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - link
I wish I knew, but I don't follow game development.It'd be easy enough, though. I mean, if you can use the main GPU for those things, then the iGPU is just sitting there. And on low-end CPUs, the amount of benefit would be even greater.
mode_13h - Wednesday, January 5, 2022 - link
> if you can use the main GPU for those things, then the iGPU is just sitting there.What I meant is that it's probably in the same list of GPUs enumerated by the system. It's probably just a matter of writing a little code to search for GPUs other than the main one being used for rendering. Perhaps some games let the user manually specify.
brucethemoose - Monday, January 3, 2022 - link
Normally, the cost of a low end dGPU should be trivial in such a system.ET - Tuesday, January 4, 2022 - link
Zen 4 desktop CPUs are rumoured to all feature iGPUs.That said, obviously there's no need for all CPUs to come with graphics, as AMD has proven with its desktop line, and Intel followed by introducing 'F' CPUs. Even for people who don't need a GPU, adding an entry level GPU shouldn't be a real issue. Unless of course the GPU market goes bonkers, as it is now.