AMD at CES 2022: Laptop CPUs with RDNA2, new Radeon GPUs and 5nm Ryzen 7000 CPU

AMD has been very busy this CES 2022. They’ve launched everything from a new graphics card to a whole line of laptop processors too. Here’s a quick run down of everything they showed off during CES 2022.

The Radeon family gets new members

Following some earlier speculation, AMD has finally shown off their entry level cards for the Radeon RX 6000 series of graphics cards in the form of the Radeon RX 6500 XT and Radeon RX 6400. Both are aimed at the 1080p space, with the RX 6500 XT the more powerful of the two and able to offer high settings at full HD. It comes with 4GB of GDDR6 VRAM, has a boost frequency of up to 2815MHz and offers 16 compute units, a 305GB/s bandwidth as well as 11.53 TFLOPs of peak half precision compute performance. The RX 6500 XT takes around 107W of power, and AMD recommends you use at least a 400W power supply with it.

As for its lower spec sibling, the RX 6400 appears to be mostly for OEMs to put into prebuilt desktop systems. It has 4GB of GDDR6 VRAM and just 12 compute units, with a lower boost frequency of 2321MHz too. Performance is rated at just 7.13TFLOPs for peak half precision compute performance, while memory bandwidth is rated at up to 128GB/s. The RX 6400 though sips power compared to its higher spec cards, with a 53W rating from AMD, who recommend a minimum of a 350W power supply.

The Radeon RX 6500 XT starts at USD199 (~RM836.08), while the RX 6400 retails at USD149 (~RM626.01), though prices from their hardware partners will likely be higher judging from the current market situation. The former is expected to hit shelves by 19 January while OEM partners will start using the latter in prebuilt desktops later this year. You can find out more about the RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 from its product pages on the AMD website.

New lineup of AMD Ryzen 6000 mobile processors

Codenamed Rembrandt, the AMD Ryzen 6000 lineup of mobile CPUs are based on the Zen 3+ architecture and build on the 6nm process. It comes with all the expected performance bumps as well as improved power management which will be crucial for laptops, with AMD claiming anywhere between 15-40% lower power consumption when browsing the web or streaming content like Netflix. All of the Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 options come with 8 cores and 16 threads, while the Ryzen 5 options come with 6 cores and 12 threads. The H-series processors will be able to use more power for more performance with TDPs up to 45W, while the U-series chips sip just 15-28W of power.

The big new addition to the AMD Ryzen 6000 lineup though is in the integrated graphics department. AMD has finally brought their RDNA2 architecture to mobile, the same architecture used in their Radeon 6000 graphics cards as well as in the latest Xbox, PlayStation 5 and the Steam Deck. Ryzen 5 chips get 6 compute units in its iGPU and is clocked at 1900MHz, while both Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 chips have iGPUs with 12 compute units in them. However, the iGPU in the Ryzen 9 is clocked slightly higher at 2400MHz over the Ryzen 7’s 2200MHz. This makes them the best integrated graphics solution AMD has ever designed, with double the performance compared to last generation’s Vega iGPU. With FidelityFX built into it as well, you’re looking at potentially 20-60% better frame rates in games, while productivity laptops will also benefit with GPU rendering performance up by 2.3 times.

AMD says that the first laptops to feature the AMD Ryzen 6000 processors will drop sometime in February of this year. They say that consumers can expect over 200 laptop models with Ryzen 6000 in this year alone, and no doubt it’ll shake up not only gaming laptops but thin-and-light ultrabooks as well. By having such a powerful integrated graphics solution while still overall being a lower power chip, this could mean that your office laptop will be able to support playing some light and casual games or even the odd eSports title or two. It’s an exciting time for sure, and we can’t wait to get our hands on these new laptops.

A new gaming-focused desktop processor

So while technically we didn’t get a new lineup of desktop processors, we did see a new desktop chip still in the form of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D. It is essentially still the Ryzen 7 5800X, except with a boatload of cache on it to make it what AMD calls the ‘world’s fastest gaming processor’.

Similar to how AMD Radeon 6000 GPUs have Infinity Cache, this huge L3 cache compared to its rivals means that the processor won’t need to reach into the system’s RAM memory as often, increasing performance. AMD themselves are claiming a 15% increase in performance, and 15% extra frame rates too. This means that not only is it better than the Ryzen 9 5900X in gaming, but also ahead of the Intel Core i9-12900K in frame rates.

Specs wise it’s actually quite a decent processor across the board. The Zen 3 chip is an 8-core, 16-thread CPU with a base clock of 3.4GHz that boosts up to 4.5GHz. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D uses the AM4 socket and is compatible with 400 and 500 series motherboards, and has a TDP of 105W. Where things change is in the L3 cache, as it has a massive 96MB of 3D V cache. This is achieved by stacking a 32MB L3 cache on top of 64MB of L3 cache. By increasing the L3 cache, the CPU has to access the main DDR memory less often, which is up to a hundred times slower than the cache on board the CPU itself. In comparison, the top tier Ryzen 9 5950X with its 16 cores and 32 threads only has 64MB of L3 cache, while Intel’s own Core i9-12900K only has 30MB though supports the faster DDR5 memory.

Some of you might be wondering then why is it only a Ryzen 7 if it’s the ‘world’s fastest gaming processor’. It seems that AMD is using this to test the waters so to speak, and by introducing a more reasonable CPU that won’t be priced too high for most users it should catch the eye of more gamers rather than just the richest. It’s also clocked a little lower than the regular Ryzen 7 5800X, and that’s because the extra cache adds some watts used so lowering the clocks a bit will offer better stability and less binning too. At time of writing though, no price has been set for the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and instead AMD has said that it’ll launch sometime before the end of April.

5nm AMD Ryzen 7000 in the works

As a quite side note, AMD also gave a quick preview of the upcoming Ryzen 7000 series of desktop processors. It’s dubbed Ryzen 7000 it appears to not confuse people with the Ryzen 6000 mobile lineup, which is on the Zen 3+ architecture. Ryzen 7000 will instead be built on the 5nm process using the new Zen 4 architecture. It’ll also have a new look to it, with cutouts on the sides of the chip and this design will also be found on the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D.

A key part of the new chip will also be that it will use a new LGA-style socket and this new socket will be called AM5, replacing the current AM4 lineup. This new socket will have 1718 pins on the motherboard, and is the first time AMD will be using an LGA-style socket. Ryzen 7000 will also support PCIe Gen 5 and DDR5 memory, which is already available now with Intel’s 12th gen Alder Lake chips.

For more about AMD at CES 2022, you can check out AMD’s CES page on their website.