Makes for a more realistic and level-headed take on the 7000-series compared to the giddy hyperbole and hype spouted by some Techtubers. This is the first I've heard that a; Ryzen 7000 will be a serious challenge to cool (at the high end at least) and b; production costs for it are significantly higher. This is key as with the return of Intel increasing ASP is not an option.
Any word yet on the iGPU? It's not supposed to be anything special, enough for basic desktop and video streaming/conferencing, but I'm curious which arch it is, ALUs/speed, and what kind of output formats and bandwidth we're looking at.
As Tim said, RDNA 2. Specifically 2 Compute Units (CUs) of it. I read somewhere that it converts to around half a TFLOP FP32 or 1/3 of the Steam Deck's power. Base speed is 400MHz while boost is 2200MHz. It can run up to 4 displays at a time.
Nice, I'm not expecting a ton of performance, but I'm keen leave windows dual-boot behind. A modest GPU that can do 2x 4k60 or better, will let me virtualize w/gpu-passthrough with just one discrete.
I'm interested in zen 4, raptor lake, and maybe zen 43D if that's something AMD launches soon. I'm not too worried about cooling, as I imagine most people comparing the top Intel SKU to the top AMD SKU understand that a good cooling solution is needed. I was going to go with Zen 4 since it's first to market, but with GPU launches not lining up with Zen 4, waiting to see what Raptor Lake and/or Zen 4 3D look like seems like a good idea.
It's not really only about cooling though. The energy cost is going insane right now and most people would like to not make their rooms hotter. Bumping the TDP also impacts laptops. How will Zen 4 mobile chips work with low TDP? It's, sadly, a bad move from AMD. They sould have kept their 65w x600-x700 lineup and their 105w x800 and x900 imho.
The higher end Zen 3 SKUs were power limited. The AM4 platform wasn't originally designed with 16 core CPUs in mind (remember it was up to 8 cores for Zen and Zen+) and the socket was only capable of delivering a certain amount of voltage. It's not an apples to apples comparison but look at the i5 12600K at 125W base power. Intel gave even that mainstream SKU all the power it needs. The 5950X could've been a bit more powerful had it been on a platform designed for 16+ cores like AM5 is for example.
Zen 4 is built to do exceptionally well at lower power too and will be much more powerful in next year's laptops than Zen 3. If heat is a concern though just wait for the non X SKUs to be released as they will likely run a bit cooler with lower wattage.
If you want more efficient performance, you can do that as well. They showed a slide with a 74% performance improvement over 5950X at ISO 65w power. Meaning if you just want the most efficient performance possible, you're getting a huge improvement going from Zen 3 to Zen 4 at 65W. But Intel is not more power efficient at the moment, they are pushing their processors for maximum power. So AMD is following suit so they don't look bad in benchmarks. They'll be doing the same thing with RDNA3 to compete with nvidia. The higher power usage is coming from their ability to clock so high. The higher you clock, the less efficient the CPU is, as it takes more and more voltage to achieve those clocks. Diminishing returns etc.
Another thing to remember is Zen 3 did not have an APU, so additional TDP was added to Zen 4 to allow for CPU + GPU power draw.
Either way, best to wait for real reviews from third party testing before we draw any conclusions. Also probably worth waiting for Raptor Lake before we know whether or not Zen 4 is a good buy.
Makes for a more realistic and level-headed take on the 7000-series compared to the giddy hyperbole and hype spouted by some Techtubers. This is the first I've heard that a; Ryzen 7000 will be a serious challenge to cool (at the high end at least) and b; production costs for it are significantly higher. This is key as with the return of Intel increasing ASP is not an option.
Any word yet on the iGPU? It's not supposed to be anything special, enough for basic desktop and video streaming/conferencing, but I'm curious which arch it is, ALUs/speed, and what kind of output formats and bandwidth we're looking at.
As Tim said, RDNA 2. Specifically 2 Compute Units (CUs) of it. I read somewhere that it converts to around half a TFLOP FP32 or 1/3 of the Steam Deck's power. Base speed is 400MHz while boost is 2200MHz. It can run up to 4 displays at a time.
Nice, I'm not expecting a ton of performance, but I'm keen leave windows dual-boot behind. A modest GPU that can do 2x 4k60 or better, will let me virtualize w/gpu-passthrough with just one discrete.
It's RDNA2, i don't think they said more than that.
I'm interested in zen 4, raptor lake, and maybe zen 43D if that's something AMD launches soon. I'm not too worried about cooling, as I imagine most people comparing the top Intel SKU to the top AMD SKU understand that a good cooling solution is needed. I was going to go with Zen 4 since it's first to market, but with GPU launches not lining up with Zen 4, waiting to see what Raptor Lake and/or Zen 4 3D look like seems like a good idea.
It's not really only about cooling though. The energy cost is going insane right now and most people would like to not make their rooms hotter. Bumping the TDP also impacts laptops. How will Zen 4 mobile chips work with low TDP? It's, sadly, a bad move from AMD. They sould have kept their 65w x600-x700 lineup and their 105w x800 and x900 imho.
The higher end Zen 3 SKUs were power limited. The AM4 platform wasn't originally designed with 16 core CPUs in mind (remember it was up to 8 cores for Zen and Zen+) and the socket was only capable of delivering a certain amount of voltage. It's not an apples to apples comparison but look at the i5 12600K at 125W base power. Intel gave even that mainstream SKU all the power it needs. The 5950X could've been a bit more powerful had it been on a platform designed for 16+ cores like AM5 is for example.
Zen 4 is built to do exceptionally well at lower power too and will be much more powerful in next year's laptops than Zen 3. If heat is a concern though just wait for the non X SKUs to be released as they will likely run a bit cooler with lower wattage.
If you want more efficient performance, you can do that as well. They showed a slide with a 74% performance improvement over 5950X at ISO 65w power. Meaning if you just want the most efficient performance possible, you're getting a huge improvement going from Zen 3 to Zen 4 at 65W. But Intel is not more power efficient at the moment, they are pushing their processors for maximum power. So AMD is following suit so they don't look bad in benchmarks. They'll be doing the same thing with RDNA3 to compete with nvidia. The higher power usage is coming from their ability to clock so high. The higher you clock, the less efficient the CPU is, as it takes more and more voltage to achieve those clocks. Diminishing returns etc.
Another thing to remember is Zen 3 did not have an APU, so additional TDP was added to Zen 4 to allow for CPU + GPU power draw.
Either way, best to wait for real reviews from third party testing before we draw any conclusions. Also probably worth waiting for Raptor Lake before we know whether or not Zen 4 is a good buy.