Just when you thought you'd have a moment away from any AI-focused hardware news, AMD is jumping into the “PC AI” arena with its latest mobile laptop chips. The new Ryzen AI 300 series offers better performance than Intel or Qualcomm, more neural processing abilities.
The potato chip industry has always been a game of oneupmanship. Now more than ever, chipmakers are trying harder than ever to benchmark their CPUs and GPUs not only on power, but also on the future promise of ultimate PC performance through the proliferation of AI. AMD doesn't have to fight long-time rival Intel in the consumer PC market, but Qualcomm does, mainly thanks to the ARM processor Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus in the last PC Copilot+.
AMD is mainly focusing on promoting its two new chip series. One is the new version of its Ryzen processors with the Ryzen 9000 series, and the other is the Ryzen AI 300 series featuring a new NPU in the form of XDNA 2. On laptops, both chips will be the Ryzen AI 9 365 and the beefier Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. This is technically the company's third-generation AI-centric processor, but this latest series differentiates itself with its massive neural processing upgrade.
Microsoft says it needs NPUs with at least 40 TOPS to score them for Copilot+ PCs. Like recent Snapdragon chips, the HX 370 and 365 have the same NPU running at 50 TOPS. It's one of the biggest AI performance highlights of the last year, but despite the company's claim that it's here to run more complex AI models, we still need to see if there will be software worthy of these new neural components.
The 370 comes with 12 cores, 24 threads, and a maximum boost speed of 5.1 GHz, while the 365 has ten cores, 20 threads, and a maximum speed of 5.0 GHz. The chips also feature the RDNA 3.5 integrated GPU for some mobile graphics work or gaming. At the Taiwan Computex conference, these chips will appear in new laptops in the coming days.
What is Zen 5?
These new chips feature AMD's new centralized architecture, namely Zen 5, on the CPU side. The chipmaker claimed Zen 5 was a big update compared to Zen 4, which is supposed to handle twice the bandwidth of the last generation. What does this mean for PCs? AMD promises that you'll get up to 19% better benchmark performance in Geekbench 6 or 13% better in 3DMark's physical tests, but that will depend on your PC's exact chip and other architectures.
Zen 5 is different from the XDNA 2 NPU architecture. You can break NPU TOPS speed into a whole host of other categories, but AMD claims that XDNA 2 is twice the power efficiency and several times the total neural computing capacity of the previous generation's 10 or 16 TOPS.
AMD's new gaming processors deliver better performance thanks to Zen 5 architecture
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For those who don't care about AI 300 chip-centric productivity machines, all you want to know is how the Ryzen 9000 series compares to the last generation and Intel's latest. This includes the Ryzen 5 9600X, Ryzen 7 9700X, Ryzen 9 9900X, and at the top end is the Ryzen 9 9950X. Most boast slightly higher clock speeds, but several, like the 9900x and 9700X, are much more power efficient with a better TDP.
Taking on the big boy, this 9950X has 16 cores, 32 threads, and clock speeds of up to 5.7 GHz. These are technically the same specifications as the last generation Ryzen 9 7950X3D. AMD is trying to beat Intel's Core i9-14900K by claiming you'll see slightly better frame rates in games like Cyberpunk 2077 Or F1 2023 and much better bandwidth for multitasking thanks to the new Zen 5 architecture.
All these gaming-focused processors are expected to arrive in July this year. There is good news for anyone whose motherboard supports the AM5 socket. AMD promises to support the AM5 until 2027, so if you're considering an upgrade, you'll get the chance in the next few years. After more than eight years of operation, AMD plans to end support for the AM4 by 2025 or later. Zen 5 will continue to be specific to the AM5.
The chipmaker said pricing hasn't been set for the 9000 series chips, but we should know more as they approach their July release.