AMD’s CES 2022 Keynote – Ryzen 6000 & 7000, AM5, 5800X3D and more!
AMD announced a good few products in their CES keynote, it’s almost 42 minutes long but there’s some exciting stuff planned for 2022 for both Mobile and desktop users! A huge portion of their keynote presentation was focused on the Ryzen 6000 mobile APU’s so a big chunk of this article is on those but we’ve covered all items in the release schedule announced at CES 2022 in their keynote presentation in this article.
AMD Ryzen 6000 Zen 3+ Mobile lineup Offically Launched
AMD officially launched their Ryzen 6000 Series mobile chips which feature a Zen 3+ CPU core, and RDNA 2 Graphics (a first for a mobile APU), built on the TSMC 6nm process these chips incorporate LPDDR5, USB4 (40Gbps), WiFi 6/6E, and BTLE 5.2. Some Ryzen 600 chips will be able to boost as high as 5Ghz. AMD has stuck with PCIe Gen 4 for their Ryzen 6000 mobile chips. They also state that DDR5 or LPDDR5 will be enabled on all Ryzen 6000 platforms. AMD is releasing 20 different Ryzen 6000 processors with the first public appearances in notebooks starting in February 2022.
AMD Ryzen 6000 Performance
The benchmarks provided by AMD look impressive – with some massive gains across the board. It’ll be awesome to see how these chips go once we start seeing some independent reviews. AMDs figures look quite impressive though. I’m curious to see how well the integrated Graphics on these laptops perform. We’ve got to remember RDNA 2 is the graphics tech used in current gen. consoles like the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series S|X which are quite impressive in their own rights for a console especially at their price points
Ryzen 6000 new Security features
The Ryzen 6000 will also integrate the Microsoft Pluton Security Processor. The Pluton is designed as a successor to the TPM and essentially emulates a TPM whilst also providing additional security functionality. The Pluton sounds like it’s got some pretty cool stuff going on security-wise. The Microsoft blog post I’ve linked does a great job of answering many of the questions. Honestly, I still have a few questions myself as this silicon does quite a bit by the sounds so I’ll simply defer to Microsoft’s blog post on this particular item.
Ryzen 6000 Battery Use
One pretty epic claim is up to 24 hours of battery life during video playback. That’s a whole lot of Netflix or Youtube! I’m curious to see how these 6nm chips go on battery for gaming and productivity! There’s been 50 new power management features implemented since Zen 3 (Ryzen 5000) including an entirely new set of deep sleep states and smarter system management firmware.
They’re also claiming some solid power reduction for web and video conferencing.
Ryzen 6000 APU GPU Performance and features
The Ryzen 6000 brings AMD’s hardware ray tracing to its mobile APUs! It’s got up to 12 RDNA compute units (for reference the RX 6600 has 28). Whilst these specs are impressive for integrated graphics, we must remember they’re still integrated graphics and as such, they will be substantially less performant than a decent dedicated GPU (ie not the MX450). With that being said an entry-level GPU is a fair comparison to an APU. What’s exciting is that these APUs may enable entry-level gaming performance on a relatively thin device. With increasing graphics card prices it’s great to see integrated graphics even on portables becoming a more viable option! I think this is quite a smart move by AMD.
They talk quite a bit about FidelityFX Super Resolution by the looks of things FSR might make 1080p gaming on some titles viable. I’d still be wary of trying some of those titles on those settings even with FSR. It’s a shame they don’t post minimum frame rates as honestly as that’s what really makes a title playable or not. It’s not when things are going smooth it’s when they’re not that really jars your attention on a lower-performing device.
New Ryzen 6000 Laptop Designs
A variety of new products from various manufacturers are on the way which leverage Ryzen 6000 APU’s over 200 new designs from Lenovo, Acer, Asus, Dell, HP.
AMD Radeon RX 6000M and RX 6000S
AMD is introducing new RX 6000M models (5 new SKU’s) which offer greater performance, higher clocks, and faster memory than their predecessor. In addition to this, there is a new 6nm based 6000S series GPU’s. In the M series, they’ve introduced the RX6850M XT as a new flagship mobile GPU which is stated to be 7% faster than the RX 6800M. The RX 6000S line is aimed at slim devices with 3 new SKU’s being introduced. The RX 6800S, the RX 6700S, and the RX 6600S.
A new discreet 6nm GPU (but don’t get too excited it’s not a RX 6950 XT or anything as cool as that)!
I also got quite excited that they were announcing a 6nm GPU and whilst this announcement might be exciting for people building an entry-level PC I initially found it a bit anticlimactic. Shortly after I realized this GPU probably would be great in my secondary PC which is sporting a GTX 1060 but I shall wait and see some independent benchmarks first.
The card announced was the 6500 XT with an admittedly impressive 2.6Ghz GPU clock (the 6600 XT has a 2044Mhz game clock and its boost clock is only up to Up to 2491 MHz), 16 CU’s ( RX 6600 XT has 28), and RT accelerators, and 16MB infinity cache (the RX 6600 XT has 32MB). Needless to say despite the epic clock speeds I’ll be very surprised if the 27% increase in clock speeds can offset only having 57% of the core count. I’m guessing it’ll be about 28% slower than a 6600XT (excluding the impact of cache). With that being said it looks like it’ll be a nice upgrade for an RX 570 or a GTX 1650 and at $199 USD starting price likely seem like a great value option! These will probably be great for entry-level gaming and should be available from January 19th, 2022.
AMD software/drivers
AMD will be implementing Radeon Super resolution which will enable FidelityFX Super Resolution via AMDs drivers, this means that most games will be able to use FSR and (hopefully) benefit from it regardless of if the game has implemented FSR or not. This should be available in Q1 2022 sometime.
AMD SmartShift Max and SmartShift Eco
AMD’s Smartshift Max claims to improve on their existing Smartshift technology by better balancing power use between the CPU and GPU to improve performance.
SmartShift Eco is a configurable option allowing you to automatically switch between gaming on your discreet GPU and the CPU integrated GPU when you unplug your laptop in order to prolong battery life. This is claimed to be capable of doubling battery life. SmartShift Eco should be available later in 2022. To mitigate some of the potential performance impacts of hybrid graphics AMD has developed SmartAccess Graphics, they didn’t really elaborate on this particular point too much beyond saying it offers up to 15% more performance presumably against prior hybrid graphics tech.
AMD Advantage
AMD has provided OEMs with a design framework to enable a quality gaming experience with regard to particular laptops. They mention a number of factors considered such as premium performance, display (low latency, high refresh rate, freesync), sleep/resume times, battery life, acoustics, and more.
In 2022 they’ve revamped this design framework specifying a minimum of a PCIe 4 SSD, and 16GB of dual-channel DDR5. The thing that wasn’t clear to me is how they intend on branding/differentiating the new vs the old. Some of the new model AMD Advantage laptops are set to be available in Q1 2022 with a total of 20 or more laptops set to release in 2022.
The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and AMD 3D V-Cache Technology
AMD’s have announced the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D an 8 core 16 thread chip with 64MB of 3D V-Cache and 32MB of 2D Cache operating for a massive total of 96MB of L3 cache. This chip will operate at 4.5Ghz boost and 3.4Ghz base clock all at a modest 105W TDP and is compatible with existing AM4 motherboards. The cool thing with this chip is the additional cache shows it outperforming the 5900X in many workloads even despite a 4 core and 300 Mhz reduction on both boost and base clocks.
AMD Ryzen 7000 Zen 4 Desktop CPU (5nm)
AMD is set to release its latest Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 series CPUs for desktop, they’re expected to launch in the 2nd half of 2022. These will feature PCIe Gen 5, DDR5 and the big “surprise” here is that instead of AMD’s traditional pinned CPUs they’re moving from AM4 to an LGA1718 socket with AM5 which means much like Intel’s CPU’s in recent times their pins will be located on the motherboard.
AMD Release schedule 2022
AMD currently has the following products scheduled for release in 2022:
- Radeon 6500XT GPU – 19 January 2022
- Ryzen 6000 Mobile APU’s – Feburary 2022
- Radeon RX 6000 M and S series mobile GPU’s – starting Q1 2022
- AMD Advantage – Starting Q1 2022
- Ryzen 7 5800X3D Desktop CPU – Spring (March-May) 2022
- Ryzen 7000 Desktop CPU’s 2H 2022
- AMD Socket AM5 Motherboards (as Ryzen 7000/AM5 is an entirely new socket for AMD) – 2H 2022
Final Words
It looks like it’ll be a busy and exciting year for AMD! They’re releasing some exciting new products. I’d really quite like to try out some of their new gaming laptops and their new AM5 platform looks particularly exciting. Keep up the good work AMD!
Update regarding Ryzen 7 5700X3D
We mistakenly had mentioned a Ryzen 7 5700X3D at a couple of points within the article, this is a typo, at the time of writing there is no such thing as the Ryzen 7 5700X3D there is only a 5800X3D. I apologize for this mistake. The article has been updated to reflect the correct model number in all locations (Ryzen 7 5800X3D).