AMD came out swinging at CES 2024 this week, with major announcements reinforcing their CPU and GPU technology leadership.
AMD Ryzen 8000 Mobile Processors at CES 2024
Let’s start with their next-gen Ryzen 8000 mobile processors that feature an integrated neural processing unit (NPU) for accelerated AI tasks. Codenamed “Strix Point.” These chips combine the latest Zen 4 CPU cores, RDNA 3 graphics, and a seriously upgraded NPU running 60% faster than before. AMD talked up huge performance gains in AI benchmarks, boasting about 45% better memory efficiency, so you can run massive language models on under 4GB of RAM. It all sounds very impressive if it all works as expected, but either way, it is exciting to see AMD is looking to trade blow for blow with Intel’s latest Intel Meteor Lake offerings that only recently hit the market.
Not stopping there, the Radeon 700M integrated graphics also got a nice upgrade. AMD claims they still beat Intel’s brand new Meteor Lake ARC-based graphics, continuing their integrated GPU dominance. Together with the improved Zen 4 cores, Ryzen 8000 delivers up to 76% higher overall performance at lower power consumption compared to Meteor Lake. It all sounds fantastic on paper, but I will be very excited to see how it all stacks up in real-world testing and how all these new gains will affect battery life.
AMD Ryzen 8000G Desktop Processor at CES 2024
Shifting to the desktop, AMD announced their new Ryzen 8000G series processors, their latest APU offering that honestly looks very impressive. Touting “the fastest desktop PC processor graphics in the world” that are supposedly fast enough for smooth 1080p gaming even in demanding titles like Cyberpunk 2077.
Sure, you’ll have to turn the settings way down, but AMD says modern games still look decent at low specs, and frame rates can exceed 100 FPS. Even more impressive, AMD has detailed this latest chip will boast 39 TFLOPs of total processing power, something that is staggering, especially considering the Xbox Series X only has 12.1 TFLOPs.
Again, AMD flexes their graphics muscles over Intel, with benchmarks showing the integrated Radeon 700M graphics demolishing Intel’s flagship UHD Graphics 770. The 8000G remains fully upgradeable if you decide to add a discrete GPU later, with tested frame rates surpassing 150 FPS on high when paired with a Radeon 7900 XTX, something that should make gamers very happy if they are looking for their next CPU upgrade.
AMD also claims that the 8000G is the first desktop CPU with a dedicated AI engine—an NPU similar to their upcoming Ryzen 8000 mobile chips. They made a strong case for why local AI acceleration is important for performance, efficiency, security, and cost savings compared to relying solely on the cloud. It could also mean that users could run LLM (Large Language Models) or applications like Stable Diffusion all on the CPU, giving more options to people who want to dive into local testing of these AI applications that are currently dominating the tech landscape.
Updated AMD Ryzen 5000 Series at CES 2024
Even the last generation platform managed to see some new products, with AMD unveiling new 5000 series desktop CPUs for the existing AM4 platform, headlined by the Ryzen 7 5700X3D. This new X3D model brings the large L3 cache previously found only on the high-end 5800X3D to a more affordable price point while still beating the competition in gaming workloads. New non-X Ryzen 7 and 5 models also join the family.
It’s crazy to think that AMD was once the underdog in the CPU market, and it’s remarkable to see how they now dominate the desktop CPU space with clear options that advance computing. With excellent energy efficiency and outstanding integrated graphics, these latest Ryzen processors look poised to extend AMD’s run at the top. I can’t wait to get my hands on them and put the latest in Zen 4 through its paces!
Keep up to date on everything CES 2024 here.
