AMDs’s Ryzen Pro 8000 And Pro 8040, Almost All About The XDNA NPU

AMD’s New Chips Are For Work, Not Gaming

If you were hoping that the AMD Ryzen Pro 8000 and Ryzen Pro 8040 series would give you a great excuse to upgrade your CPU or grab a new laptop you might be disappointed.  The Hawk Point based Pro 8040 series is almost completely unchanged from the previous generation Phoenix chips, apart from it’s performance in AI applications.  The XDNA NPU on most of the Ryzen Pro 8040 series can hit 16 TOPS, up from 10TOPS on the previous generation which will be a huge boon for your AI apps, if you have them. 

The Ryzen Pro 8000 desktop CPUs see a bit more improvement, migrating from the chiplets of the Pro 7000 series to the Phoenix architecture and also seeing a focus on the XDNA NPU.  This likely means they will not perform general tasks as quickly as the previous generation but will outshine them on AI tasks.  The Pro 8000 series will also be more power efficient, a boon for businesses but of less impact for gamers.

There will be eight Ryzen Pro 8000 desktop CPUs, of which only four will have the enhanced XDNA NPU onboard and of the eight Ryzen Pro 8040 chips, fully half will sport improved AI performance.   Overall not a great launch for the enthusiast but it could still help AMD’s bottom line if businesses are attracted to the improved AI performance the 8000/8040 series offer.  As ServeTheHome points out, AMD does have a lot of work to do when it comes to convincing laptop builders to expand their selection of Ryzen based models, and this could well help.