A potential game changer?
AMD is announcing the Ryzen Mobile processors with integrated Vega graphics today. Should Intel and NVIDIA be worried?
I thought we were going to be able to make it through the rest of 2017 without seeing AMD launch another family of products. But I was wrong. And that’s a good thing. Today AMD is launching the not-so-cleverly-named Ryzen Processor with Radeon Vega Graphics product line that will bring the new Zen processor architecture and Vega graphics architecture onto a single die for the ultrathin mobile notebook platforms. This is no minor move for them – just as we discussed with the AMD EPYC processor launch, this is a segment that has been utterly dominated by Intel. After all, Intel created the term Ultrabook to target these designs, and though that brand is gone, the thin and light mindset continues to this day.
The claims AMD makes about its Ryzen mobile APU (combination CPU+GPU accelerated processing unit, to use an older AMD term) are not to be made lightly. Right up front in our discussion I was told this is going to be the “world’s fastest for ultrathin” machines. Considering that AMD had previously been unable to even enter those markets with previous products, both due to some technological and business roadblocks, AMD is taking a risk by painting this launch in such a light. Thanks to its ability combine CPU and GPU technology on a single die though, AMD has some flexibility today that simply did not have access to previously.
From the days that AMD first announced the acquisition of ATI graphics, the company has touted the long-term benefits of owning both a high-performance processor and graphics division. By combining the architectures on a single die, they could become greater than the sum of the parts, leveraging new software directions and the oft-discussed HSA (heterogenous systems architecture) that AMD helped create a foundation for. Though the first rounds of APUs were able to hit modest sales, the truth was that AMD’s advantage over Intel’s on the graphics technology front was often overshadowed by the performance and power efficiency advantages that Intel held on the CPU front.
But with the introduction of the first products based on Zen earlier this year, AMD has finally made good on the promises of catching up to Intel in many of the areas where it matters the most. The new from-the-ground-up design resulted in greater than 50% IPC gains, improved area efficiency compared to Intel’s latest Kaby Lake core design, and enormous gains in power efficiency compared to the previous CPU designs. When looking at the new Ryzen-based APU products with Vega built-in, AMD claims that they tower over the 7th generation APUs with up to 200% more CPU performance, 128% more GPU performance, and 58% lower power consumption. Again, these are bold claims, but it gives AMD confidence that it can now target premium designs and form factors with a solution that will meet consumer demands.
AMD is hoping that the release of the Ryzen 7 2700U and Ryzen 5 2500U can finally help turn the tides in the ultrathin notebook market.
| Core i7-8650U | Core i7-8550U | Core i5-8350U | Core i5-8250U | Ryzen 7 2700U | Ryzen 5 2500U | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Kaby Lake Refresh | Kaby Lake Refresh | Kaby Lake Refresh | Kaby Lake Refresh | Zen+Vega | Zen+Vega |
| Process Tech | 14nm+ | 14nm+ | 14nm+ | 14nm+ | 14nm | 14nm |
| Socket | BGA1356 | BGA1356 | BGA1356 | BGA1356 | ? | ? |
| Cores/Threads | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 |
| Base Clock | 1.9 GHz | 1.8 GHz | 1.7 GHz | 1.6 GHz | 2.2 GHz | 2.0 GHz |
| Max Turbo Clock | 4.2 GHz | 4.0 GHz | 3.8 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 3.8 GHz | 3.6 GHz |
| Memory Tech | DDR4/LPDDR3 | DDR4/LPDDR3 | DDR4/LPDDR3 | DDR4/LPDDR3 | DDR4 | DDR4 |
| Memory Speeds | 2400/2133 | 2400/2133 | 2400/2133 | 2400/2133 | 2400 | 2400 |
| Cache | 8MB | 8MB | 6MB | 6MB | 6MB | 6MB |
| System Bus | DMI3 – 8.0 GT/s | DMI3 – 8.0 GT/s | DMI2 – 6.4 GT/s | DMI2 – 5.0 GT/s | N/A | N/A |
| Graphics | UHD Graphics 620 | UHD Graphics 620 | UHD Graphics 620 | UHD Graphics 620 | Vega (10 CUs) | Vega (8 CUs) |
| Max Graphics Clock | 1.15 GHz | 1.15 GHz | 1.1 GHz | 1.1 GHz | 1.3 GHz | 1.1 GHz |
| TDP | 15W | 15W | 15W | 15W | 12-25W 15W Nominal |
12-25W 15W Nominal |
| MSRP | $409 | $409 | $297 | $297 | ? | ? |
The Ryzen 7 2700U will run 200 MHz higher on the base and boost clocks for the CPU and 200 MHz higher on the peak GPU core clock. Though both systems have 4-cores and 8-threads, the GPU on the 2700U will have two additional CUs / compute units.
The TDP numbers will warrant more digging as we get hardware in hands. Both processors are listed as 12-25 watts (configurable) with a nominal TDP of 15-watts. I’m not sure what the means exactly. I can say that based on looking at the scores provided by AMD for performance, I am guessing that Cinebench runs are going to be hitting that 25 watt level for short bursts of higher clock speeds. More on that later.
There is a lot of technology that goes into create a monolithic die with a quad-core CPU design along with a 10 Compute Unit GPU based on Vega. First, the SenseMI technology that tended to be overlooked in the desktop environment where power and thermal limits are less impactful makes a bigger impact on the Ryzen mobile release. Precision Boost gets upgraded to version 2 as the algorithm to dynamically adjust the clock speed of cores within thermal limits of a notebook design. It aids the system to achieve higher single threaded performance when possible but constrains to power limits in multi-threaded situations.
This graph provided by AMD shows an example workload that scales thread count and tells us corresponding clock speeds on the various cores. It shows the single threaded test running at just over 3.6 GHz with lower clocks as more threads are loaded on to the system. At four threads, the three operating cores are running around 3.0 GHz. Fully loaded with 8 threads, the 2700U processor appears to sit firmly at 2.9 GHz.
To be quite blunt – those are extremely high clock speeds for a notebook form factor that typically demands 15-watt TDP levels. For comparison, the latest 8th Generation Intel Core processors (Kaby Lake-R) are only able to run at 2.4 GHz when running in a sustained many-thread workload like Handbrake. Without hardware to test AMD claims, we have to take them at their word, but the complexity of system design in a notebook is very different from desktop system. The question will be how LONG can the Ryzen mobile processors support running at these clocks?
Mobile XFR is another SenseMI technology that will help Ryzen in the mobile segment. This feature boosts clock speeds of the processor when thermal headroom is available, and AMD tells us that when a notebook is designed with adequate cooling, it can see as much as 23% application performance increase because of it. Leveraging the temperature awareness of the Precision Boost 2 technology, Mobile XFR will require specific AMD performance and cooling criteria to be enabled on a per-system basis.
Performance claims from AMD for this launch are likely to set Intel’s product teams back a step. Though AMD admits to a 10% deficit in Cinebench R15 single-threaded results, it claims to have 44% better performance in the multi-threaded score, and this is with a true-quad core Core i7-8550U based on the latest Intel 8th generation Kaby Lake-R. That’s not a little gap, and since we are looking at a matched core/thread count comparison, the difference HAS to indicate that the Ryzen 7 2700U is running at higher clocks than the 8550U, much higher. (We already know that from an IPC perspective, the KBL design exceed Zen.)
AMD also claims performance victories in POV-Ray, PCMark10, and TrueCrypt 7.1a and a minor loss in PassMark9. These are impressive results from AMD, though honestly, the all-core loaded performance of ultrathin notebooks is less important for this market than nearly any other. Responsiveness and battery life are the kings for productivity machines and it appears we’ll have to get some hardware in our hands before we can judge AMD’s new baby in that regard.
From a GPU perspective, it should come as no surprise to anyone that follows the market even slightly that the Ryzen APU with Vega graphics has the edge here. The Ryzen 7 2700U with 10 CUs will offer similar performance to a notebook with a discrete NVIDIA GeForce 950M GPU and 2.6x that of the Intel Core i7-8550. AMD also showed data where the Ryzen 7 2700U was able to hit 60 FPS or near it for many popular games running at 1080p: League of Legends, DOTA 2, CS:GO. For hardcore PC gamers that isn’t going to impress but for thin and light designs with Intel integrated graphics that will be a significant increase. Also, the advantage of getting drivers from a company that also sells discrete GPUs means more performance upgrades and reliability improvements on a regular basis.
This advantage for AMD is going to be key to its sales pitch. What would previously have required both an 8th generation Core processor from Intel, along with a discrete GPU like the 950M from NVIDIA, can now be done with a single chip. This COULD save money, space on the board design, and power. I say COULD because we haven’t been able to get hands on it the hardware yet, and proving out this advantage is more crucial for consumers to have confidence in the story AMD is telling us.
How AMD makes it all happen
A lot of work was done by AMD engineers to improve the power efficiency of Ryzen Mobile, starting with a two-stage voltage rail for the entire SoC. There is an off-chip stage that is part of the motherboard voltage regulation coupled with a second stage that utilizes an on-chip voltage regulator and digital low-dropout regulators. These LDOs are divided into regions for CPU cores, graphics, and other system functions. These help reduce current requirements on the chip itself while also doubling as power gates when certain portions of the SoC are not in use.
If you remember back to the Haswell design, Intel had integrated a voltage regulator on the processor as well. However, with Skylake, the design has since reverted, with Intel going back to an on-motherboard solution. At the time of Skylake’s launch Intel claimed that removing the FIVR “enabled improved power efficiency across a much broader range of thermal design powers.” We will see if AMD’s implementation has longer legs than Intel’s. AMD believes that its integration only requires a 45A maximum draw while the Intel 7th generation Core parts can pull as much as 95A through both the CPU and GPU rails.
Ryzen Mobile introduces per-core frequency and voltage scaling that is based thread utilization. Fine grained to 25 MHz increments, this allows AMD to steer power to the most demanding threads and workloads without sacrificing power efficiency and needing to increase power to all or most of the cores on the die. It also allows for power sharing between the CPU cores and the GPU – not a new idea for thermally limited mobile processors. But AMD claims that on-die regulation and frequency control from Precision Boost 2 allows Ryzen Mobile to handle this faster and more accurately than any previous integration.
With the implementation of the digital LDOs in place, AMD has integrated enhanced gate states to allow CPU cores, GPU cores, and the entire chip to reach lower power states. Each CPU core can individually enter CC6 states through gating and when all cores are idle it can drop to a CPUOFF state that allows lower power to the L3 cache. For graphics, LDO-based gating can power down as much as 95% of the GPU functionality. When it enters both GFXOFF and CPUOFF states, the entire chip can halt the voltage regulator and provide 99% residency at a static Windows screen. This should translate into much improved battery life over previous AMD APU designs.
Infinity Fabric gets more credit with this processor implementation as it allows for some interesting region to region communications and power gating configurations. AMD has built the Ryzen Mobile processor with SoC elements divided into regions, each of which can be gated and controlled independently. While this might make the power and communication diagrams look more complex, this allows AMD the flexibility to shut down as much of the chip as possible. Type A regions on the slide above can be gated during screen refreshes while Type B must be active, if only briefly.
AMD touts gate exit speed as another improvement at the hand of Infinity Fabric. Gate exiting is what allows the chip to get out of a sleep state and into an active working state and is critical to improve the experience and responsiveness of a system. Handling the telemetry from the six unique clients on the SoC is a significant task and one that AMD claims has been in the making for more than four years.
From a battery life perspective, AMD is claiming to have made a lot of progress. For VP9 video, which has been hardware accelerated on Vega, we should see more than a 2x increase compared to the AMD FX-9800P design previously. For H.264 playback and MobileMark that difference is bit more modest at 2-3 hours, but if they can become competitive with Intel’s latest offerings that is a huge win for AMD.
The overall performance story from AMD is very aggressive with Ryzen Mobile. The interior line in the chart above indicates the performance of the Intel Core i7-8550U, a quad-core KBL-R part. Claiming that the HD 620 will have only 38% of the performance of the Vega integrated graphics is a great result! There are some caveats here to note. For example, the Content Creation result is based only on POV-Ray, Productivity is based only on PCMark10, and Data Security is only based on TrueCrypt. Maybe the most troublesome is the power efficiency metric in which AMD only takes the Cinebench R15 multi-threaded score and divides by 15-watts. Because we are looking at MEASURED power, and only nominal results from AMD’s specs, I question if that result will hold up.
Most importantly for AMD, there are design wins they can talk about. HP, Lenovo, and Acer will all have systems in the channel by the end of this year, in time for the holiday season. The HP Envy X360, Lenovo Ideapad 720S, and Acer Swift 3 will all be available with Ryzen 7 2700U or Ryzen 5 2500U hardware and various other configuration options. Though these aren’t quite as thin and light as some other Intel machines just yet, they are offering high end options like NVMe SSDs, IPS screens, USB Type-C, and more. No pricing is set yet, but I am assume they will be in line with current selling Intel options. (Note that only the Lenovo machine is listed as single channel memory – possible a big detriment to GPU and gaming performance.)
I am hoping to have a system or two in my hands in the very near future powered by the Ryzen Processor with Radeon Vega Graphics. There is a steep curve for AMD to get past for acceptance into the thin and light market of notebooks, but AMD feels confident they have made the processor that can finally do it.
This is exactly what I have
This is exactly what I have been looking for, slim and light system that is powerful!
There is no such ->Thin and
There is no such ->Thin and Light Unicorn<- in existance that is also powerful. Only regular form factor laptops that support 35 watts and above SOCs/APUs are powerful and the more cooling provided the more powerful the processor will be. I'll wait for some gaming notebook with maybe a desktop Ryzen/Vega APU inside and a proper amount of cooling to make the system actually powerful. Intel has been steadily moving the Power/Performance Bar down while no one was looking with its damn Ultrabook/Apple Envy thin and useless form factor for some years now. And what was once considered a desktop replacment laptop form factor is now called a gaming laptop. I'll wait for some HP Regular Form Factor ProBook design to replace my Ivy Bridge quad core i7 with discrete mobile Radeon 7650m(terrascale rebrand) ProBook laptop. And I'm very interested in a laptop with both a Ryzen/Vega APU and a Discrete Mobile Vega GPU for some extra rendering horsepower. But it looks like that thin and light market has ruined the low cost regular form factor laptop market and that's going to require a gaming laptop now for folks that need a more powerful laptop. If HP does not update its HP ProBook brand with some 25 watt+/Dual Memory Channel(16GB) ProBook Ryzen/Vega APU SKU options then that's the last of my laptop business that HP will get. As I do not want or need a laptop that is thinner than my current Ivy Bridge based ProBook I want a real POWERFUL laptop so hopefully there will be some laptop OEMs that may offer a desktop Ryzen/Vega APU in a laptop form factor. And if Laptop OEM's can offer laptops with a Ryzen 7 1700 on board then some desktop Ryzen/Zen APU should be no problem and would sell like hotcakes in 2018 when the Desktop Ryzen/Vega APUs arrive. AMD had better get some Ryzen/Vega APUs out there with a single/dual stack of HBM2 for the portable workstation market as that would be a great new innovation that Intel would be hard pressed to compete with. At 15 watts do not ever expect much in the way of performance when it's very easy to build a laptop that supports 25 - 25 watts and above. And dann if these 15 watt from factor laptops do not cost even more for some dual core variants than the old quad core i7 variants used to cost. So that's not more of anything it's actually less for more cost in those Ultrabook/Apple Envy thin and useless laptop SKUs that Intel's bean counters and marketing monkeys rammed down everybody's throats when Intel was not getting and real competition from AMD. And Now AMD is forced to go along with all that marketing driven nonsense and only produce APUs for the low power/no real performance market so hopefully there will be some laptop OEM that will use a desktop Ryzen/Vega APU in a laptop from factor. Hell the performance bar has been so artifically moved down by Intel that 35 watt CPUs are now considered desktop variants and the relative processing power offered per CPU SKU has actually declined beceuse of all this Apple envy on the part of Intel and Intel's outsized influnce over the entire PC market place.
I have carried a 17 inch
I have carried a 17 inch laptop around with me when traveling before. The “thin and light” mobile market exist for good reasons. If you don’t like it, feel free to buy a giant, heavy 17″ laptop with all of the CPU and GPU power you need. I am not carrying such a thing when traveling though, so I mostly don’t have a use for “thick and heavy”.
My 15 inch HP Probook(quad
My 15 inch HP Probook(quad core Ivy Bridge i7/discrete Radeon Mobile 7650m terrascale rebrand GPU) based laptop is not 17 F-ing inches you daft fool and it’s a 35 Watt CPU SKU and 20 Watt GPU SKU. It’s about 3/4 of an inch thick at the thickest point and is relatively light. And I can easily carry it all day with my bad back no problem. GTFO with your damn Daft reply as most laptops of the regular form factor variaty have always been 15 inch models that where around 3/4 of an inch thick with plenty of cooling so the processors did not throttle.
One can have a very light laptop at 15 inches that is around 3/4 of an inch thick and has better cooling and a bigger/replacable battery and support for dual channel memory of at least 16GB and a 35+ watt APU/SOC.
Really you marketing types are total scum with your overpriced Ultrabook/Thin and light tat that is priced too high to begin with. Utrabooks where an Intel Scam to force onto the larger GPU market that same Apple style Overpricing business model and that ehere made with the crappy dual core U series i7 basd laptop SKUs that cost more than my quad core Ivy Bridge core i7 laptop costs! And my HP probook came with a Radeon discrete mobile 7650M and still cost less than most Ultrabooks that only had a dual core i7 U/Crappy with lackluster integrated graphics.
Intel sure got a lot more of those dual core i7 U series SOC SKUs per wafer and Intel was charging more for the Crappy Dual core U series i7s than a quad core Ivy bridge i7 of a earlier generation and that quad core Ivy Bridge i7 beat the crap out of any dual core U series i7 even to this day. What a complete scam and Intel was making billions off of the Daft fools out there with that Apple style over priced underpowered Ultrabook TAT!
My Probook even game with a CD/DVD/RW drive that can be Removed and replaced with a second Hard-Drive or SSD.
This Thin and light croap is a total value scam foisted on the entire non Apple PC market by an abusive Monopolistic Intrest(Intel) and the entire OEM laptop market has been Applefied with less processimg power at higher cost for less end user than ever before for laptops, ever since Intel’s Ultrabook Branding was first trademarked by Intel.
Screw Ultrabooks and Thin and lights and the Fools that fall for it each and every time!
…what laptops can teach you
…what laptops can teach you about parenting gone wrong.
I could be totally wrong
I could be totally wrong about this, but it seems to me that since the GPU and CPU are both on the same die, then the motherboard could be a bit smaller which leaves room for a bigger battery, which would be a good thing I think.
Ya that is why this is going
Ya that is why this is going to be the Ultra book (oops Ultrathin) king. Can’t wait for device to hit the market with these.
I don’t know enough to answer
I don’t know enough to answer this question but is it possible to guess if these integrated processors can do VR, specifically Vive / Oculus level VR?
In theory, it could do VR,
In theory, it could do VR, but at it’s very low-end state. The iGPU looks promising, but doubt it would match a GTX 1060.
Knowing more about the performance of the CPU and iGPU is what I am waiting for in regards to investing into a mini-PC, like the NUC, that can handle gaming. 🙂
Yeah, this looks like the NUC
Yeah, this looks like the NUC chip I’ve been waiting for. Gigabyte, get on that! 🙂
The performance in 3DMark11
The performance in 3DMark11 seems close to a 1030, quite a bit lower than 1060.
Still, M$ VR platform works on Intel IGP, so maybe some low end VR is possible
Not really in any acceptable
Not really in any acceptable definition. Performance looks to be lower than the GeForce MX 150, which is itself about 3 rungs below what would really be classed as a VR suitable card (Geforce 1060).
An MX 150 or these Ryzen APUs
An MX 150 or these Ryzen APUs graphics are still going to be better for Blender 3D Rendering/Mesh Editing workloads than Intel’s stripped down of shader count integrated graphics. Intel’s too costly graphics may be fine for some light gaming workloads but just you try and bring up a Blender 3D high polygon count/high resoulution mesh model on Intel’s graphics and watch the UI/Editing Interface on Blender 3D bog down. That Never happens with Nvidia’s or AMD’s Graphics because both of those companies’ GPUs have enough shaders/TMUs/ROPs to handle the Blender 3d editing UI under large complex mesh models with million+ polygon counts.
Intel’s In-House Graphics is so shader bare that Intel’s GPUs are only good for the lower polygon counts models/scenes used in gaming workloads but it’s not so good for any non gaming graphics wotkloads that love as many shader cores as can be offered for non gaming graphics workloads like Ray Tracing accelerated on the GPU’s shaders. So if you use Nvidia’s or AMD’s graphics not only can you game you can also do other graphics workloads without bogging down the Graphics software’s UI/Editing interface.
At least the AMD Ryzen/Vega APUs will be able to work with Blender 3D and other graphics software in addition to playing games, and Nvidia’s Graphics in its Tegra SOC’s is better than Intel’s overpriced “Graphics”.
Apple is going to be forced to look at these Ryzen APUs simply because of their graphics design workload usability relative to Intel’s not so great integrated graphics on non gaming graphics usage. So if Apple is not careful they will begin to lose MacBook sales if they can not get Intel to produce GPUs that have the shader/ROP/TMU counts that match Nvidia’s and AMD’s graphics.
You will probably still want
You will probably still want a dedicated GPU for VR unless they make an HBM APU, which is probably not happening anytime soon due to how expensive it is for HBM. There may be some more possibilities in. The next generation HBM memory that may have some variants that are made to go on a PCB package with the processor rather than on a silicon interposer. It should be a massive improvement over previous generations though. For quite a while we have been comparing AMD APUs at 32 and 28 nm to Intel devices at 20 and 14 nm. Now we finally get an AMD integrated GPU at a somewhat comparable process node. It should do very well except maybe against Intel parts with on package eDRAM caches, but those are much more expensive. Even with more constrained bandwidth, AMD will probably still have a more powerful GPU and better drivers for gaming. They have done a lot of work to reduce memory bandwidth consumption, so it may not be as much of a problem as people think.
There is no HBM2 on these
There is no HBM2 on these first Ryzen/Vega APU SKUs so that HBCC IP in Vega has no HBM2 to act as HBC. So there are still so many slack-jawed gaming Bumpkins trying to tout Vega’s HBCC IP for these APUs and that HBCC/HBC IP in Vega needs something to become the HBC if there is no HBM2 to become the HBC. And the Ryzen/Vega APUs announced will not have any HBM2 or any eDRAM, so that HBCC IP is pretty much limited to the discrete Vega 10 based GPUs currently.
Good Luck with that single channel to memory that will be the standard from most of the laptop SKUs that use these first U series Ryzen/Vega APU SKUs. The desktop socketed Ryzen/Vega APUs are scheduled for Q1 2018 and hopefully some laptop OEMs will use a 35-65 watt desktop Ryzen/Vega APU with hopefully at least one stack of HBM2 to act as HBC for that Vega HBCC IP to make use of. Folks need to not purchase any OEM laptop variants with single channel memory as even an Apple Tablet based SOC(Apple A series) will have more memory bandwidth.
Laptop OEM are really shooting their other foot this time around with that single channel to memory nonsense!
From an AMD video showing
From an AMD video showing Firestrike scores (for gaming):
• 2544 R7 2700U vs 932 i7 7200U
• 2056 R5 2500U vs 940 i5 7200U
Where it stands;
• 21850 GTX 1080
• 20150 RX Vega 56
• 12780 GTX 1060 (VR Entry-Level)
• 5000 to 6400 for GTX 760
• 2560 GTX 460
• 2520 Radeon HD 5870
• [AROUND HERE]
• 1940 Radeon HD 5830
• 1900 GTX 550 Ti
The Vega and Ryzen architecture is showing their strength and looks very good as low-end gaming mini-PC APU. Still has much to catch up.
Performs like discrete
Performs like discrete solutions. Comparison to competing discrete GPUs for notebooks/laptops
3603 GeForce MX150 (current)
2863 GeForce GTX 950M (old)
2765 GeForce GTX 850M (oudated)
2504 GeForce 945M (old)
2113 GeForce 845M (outdated)
This one is a hill too far…
5453 GeForce GTX 1050 (current, as used in Surface Book 2)
Questionable benchmark
Questionable benchmark slides. Cinebench scores are probably the lowest ever, even when compared to review sites like https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i7-8550U-SoC-Benchmarks-and-Specs.242108.0.html which has a sizeable sample range. Also notice the Cinebench score on the MobileXFR (below 600, around 550) contradicts the other chart (showing 719). Then read their footnotes. The AMD test platform was a reference motherboard, which likely meant an open air fully cooled environment unlike those of the notebooks. And from AMD’s video, the Core i7-8550u was using single channel RAM and the Core i5 was using DDR4-2133. Meanwhile the AMD ones are using dual channel DDR4-2400. So we shall wait and see the real benchmarks of actual products, and take these marketing slides with some grain of salt.
We all know how this will end
We all know how this will end up. With OEMs killing any hope for success in the market. They will never let their relationship with Intel to be threatened. Just have a look at that HP. 8GB max memory, only one storage and SATA.
Look at the model from
Look at the model from Lenovo, its single channel memory. Weird part is that ASUS and Dell are missing. Either possible chip shortage, still in evalutation/prototyping stage, sell off current inventory first (before release) or they have not planned any products yet.
I really hope Apple will
I really hope Apple will start using AMD processors. Intel still has way too much influence over the market. It would be great to see Apple make a new MacMini or iMac with this APU. A MacBook Pro would be interesting to some people, but I will not buy one because of the soldered on everything. The soldered on SSD was the last straw. I have also thought it would be great if Apple makes a new MacPro with Epyc processors and as many Vega cards as they can fit. It wouldn’t fit in the trash can form factor, but that should never have been a thing anyway.
Nopes, just that Intel had
Nopes, just that Intel had the entire PC mobile (notebooks/laptops, 2-in-1s tablet hybrid and convertibles) wrapped up even if Apple was not in the picture. Besides big names like Microsoft, Dell, HPE, ASUS, MSI, GigaByte, Acer and Lenovo, there are other numerous OEMs/ODMs and companies in far east (mainly China and Taiwan) are producing them in mass quantities. Xiaomi, Huawei, Chuwi, Onda, Jumper, Voyo, Pipo, etc just to name a few (out of many). Have yet to see any notebooks/laptops featuring AMD SoCs from these (Chinese) companies.