AI is the very much the trending topic at CES this year and AMD have returned with new tools and ongoing partnerships to cement their place in this burgeoning landscape that could easily see the unprepared sidelined. 2023 saw them reveal Ryzen 8040-series processors with on-board NPUs, unlocking a new generation of hardware-accelerated local inferencing for AI models, and the team arrived in Las Vegas with more products that have a slightly more consumer-oriented angle.
Primary among these new products is the Ryzen 8000G-series, a brand new line of APUs which integrated Zen4/Zen4c CPUs cores, 700M-series Radeon graphics cores and optionally AMD XDNA1 AI processor cores (on architecture dubbed a Neural Processing Unit). They run the gamut of 4-core/8-thread to 8-core/16-thread SKUs operating in frequencies up to 5.1GHz and TDPs of 65W, and AMD boast that they are the first desktop processor to integrate NPUs for consumer applications.
The Ryzen 8700G and 8600G integrate the XDNA1 AI processors, but the lower-positioned 8500G and 8300G do not. Each step down in the range also reduces the GPU capability from outright gaming capability to more broad productivity suitability. Contextually, the Ryzen 8700G has roughly equivalent gaming credentials as a entry-level system powered by NVIDIA's aging but still usable GeForce GTX 1650 (according to internal benchmarks)
It is noteworthy that 8300G processors are explicitly launching exclusive through partner systems, likely the likes of HP and Lenovo. Like previous Ryzen G-Series APUs, consumer and DIY system availability may be low deep into its life-cycle. The entire range should launch by the end of January.
Joining the Ryzen 8000G-series is AMD's latest mainstream Radeon GPU, the RX 7600XT 16GB. This card is explicitly designed to run games that require larger memory pools at 1080p, with the knock-on consequence of being suitable for generative AI and LLMs which need 16GB of VRAM to process. The VRAM is connected through a 128-bit bus, and offers an effective bandwidth of 288GB/s
Unlike some other XT models, the 7600XT is equipped with identical CU and stream processor numbers at its non-XT counterpart. It is however clocked higher, with default frequencies up-to 2.76GHz. It is priced at an MSRP of $329, $60 more than the RX 7600, and should be in stores on January 24th.
Other announcements at CES included an expansion of their ROCm open software platform to include support for Radeon RX 7900-series GPUs and ongoing partnerships with industry leaders such as Microsoft, HP, Lenovo and ASUS to integrate Ryzen 8040-series processors into new platforms for its local AI inferencing capabilities. While new main-line Ryzen processors weren't announced, it was hinted that the next-gen 8000-series with Zen5 will be coming later this year.
For more information on AMD at CES 2024 visit https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/events/ces.html
