Earlier this week AMD revealed the forthcoming release of additional entry-level "Zen 2" Ryzen 3 3000-series CPUs and the B550 motherboard chipset, setting the stage for an update to their desktop ecosystem that gradually phases out 400-series motherboards. New desktop APUs - based on the 'Renoir' Ryzen 4000 H-series for Mobile systems - were notable by their absence however, perhaps hinting that the Zen 2-based APU would remain exclusive to notebooks for the foreseeable future.

That being said, a specification leak posted to Twitter by @_rogame could indicate that such models are incoming, potentially bolstering AMD's lineup in the <65W TDP low power desktop segment.



The leak details GPU and CPU frequencies of a processor with codename "AMD Arctic", one which doesn't match known aliases. The design incorporates relatively high CPU base clocks (3000MHz) beyond the typical mobile chips, and apparently has a higher CPU score than a Ryzen 7 4700U chips. The GPU score however nudges lower than the 4600U, representing a configuration bias towards the former over the latter. A 35W TDP is an educated guess based on performance compared to the 4700U and AMD's previous entry-level desktop APU, the Ryzen 3 3200GE.

Taken at face value, the specifications could indicate a chip based on AMD's Renior APU architecture (i.e. a monolithic 7nm Zen 2 CPU & Vega iGPU) that biases in favour of higher CPU performance in the expectation of graphics performance shortfalls being overcome by pairing with a budget discrete GPU. This would be ideal for a budget or low power desktop system and a replacement for the Ryzen 3200GE APU should one be required.

One plausible alternative is that this APU could be headed into a range of embedded systems rather than socketed desktop environments, and that's pretty compelling too. It would however not be quite as interesting.

SOURCE: @_rogame