Home AMD lays out its Ryzen and Radeon plans for 2018 and beyond at CES
Reviews

AMD lays out its Ryzen and Radeon plans for 2018 and beyond at CES

Renee Johnson
Disclosure
Disclosure
In our content, we occasionally include affiliate links. Should you click on these links, we may earn a commission, though this incurs no additional cost to you. Your use of this website signifies your acceptance of our terms and conditions as well as our privacy policy.

Few companies in the world of computing were as busy as AMD was last year. The company refreshed its mainstream desktop processor lineup from top to bottom with Ryzen 3, Ryzen 5, and Ryzen 7 CPUs, bringing more competitive cores and threads to more affordable price points than ever. In high-end desktops, Ryzen Threadripper CPUs and the X399 platform offered competitive performance and better platform features than the Intel competition on the X299 platform. In the data center, AMD took the wraps off a full range of Epyc server CPUs that challenged Intel’s Xeon Scalable Processor family on bang-for-the-buck. In notebooks, Ryzen Mobile APUs joined the battle with Intel’s Kaby Lake Refresh chips. And in graphics, Radeon RX Vega graphics cards proved competitive with Nvidia’s GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 at the high end of the market, even if they remain difficult to get ahold of today.

Even if AMD didn’t win in every benchmark on every platform, the company can inarguably claim the most competitive product lineup it’s enjoyed in years. The challenge for AMD now is to keep that momentum going as we enter 2018. Ahead of CES, the company laid out a case for how it intends to keep the pedal to the metal.

The most natural place to chart a path through AMD’s 2018 starts with the desktop CPU, and enthusiasts will be happy to learn that AMD is bringing Raven Ridge APUs to the AM4 platform next month. That launch will be followed by second-generation Ryzen CPUs featuring the Zen+ architecture and built on GlobalFoundries’ 12-nm LPP process technology. Those chips will launch in April alongside a new X470 chipset. In the second half of the year, AMD will release the second generation of Ryzen Threadripper CPUs and update its Ryzen Pro platform with the new chips.

Ever since the launch of Ryzen CPUs last year, desktop users have been clamoring for a desktop APU that integrates Zen CPU cores with Radeon graphics processors. Those folks can rejoice soon, because Raven Ridge is coming to the AM4 platform. AMD will offer two such APUs next month: the Ryzen 5 2400G and the Ryzen 3 2200G.

  Cores/
threads
Base
clock
(GHz)
Boost
clock
(GHz)
GPU
compute
units
GPU
peak
clock
L3
cache
TDP
Ryzen 5 2400G 4/8 3.6 3.9 11 1250 4 MB 65 W
Ryzen 3 2200G 4/4 3.5 3.7 8 1100

The Ryzen 5 2400G marks AMD’s first fully-enabled Raven Ridge product. This chip will offer four Zen CPU cores alongside 11 Radeon Vega compute units. Those CPU cores will run at up to 3.9 GHz boost speeds with a 3.6 GHz base clock, and the complete package will sell for $169. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 3 2200G will drop back to four cores and four threads running at 3.7 GHz boost speeds and 3.5 GHz base speeds, and it’ll offer eight Vega compute units on board. That part will go for an especially spicy $99 suggested price. Both chips fit into a 65 W TDP, they use soldered heat spreaders, and they’ll be fully unlocked on both the CPU and graphics side of the die for overclockers to work their magic. AMD will launch them February 12.

Although we’d expect no less, AMD teased the performance of the Ryzen 5 2400G by putting it up against the integrated graphics processor of Intel’s Core i5-8400. Unsurprisingly, AMD’s testing reveals that the fully-enabled Vega 11 IGP walks all over the UHD Graphics 620 on board the i5-8400. More surprising, perhaps, is that AMD believes it’d take a GeForce GT 1030 to bring the i5-8400’s gaming performance on par with that of the Ryzen 5 2400G. To be clear, I don’t believe that it’d be necessary to pair a $200-ish processor like the Core i5-8400 with the GT 1030 to get comparable performance. One could easily get a Core i3-8100 for $130 and pair it with that same $70 or $80 graphics card and get competitive numbers to the effect of AMD’s claims for the i5-8400 setup.

Even with that in mind, AMD’s real advantage is that the platform cost of the Ryzen 5 2400G and a B350 motherboard would likely land around $250, and one could easily overclock the 2400G thereafter. The locked Core i3-8100 requires a relatively expensive Intel Z370 motherboard to run, as Intel’s partners haven’t released inexpensive H- and B-series motherboards in the 300-series generation yet. With such a motherboard, one might charitably need to spend $300 or more between the graphics card, CPU, and motherboard for an entry-level Core i3 gaming system. The bottom line is that the Ryzen 5 2400G looks like a sweet value for entry-level gamers and small-form-factor builders without room for a full- or even half-height graphics card.

Even for folks who don’t game, the Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G open up a wide swath of systems that were difficult for AMD to claim a foothold in with first-generation Ryzen CPUs. Since those chips lacked integrated graphics, folks with basic productivity needs had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for a basic discrete graphics card to light up their displays. That added expense ate into AMD’s platform-cost advantage a bit, and the Ryzen G-series parts neatly iron out that wrinkle. For basic computing tasks, a Ryzen 3 2200G seems like an extremely competitive part for $100. We should have an opportunity to find out soon.

 

Second-gen Ryzen CPUs promise positive evolutions
AMD’s Raven Ridge Ryzen APUs offer the first hints of what’s coming in AMD’s second-generation Ryzen desktop CPUs, as well. Although AMD didn’t offer many details of what to expect of these parts, folks hoping for some kind of foundation-shaking rework of Zen to fix its deficiencies relative to the Intel competition will be waiting for a while yet. Zen+ will likely offer meaningful improvements in performance, but from what AMD told us, I would expect a nice evolutionary improvement rather than a huge leap.

First off, Zen+ will be fabricated on GlobalFoundries’ 12LP process that we learned of in September of last year. AMD said the move from 14-nm LPP to 12LP will result in lower power usage and higher frequencies, two improvements that will be nothing but upside if they play out. The company also alluded to improvements for cache speed, memory speed, and latency, another bit of polish that has the potential to address some of the complaints enthusiasts have had about Ryzen chips. Finally, second-generation Ryzen CPUs will use the Precision Boost 2 boost algorithm that the company introduced with Ryzen Mobile APUs. Instead of relying on a one-core to two-core and then an all-core boost speed, Precision Boost 2 allows the processor to boost each core as it’s able depending on thermal conditions and workload severity. That more granular approach could offer better performance in workloads that previously straddled two-core and all-core boost conditions.

To mark the introduction of second-generation Ryzen CPUs, AMD will also introduce a new high-end motherboard platform called X470. We don’t know a ton about this new platform yet, other than that AMD claims it’s “optimized for second-generation Ryzen CPUs” and that it could offer lower power consumption than its predecessor. Despite any optimizations X470 might offer, second-generation Ryzen CPUs will be backwards-compatible with today’s X370 motherboards, and that combo shouldn’t require anything more than a firmware update to function properly.

Today’s Ryzens get a storage boost and price cuts


Old SEPs on the left, new on the right

For the moment, AMD is using the lag time between the maturity of the first generation of Ryzen processors and the arrival of the second generation to potentially put more competitive pressure on Intel. We’ve been seeing deep discounts on a lot of Ryzen CPUs from retailers of late, but AMD is making those lower prices official with a change to its suggested price list. The deepest cuts come at the top of the stack, where the Ryzen 7 1800X plummets from $499 to $349, the Ryzen 7 1700X falls from $399 to $309, and the Ryzen 7 1700 drops $30 to end up at $299. Those prices aren’t far off the deep discounts we’ve seen of late, but it’s nice to know that builders can reliably enjoy those stickers rather than waiting for the discount winds to blow the right way again.

In the middle of the market, AMD’s Ryzen 5 1600X drops from $249 to $219, the Ryzen 5 1600 drops from $219 to $189, and the Ryzen 5 1500X drops from $189 to $174. Of these drops, the Ryzen 5 1600’s is probably the most important, as the value proposition of that CPU was among the strongest of any chip released last year even at its suggested price. For around the same price as a locked Core i5-8400 with six cores, especially thread-hungry builders can get an overclockable CPU with a respectable stock cooler and 12 threads, and that continues to be an enormously attractive proposition for AMD. The Ryzen 5 1500X drops to $174 from $189, but that gap probably isn’t enough to make the four-core, eight-thread part appealing versus the only slightly-more-expensive 1600.

At the lower end of the Ryzen stack, the Ryzen 5 2400G slots into the spot that the Ryzen 5 1400 occupied previously—and just below the 1500X. AMD says the Ryzen 5 1400 will continue to be produced, but unless someone really needs a wide-and-slow chip, it’s hard to imagine choosing the 1400 over the higher-boosting and Radeon-equipped 2400G. A similar fate would seem to await the Ryzen 3 1200, whose relatively low clocks and lack of an IGP look hard to justify next to the Ryzen 3 2200G with its higher clocks and powerful onboard graphics.

A couple more platform perks await Ryzen builders in 2018. First up, AMD is attempting to blunt Intel’s vendor-locked Optane Memory storage accelerator with a software partnership from Enmotus. The companies have joined forces to offer Enmotus’ FuzeDrive storage-tiering utility to Ryzen owners for just $20. FuzeDrive can join hard drives, SSDs, and even RAM together in a tiered caching approach that stores frequently-used files on faster tiers of storage. AMD cheekily suggests that builders could even use Optane modules as intermediary storage tiers if they wanted, and we see no reason to doubt it since Optane formats just like any other NVMe device when it’s not paired with its companion software. The downside of FuzeDrive is that since it’s a block-level caching solution, losing a storage device from the tiered pool or experiencing a power failure while the system is operating will likely mean data loss. AMD admits as much, but falls back on the justified advice that users should be backing up their files anyway.

Finally, AMD is updating its popular Wraith Max cooler to more fully capitalize on the RGB LED craze. Where the first Wraith Max only had a single-color LED ring encircling its fan, the Wraith Prism will offer controllable RGB LEDs around its fan’s perimeter to allow for a rainbow effect. The cooler’s fan hub will also be illuminated this time around, and the fan’s rotor is now translucent instead of opaque to allow the RGB LEDs in the center to shine through. The current Wraith Max is now available for $45 at retail for those who want to cool their Ryzen chip without going overboard on the blinkenlights, too.

 

Ryzen Mobile branches out
While AMD’s Ryzen 5 2500U and Ryzen 7 2700U have shown promise as AMD re-enters the mobile space, those high-end and high-performance parts don’t give potential AMD partners all the flexibility they might want in designing notebooks for every market segment. That’s where the Ryzen 3 2300U and Ryzen 3 2200U come in. This pair of mobile processors will fill out the Ryzen Mobile lineup for entry-level and lower-midrange systems that don’t need the absolute highest gaming performance.

  Cores/
threads
Base
clock
(GHz)
Boost
clock
(GHz)
GPU
compute
units
GPU
peak
clock
L3
cache
TDP
Ryzen 7 2700U 4/8 2.2 3.8 10 1300 MHz 4 MB 15 W
Ryzen 5 2500U 2.0 3.6 8 1100 MHz
Ryzen 3 2300U 4/4 2.0 3.4 6
Ryzen 3 2200U 2/4 2.5 3.4 3 1000 MHz

AMD will also be launching a full lineup of Ryzen Pro mobile APUs in 2018, and it expects to beat Intel’s eighth-generation vPro CPUs to market with these business-ready systems. I wrote in-depth about the capabilities of Ryzen Pro desktop systems last year, and those same security and manageability features are coming to Ryzen Pro notebooks this spring.

  Cores/
threads
Base
clock
(GHz)
Boost
clock
(GHz)
GPU
compute
units
GPU
peak
clock
L3
cache
TDP
Ryzen 7 Pro 4/8 2.2 3.6 10 1300 MHz 4 MB 15 W
Ryzen 5 Pro 2.0 3.6 8 1100 MHz
Ryzen 3 Pro 4/4 2.0 3.4 6

As a brief refresher, Ryzen Pro processors support transparent system memory encryption, remote management using the DASH open consortium’s standards, 18-month stable system images, and more. AMD will offer a Ryzen Pro Mobile chip in every one of its product tiers.

RX Vega hits the road
Just a couple hours ago, Radeon RX Vega graphics made a splashy midrange debut on Intel’s eighth-generation G-series CPUs for mobile devices. While we don’t know any details of the chip yet (or whether it’s related to the chip that Intel is using at all), AMD has its own plans to bring RX Vega graphics into mobile PCs.

The company teased a smaller Vega chip with a single stack of HBM2 RAM on board during the conference, but it didn’t share any further details regarding the graphics-processing resources on board.

AMD did tell us to expect the RX Vega Mobile chip to power thin-and-light gaming notebooks, but details are still frustratingly thin. We expect to hear more about the RX Vega Mobile GPU later this year.

7-nm makes its debut with a Radeon Instinct chip
Perhaps the biggest news from AMD’s GPU roadmap is that the first 7-nm GPU it will build is a Vega chip, and that it won’t be a consumer graphics chip.

Instead, this Vega GPU will be a Radeon Instinct product. AMD says it’ll have dedicated instructions for accelerating deep-learning training and inference, new I/O capabilities for high-speed communication among nodes in general-purpose HPC clusters, and support for the company’s hardware-managed multiuser GPU . This chip will be sampling to customers in 2018, though AMD didn’t offer further details about its availability.

Along with this new chip, AMD announced that its complete deep-learning software stack has achieved production-ready status, and it touts that stack’s open-source accessibility in contrast to the closed environment of CUDA. The ease of implementation and widespread popularity of CUDA will be difficult to overcome, to put it mildly, but AMD is laying the foundation for customers interested in its hardware.

AMD has laid out an exciting series of potential products for 2018. Stay tuned as we get our hands on some of this hardware and put it to the test.

Latest News

Ripple Dumps 240 Million XRP Tokens Amid 17% Price Decline
Crypto News

Ripple Dumps 240 Million XRP Tokens Amid 17% Price Decline

Crypto Expert Draws A Links Between Shiba Inu And Ethereum
Crypto News

Crypto Expert Draws Link Between Shiba Inu And Ethereum

The founders of the second-largest meme coin, Shiba Inu, have been a mystery. However, many people within the crypto industry have made some probable suggestions regarding the coin’s fundamentals. Del...

The Lucrative FTX Bankruptcy Trade and Ongoing Legal Battle
Crypto News

The Lucrative FTX Bankruptcy Trade and Ongoing Legal Battle

The FTX cryptocurrency exchange crash in November 2022 left a trail of aggrieved investors and customers who had their funds frozen due to the complex bankruptcy case.  However, the collapse...

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Set to Enter “Danger Zone” – Time to Back-Off or Bag More Coins?
Crypto News

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Set to Enter “Danger Zone” – Time to Back-Off or Bag More Coins?

SNB to Kick Off Rate Cut Cycle Sooner Than Expected
News

SNB to Kick-Start Rate Cut Cycle Sooner Than Expected

Top Crypto Gainers on 18 March – AVAX and RNDR
Crypto News

Top Crypto Gainers on 18 March – AVAX and RNDR

smartphone security organization
Community Contributions

How to Successfully Tackle Smartphone Security in Your Organization