AMD unleashes its superteam APU with Ryzen and Vega mobile chip

By Jon Martindale Published May 31, 2017

amd ryzen vega apu laptop ryzenapu02 — PCPer

AMD has demoed a melding of its two most exciting technologies in years at Computex 2017: A system on a chip (SOC) that combines a Ryzen processor with a Vega graphics core. Shown working within an AMD-branded laptop, the mobile accelerated processing unit (APU) is said to offer 50 percent more CPU power and 40 percent more graphics power than the last generation hardware from AMD.

Although AMD has struggled for more than a decade to offer true competition for Intel at the top end of the processor market, where it has excelled is in mobile computing. Its APUs have offered affordable computing with decent performance for some time now and it’s looking to expand on that potential with the new generation of Ryzen core APUs later this year.

Recommended Videos

What’s doubly exciting about this chip, though, is that along with Ryzen’s strong launch earlier this year, Vega is expected to offer truly top-tier graphics performance, so bringing that power to a singular mobile chip has a lot of people on tenterhooks. The showing of the Ryzen/Vega APU-powered laptop at Computex is our first look at such a system, and though we didn’t get any raw performance numbers or tests, it appears to be working rather well.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming

The slimline laptop was said to have a sub-15mm thickness at its widest and AMD claims the combination of Zen CPU and Vega lead to big gains in graphical and processor performance. It would certainly be enough to give Intel and Nvidia a run for their money in their respective mobile spaces.

What will be interesting to learn more about as we get closer to this hardware’s launch later this year is what the memory allocation for Vega is like. As PCPer points out, it’s unlikely that an on-die Vega core will make use of the second-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM2) that the more mainstream graphics cards use. It could have a non-system cache, but for now, that’s mere speculation.

Topics

Evergreen writer

Jon Martindale is a freelance evergreen writer and occasional section coordinator, covering how to guides, best-of lists, and…

Computing

Pour one out — AMD is reportedly sunsetting the Ryzen 7 5800X3D

Someone holding the Ryzen 7 5800X3D in a red light.

The Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a certified legend, sitting among the best processors you can buy several years after its release. It was the swan song for the AM4 socket and Zen 3 architecture, and it debuted AMD's 3D V-Cache that has turned gaming CPUs on their heads. But it looks like the processor is finally meeting its end.

AMD hasn't said anything official, but PCGamesHardware went as far as to say that "the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is dead," and it's easy to see why. PCGamesHardware is a German outlet, and in that region of the world, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D isn't available. The same is true in the U.S. The processor isn't available on Amazon, and on Newegg, I found one third-party seller shipping the CPU from Israel for $500. It should go without saying at this point, but $500 is way too much for the Ryzen 7 5800X3D in 2024.

Computing

AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D may not give Intel any breathing room

The Ryzen 7 7800X3D installed in a motherboard.

The competition between Intel Arrow Lake and AMD Zen 5 hasn't been as fierce as usual, with both lineups delivering small gen-to-gen improvements. However, it seems that AMD may soon add a staple to its list of the best processors, and the CPU might be announced at the worst possible time for Intel. I'm talking about the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which now has a rumored release date alongside some performance benchmarks.

The release date speculation was initially shared on Bilibili, but the user has since deleted their post. However, the discussion continued on Chiphell forums, spilling the beans on both the official announcement date and the possible release date.

Computing

How AMD boosted Ryzen 9000 CPUs by 17% overnight

amd ryzen 9000 retested dt respec

AMD's Zen 5 CPUs, called Ryzen 9000, released with a collective sigh. None of them have it made it onto the list of the best processors, not so much because they're bad, but just because they aren't the best option. Outside of a few niche tasks, they felt more like a price increase and less like a performance increase compared to the previous generation. But that's changing.

We've seen a handful of updates from AMD over the last couple of months, which have culminated in a new BIOS for AMD motherboards that boosts performance across the range -- or so AMD says. I retested the full range of Zen 5 CPUs across games and productivity apps to see where they really sit now that the launch dust has settled.
How did we get here?