AMD Unveils Ryzen AI 300 Processors for Copilot+ Laptops

Microsoft’s Copilot+ initiative for supercharged AI PCs is increasingly becoming a reality at Computex 2024. Today, AMD announced its next major chip platforms, Ryzen AI 300 for laptops and Ryzen 9000 for desktop computers, which target more robust AI performance for laptops and fast-paced gaming, respectively. on desktop computers. Notably, the Ryzen AI 300 chips feature a revamped Neural Processing Unit (NPU) with 50 TOPS (tera operations per second) of AI performance, more than three times AMD’s previous portable hardware. The new desktop processors, meanwhile, are said to be 16% faster than their predecessors in terms of overall performance.

The main takeaway from these announcements is that Qualcomm is no longer the only company capable of boasting fast AI hardware for Copilot+ PCs. This initiative, unveiled by Microsoft a few weeks ago, establishes a new base specification standard for AI PCs. Copilot+ PCs require an NPU with at least 40 TOPS AI performance, 16 GB of RAM, and 256 GB SSD to be considered Copilot+ laptops. Microsoft has also linked long battery life to this initiative, but it’s unclear whether the Ryzen AI 300 chips will be able to achieve the twenty-plus hours reported by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon processors. (We also expect Intel to respond with more details on its Lunar Lake Copilot+ chips later today at Computex.)

So far, AMD’s new laptop chips include two models: the 12-core Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and the 10-core AI 9 365. As usual, we expect the company to complete its lineup over the next year with mid-tier processors. and low-end offers. Both Ryzen AI 9 chips reach maximum boost speeds of at least 5 GHz and also feature integrated RDNA 3.5 Radeon 890M and 880M graphics. According to AMD benchmarks, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is 98% faster than Apple’s M3 chip in Blender, and 73% faster than Intel’s Core Ultra 185H. (It’s worth noting that the company tested its hardware with 32GB of RAM compared to Apple and Intel systems with 16GB of RAM, according to its testing footnotes.)

The Ryzen AI 300 and Ryzen 9000 chips are powered by AMD’s Zen 5 architecture, which is a “radical update” for the company, said Donny Woligrosky, senior director of technical marketing for processors, during a press briefing. It claims it offers better branch prediction (which helps with accuracy and latency), higher overall throughput, and up to twice the instruction bandwidth. For regular users, this means you can expect Zen 5 systems to be a little more responsive and better prepared to handle large data loads.

Although AMD’s new AI chips are the star of the show, the company isn’t leaving desktop users behind. The new Ryzen 9000 chips are complemented by the 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X, which gets closer to the 6GHz dream with boost speeds of 5.7GHz. It’s a power-hungry beast, however, requiring 170 watts, so more reasonable hardware enthusiasts may want to opt for the Ryzen 9 9900X (120W TDP) or the eight-core Ryzen 7 9700X (65W). These new chips don’t include an NPU like the Ryzen 8000G, but at this point, gamers and demanding PC users can get by with the raw computing power of desktop CPUs and powerful GPUs. (NVIDIA is also trying to power some AI features with its RTX GPUswhich avoids the need for a standalone NPU.)

Alongside these new desktop chips, AMD is also unveiling the X870E and X870 AM5 chipsets. They include the next-generation PC features you expect, including PCIe 5, USB4, WiFi 7, and DDR5. For its older AM4 hardware, AMD also revealed the 16-core Ryzen 9 5900XT and the eight-core Ryzen 7 5800XT, both of which can reach speeds of 4.8 GHz.

We’re still waiting on pricing details for AMD’s new hardware, but the company says we can expect to see Ryzen AI 300 systems and Ryzen 9000 chips in July. These new laptops include the ASUS ZenBook S 16 and Zephyrus G16, as well as the MSI Stealth A16 AI+.