Microsoft’s Copilot+ initiative for supercharged AI computers It becomes more of a reality at Computex 2024. AMD today announced its next major chip platforms, the Ryzen AI 300 for laptops and the Ryzen 9000 for desktops, which target stronger laptop AI performance and faster gaming on desktops, respectively. Notably, the Ryzen AI 300 chips feature an updated neural processing unit (NPU) with 50 TOPS (tera operations per second) artificial intelligence performance, three times higher than AMD’s previous laptop hardware. Meanwhile, the new desktop processors are said to be 16 percent faster than their predecessors in terms of overall performance.
The bottom line from these announcements is that Qualcomm is no longer the only company boasting fast AI hardware for its Copilot+ PCs. That initiative, which Microsoft introduced a few weeks ago, AI sets the new core specification standard for PCs. Copilot+ PCs require an NPU with at least 40 TOPS AI performance, 16GB RAM and 256GB SSDs to qualify as Copilot+ laptops. Microsoft has also bundled long battery life with this initiative, but it’s unclear whether the Ryzen AI 300 chips will be able to touch the twenty-plus hours reported from Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon processors. (We’re also waiting for Intel to respond in more detail about it Lunar Lake Copilot+ chips 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 fill the next year’s lineup with mid-range. and low-level offers. Both Ryzen AI 9 chips reach a maximum overclocking speed of at least 5 GHz and are also equipped with internal RDNA 3.5 Radeon 890M and 880M graphics. According to AMD’s estimates, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is 98 percent faster than Apple’s M3 chip and 73 percent faster than the Intel Core Ultra 185H in Blender. (Note that the company tested its hardware with 32GB of RAM against Apple and Intel systems with 16GB of RAM, according to its test notes.)
Powering both the Ryzen AI 300 and Ryzen 9000 chips is AMD’s Zen 5 architecture, a “major update” for the company, Senior Processor Technical Marketing Manager Donny Woligrosky said at a media briefing. It claims to offer better branch prediction (helps with accuracy and latency), higher overall throughput and up to twice better instruction bandwidth. For regular users, this means you can expect Zen 5 systems to be a bit more responsive and better equipped to handle large data loads.
While AMD’s new AI chips are the star of the show, the company isn’t leaving desktop users behind. The new Ryzen 9000 chips go head-to-head with the 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X, which is close to the dream of 6GHz with a clock speed of 5.7GHz. It’s a power-hungry beast, requiring 170 watts, so more reasonable hardware pros might opt for the Ryzen 9 9900X (120W TDP) or the octa-core Ryzen 7 9700X (65W). These new chips do not include NPUs Ryzen 8000G, but at this point gamers and demanding PC users can make do with the raw computing power of desktop CPUs and powerful GPUs. (NVIDIA is also working on it boost some AI features with RTX GPUs(this avoids the need for a standalone NPU.)
Along with these new desktop chips, AMD is also introducing the X870E and X870 AM5 chipsets. These include the next-generation PC features you’ve come to expect, including PCIe 5, USB4, WiFi 7 and DDR5. For older AM4 hardware, AMD also introduced the 16-core Ryzen 9 5900XT and the eight-core Ryzen 7 5800XT, which can reach speeds of up to 4.8 GHz.
We’re still waiting on pricing details for AMD’s new hardware, but the company says we’ll 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+.
