Amid a plethora of desktop and laptop launches at its AMD Tech Summit keynote, the chipmaker huffed and puffed about a new Ryzen Pro CPU that takes aim at Apple?s M2 Pro but ultimately fails to impress.
The Pro series chips are based on Phoenix silicon and are optimized for machine learning and AI workloads, but they also offer high performance gaming and creative features. For example, the smart-shift ECO tech enables the processor to split graphics tasks between the iGPU and a discrete GPU to save power. The chips will also offer hardware video decoders and encoders to accelerate game loading times.
AMD is ringfencing a chunk of transistors in its Ryzen Pro chip to improve performance for artificial intelligence (AI) processing tasks. The resulting feature is called Radeon AI, and AMD says it will allow apps to run faster and more smoothly. The company provides an example of a Windows Studio feature that blurs the background, tracks eye movement and frames a user when using a laptop camera.
The company threw in a few other neat features, too, including an enhanced version of Precision Boost 2 that will expose the maximum boost frequency for two cores at all times. This means you won’t have to manually enter a BIOS option to disable the feature, and it also improves responsiveness when running multiple games or streaming via OBS at the same time.
Another interesting feature is the ability to enable PCIe 5.0 on a motherboard by default. This allows up to 32 lanes of data per controller for superfast transfer speeds. This could be a huge benefit for SSDs, as the latest Micron drives can reach 400MB/s read and write speeds with the right motherboard.
AMD also added its X-CPU tech to its Ryzen Pro lineup, which offers security and IT management features. This is similar to Intel?s vPro platform and typically adds software and hardware tweaks for performance and power efficiency. For instance, it will add support for AVX512 instructions to boost the performance of the iGPU, while enabling lower core count processors to run more applications simultaneously.
If you’re a professional or business user, you can expect to see the new PRO models in devices from Lenovo, Dell, HP and other big brands this year. Moreover, many of the challengers from Asus, Acer, MSI and Gigabyte will likely offer them in their business-oriented laptops, too.
As for the pricing, the Ryzen 7 Pro 7000 chips will start at $125. The B650E variants will support PCIe 5.0 for both the M.2 and GPU slots, while the standard B650 will limit it to 4.0. The B650E boards will also feature four display outputs over HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 HBR3 connections. The standard chips will be compatible with existing AM4 motherboards, too. The new chips are expected to launch in September, with the X670E motherboards arriving in October and the B650 boards coming in November.
