Why hasn't AMD announced desktop Renoir APUs?

TheRookie

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Why hasn't AMD announced desktop Renoir APUs?

AMD could simple release the same Renoir mobile processors on the desktop.

For example:

Ryzen 5 4600H --> Ryzen 5 3600G

Ryzen 7 4800H --> Ryzen 7 3700G/3800G
 
Why hasn't AMD announced desktop Renoir APUs?

AMD could simple release the same Renoir mobile processors on the desktop.

For example:

Ryzen 5 4600H --> Ryzen 5 3600G

Ryzen 7 4800H --> Ryzen 7 3700G/3800G
They're not ready to release them yet. They are still milking the crap out of 12nm Silicon Zen+ 3400G models and under.

I am on board for an immediate purchase of the 7nm APUs, I want one because it will be a processor that is almost on ST parity with Intel (with no security holes to slow it down) and the VEGA should be "56% faster" if Lisa Su is to be believed. I did notice the laptop versions dropped in the amount of EU's they have onboard 8 and under. Wondering if the desktop versions will be 8+. \

No Navi this gen, on die, kinda blows.

I would expect that these chips will be released sometime after the laptops enabled with them drop in Q1. Either just after or in Q2 with the Launch of the Desktop 7nm+ Chips.
 
They're not ready to release them yet. They are still milking the crap out of 12nm Silicon Zen+ 3400G models and under.

Picasso top out at 4 cores.

Renoir with 6- and 8- cores would address a different price points.

I am on board for an immediate purchase of the 7nm APUs, I want one because it will be a processor that is almost on ST parity with Intel (with no security holes to slow it down) and the VEGA should be "56% faster" if Lisa Su is to be believed. I did notice the laptop versions dropped in the amount of EU's they have onboard 8 and under. Wondering if the desktop versions will be 8+. \

Desktop Renoir would use the same die mobile Renoir, so it wouldn't have more CUs.

AMD was able to get more performance out of fewer CUs by running the iGPU at much higher clock speeds.
 
Picasso top out at 4 cores.

Renoir with 6- and 8- cores would address a different price points.



Desktop Renoir would use the same die mobile Renoir, so it wouldn't have more CUs.

AMD was able to get more performance out of fewer CUs by running the iGPU at much higher clock speeds.
So it's going to be a huge letdown, essentially. The gains will be on the CPU front and the GPU will be a yawn festival. Almost no damn point in me migrating from a 3400G if that's the case regardless of the CPU's higher performance. I was hoping for an on-board GPU that edges closer to a discrete part. At the rate their development is going on that end, I damn near expect Intel to release an integrated, on-die, GPU at this level first.
 
They may go chiplet for the desktop apus and keep renoir mobile/ embedded only.
 
So it's going to be a huge letdown, essentially. The gains will be on the CPU front and the GPU will be a yawn festival. Almost no damn point in me migrating from a 3400G if that's the case regardless of the CPU's higher performance. I was hoping for an on-board GPU that edges closer to a discrete part. At the rate their development is going on that end, I damn near expect Intel to release an integrated, on-die, GPU at this level first.

APUs are bandwidth limited.

There isn't much more AMD can do until we get much faster memory.

DDR4 isn't going to cut it
 
APUs are bandwidth limited.

There isn't much more AMD can do until we get much faster memory.

DDR4 isn't going to cut it
Sure that's part of the issue. However, they could very well release an onboard solution that comes damn close to a discrete, 128 Bit Solution, if they wanted to. IMO.
 
Sure that's part of the issue. However, they could very well release an onboard solution that comes damn close to a discrete, 128 Bit Solution, if they wanted to. IMO.

If AMD adds HBM2 to the die, it would significantly increase the price of the APUs, and there isn't much appetite for very pricy APUs.
 
If AMD adds HBM2 to the die, it would significantly increase the price of the APUs, and there isn't much appetite for very pricy APUs.
I'm not talking about HBM2 being added to the die. I'm talking about adding a more powerful GPU to the die, something that stresses the shit out of the memory bandwidth that is available. Honestly, the 2/3 series Zen APUs officially cap out at 2933 Mhz on Ram support. I have gotten my 3400G to run with 3200 Mhz RAM. There's nothing preventing AMD from tweaking the DIE on their APU lineup to add support for the fastest damn RAM they can allow, just cap the Infinity Fabric at a certain speed and let the APU have full access to the rest.

I know it's not that simple, but it should be. If we can tie higher speeds to Zen 2 chips on a 1:1 basis on Infinity Fabric then this should be easy enough to do.

A better optimized GPU could do more with less, I have seen it before. In older boards like custom 9800 GT cards RAM speeds and RAM on card was limited to control the power draw, and yet these cards still kicked the shit out of APU performance. The cards were running what? 512 MB of DDR3 and I could (and still can) run (even on the hacked down 128 Bit versions in the 200 series lineup...240?) 1080P at 60 FPS with FXAA on. FYI - I was running Mass Effect 3, all graphical options on with FXAA. Ran Just fine.
 
I think it's at least possible AMD could release an APU that's very different than the mobile chips. I.e. One CPU chiplet and one GPU chiplet, as opposed to the monolithic mobile die.
 
I think it's at least possible AMD could release an APU that's very different than the mobile chips. I.e. One CPU chiplet and one GPU chiplet, as opposed to the monolithic mobile die.
They already said for now latency is the issue there but would expect hbm to alleviate bandwidth issues looking forward.
 
They already said for now latency is the issue there but would expect hbm to alleviate bandwidth issues looking forward.
I will defer to your explanation. Sometimes I go a little too far based on what I feel and think shit should operate like ;).

(y)
 
I will defer to your explanation. Sometimes I go a little too far based on what I feel and think shit should operate like ;).

(y)

Horses mouth, might find it interesting :)
Should have written my last post more clearly (steam controller laziness) - I would expect HBM looking forward.
They already gave it a crack with Kaby Lake G.
 

Horses mouth, might find it interesting :)
Should have written my last post more clearly (steam controller laziness) - I would expect HBM looking forward.
They already gave it a crack with Kaby Lake G.

TY Buddy!
 
There is no huge interest in making an 8 core APU. If you need Office GPU, you don't need more than a 4 core CPU. However, you may think of having an 8 core and eventuelly only web and office GPu at first or when you drop that big GPU for games, still have a little GPU for a secondary PC in 3/4 years. Fact is, on desktop, there is nothing that prevents you to put a better than APU and iGPU Low profile graphics card on a CPu without integrated GPU and whatever GPU you put on it there is no use for an integrated GPU that will only bring more trouble and less performance for the CPU. There is been ramors of a CPU based on a 8 coree chiplet the IO chplet + the second chiplet being a GPU. This is possible if the chiplet GPU integrates lots of cache, some kind of primary Vram. Intel does than on the iGPU pro line. If that cache is half the size of the chiplet which is very small, this is going to let very little place to the GPu and the global performance won't be great, like third of that of a RX 5500 at best. And the cost of production of such an APU with 8 cores would that of a 3950X. It doesn't make sens to produce such a chip for the Dektop market. Even on mobile it's very arguable in spite of using an additionnal mobile GPU. However gaming plateforms will use those kind of APU with full GPU chiplet, even bigger than CPU, like double, close to 200mm² chiplet on 7nm+ without cache, because they will use GDDR6 for the whole system, including CPU. Those gaming boxes will have GPU performance close to RX 5700XT + Ray tracing.

So the market for Desktop APU is for the cheap builds : 4 cores + 11 Vega units for cheap Desktops, or 2 cores + 3 units for very cheap (even laptops) and NUCs. Remember the 2c/4t i3 is what you got some 3 years ago for quite some money, so there is no reason it doesn't work for quite many tasks.
 
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There is no huge interest in making an 8 core APU. If you need Office GPU, you don't need more than a 4 core CPU. However, you may think of having an 8 core and eventuelly only web and office GPu at first or when you drop that big GPU for games, still have a little GPU for a secondary PC in 3/4 years. Fact is, on desktop, there is nothing that prevents you to put a better than APU and iGPU Low profile graphics card on a CPu without integrated GPU and whatever GPU you put on it there is no use for an integrated GPU that will only bring more trouble and less performance for the CPU. There is been ramors of a CPU based on a 8 coree chiplet the IO chplet + the second chiplet being a GPU. This is possible if the chiplet GPU integrates lots of cache, some kind of primary Vram. Intel does than on the iGPU pro line. If that cache is half the size of the chiplet which is very small, this is going to let very little place to the GPu and the global performance won't be great, like third of that of a RX 5500 at best. And the cost of production of such an APU with 8 cores would that of a 3950X. It doesn't make sens to produce such a chip for the Dektop market. Even on mobile it's very arguable in spite of using an additionnal mobile GPU. However gaming plateforms will use those kind of APU with full GPU chiplet, even bigger than CPU, like double, close to 200mm² chiplet on 7nm+ without cache, because they will use GDDR6 for the whole system, including CPU. Those gaming boxes will have GPU performance close to RX 5700XT + Ray tracing.

So the market for Desktop APU is for the cheap builds : 4 cores + 11 Vega units for cheap Desktops, or 2 cores + 3 units for very cheap (even laptops) and NUCs. Remember the 2c/4t i3 is what you got some 3 years ago for quite some money, so there is no reason it doesn't work for quite many tasks.

A lot of SFF's only have room for a low profile or no gpu - in which case a built in vega8 would be good for cad, video editing or the like. I have an asrock a300w that I'd drop an an 8 core + vega8 in if it were available. The best low profile card without needing external power available is a gtx 1650, which while decently powerful adds $180 to the cost of a build. If a 4800G was $350, that'd be a lot more affordable than a 3700X basic dgpu, even if you had room for one. I could see a lot of people grabbing a 6 core version, maybe 8 core wouldn't be as popular depending on price, but quad cores are showing their age in productivity if you do anything other than office/internet.
 
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A lot of SFF's only have room for a low profile or no gpu - in which case a built in vega8 would be good for cad, video editing or the like. I have an asrock a300w that I'd drop an an 8 core + vega8 in if it were available. The best low profile card without needing external power available is a gtx 1650, which while decently powerful adds $180 to the cost of a build. If a 4800G was $350, that'd be a lot more affordable than a 3700X basic dgpu, even if you had room for one. I could see a lot of people grabbing a 6 core version, maybe 8 core wouldn't be as popular depending on price, but quad cores are showing their age in productivity if you do anything other than office/internet.
They'll come this summer. However for your use in a sff case, why don't you get a GTX 1650 LP + a ryzen 2600 for instance. Lower price for better performance where you need them. Vega 8 is kind of still and APU, not a real performance GPU, okay for laptops, okay for some standard web surfing, viewing you emails, and watching FHD video or playing 15 year old games and typing text. 8 cores and even 6 cores won't really matter but the GPU will.
 
They'll come this summer. However for your use in a sff case, why don't you get a GTX 1650 LP + a ryzen 2600 for instance. Lower price for better performance where you need them. Vega 8 is kind of still and APU, not a real performance GPU, okay for laptops, okay for some standard web surfing, viewing you emails, and watching FHD video or playing 15 year old games and typing text. 8 cores and even 6 cores won't really matter but the GPU will.

Well, I do have one - 1650 lp and a 3700x. I also have an a300w which has no room for a GPU at all. Currently it's got a 2200G but I'd drop a 65W 8 core plus Vega8 if they release one. But I can definitely see it being a small market, though I'd imagine they'll be selling the higher leakage renoir chips on desktop that would otherwise have to be low core mobile chips or not make the grade at all and be tossed.
 
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For now, I think AMD sells every Renoir chip they can make in a laptop. Launching 7 nm desktop APUs will just reduce the supply to the laptop market and also reduce the number of 12 nm desktop APUs they sell. A lose-lose for AMD.

AMD reportedly ordered additional 7 nm wafer starts at TSMC this year. Once 7 nm supply improves, I expect them to launch desktop APUs too (maybe around Computex?).
 
Im gung ho for a Zen 2 based APU. They are probably going to end up very powerful indeed! I heard that they may include some on chiplet HBM but that is a rumor and I can't remember the source of said rumor.
 
Well the laptop version according to reports, is faster than the I7-9700K desktop and Zen+ 2700x
 
Faster in 3D Mark Time Spy CPU.

I wonder what the potential implications would be if the hypothetical lower latencies due to being monolothic are better than the loss in cache and result in Renoir APUs being better for gaming than Matisse CPUs.
 
Faster in 3D Mark Time Spy CPU.

I wonder what the potential implications would be if the hypothetical lower latencies due to being monolothic are better than the loss in cache and result in Renoir APUs being better for gaming than Matisse CPUs.

We will see - Raven Ridge had slightly lower IPC because of 1/4 the L3 cache/core:

perfrel_cpu.png


The 1500x is clocked 100 mhz base/200 mhz turbo slower than the 2400g, but is 5% faster. You have to overclock Raven Ridge to 4GHz to make up the deficit. It looks like an 8% IPC deficit. The 2200g is also showing similar deficit over the 1200 (400 mhz faster, but barely outperforms it.)

But games is a bit closer (probably because Turbo matters more than huge L3 in games?)

perfrel_1280_720.png


Renoir is looking just as bad, as it maintains the same L3 cache/core as Raven Ridge, while doubling the number of cores.

It will be interesting to see if a monolithic memory controller can make up for having 1/4 the l3 cache of a 3800x, but I'm not expecting miracles.
 
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There is no huge interest in making an 8 core APU.

I would argue this isn't true. For the average *enthusiast* I'd say it's true, but if you want to see 8-core AMD CPUs to make it into inexpensive desktop systems, they *need* a built-in graphics card. Having to design a system around including a $20 (cost) GPU rather than being able to rely on integrated graphics is a *huge* differentiator for Intel in the desktop market. OEMs can equip systems with the i7 9700 or the i5 9400/9500/9600 and AMD simply doesn't have a competitor unless you bring a discrete GPU to the party.

As an IT guy, I *want* to see my customers buying >4 core systems because I think they'll have better overall longevity. My company has sold ~250 Lenovo M725s SFF systems equipped with a Ryzen 7 2700 in them in the last six months, and that system has been our *only* price economical option for getting better multi-core CPUs into our customer's hands at an acceptable price point, and every one of them comes with a GeForce GT 730. Swap that out for an 8-core APU and we would happily buy it.
 
Why hasn't AMD announced desktop Renoir APUs?

AMD could simple release the same Renoir mobile processors on the desktop.


IIRC they always direct the parts toward mobile and OEMs first. It was up to 6 months before you could get the 12nm APUs for aftermarket use.

One area that Intel is still winning is laptops, and laptops are most of the consumer PC market these days.

AMD looks to have a great laptop chip this time, with a great many design wins.

They should be directing the supply of 7nm APUs to laptops until they saturate that market.

When they project free supply after meeting the laptop need then you can expect them to talk about destkop.
 
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