Why does the specific architecture of the core (which is a small part of the larger platform) matter to the average consumer? What matters is how it stacks up against competitors which for Intel are the Celeron/Pentiums (soon to just be 'Intel Processor'). With LDDR5 and RDNA2 graphics it is modern from a feature set perspective within its market segment.
Because it tells you what sort of single threaded performance to expect. # Cores, # Threads, # Frequency/GHz, # Arch. Now we know it all. I welcome this much needed change.
I agree with the change in naming making it clearer. I just struggle to understand why people would refer to it as 'old junk' like the architecture in isolation matters. Hence why I said what matters is how it stacks up again it's competitors like the Intel Celeron and Pentiums. Knowing it is Zen 2 makes it easy for us tech enthusiasts to estimate performance, but for the general comsumer all they care is whether it is faster than that similarly priced laptop over there rocking an Intel Celeron.
But even with a brilliant naming scheme, that question cannot be answered so easily.
Exhibit A: The 1090T Phenom II 6-core processor and it's Intel counter part.
At the time, the Intel part was ahead in single threaded workloads, very far ahead. But for mutli-threaded ones it was behind, far behind. What number do you propose to show where each belongs? As the processors aged, the Intel part fell by the wayside, so much so that I can't even recall it's number or name. But the 1090T, according to my experience and at least one review I read on newegg, continued to work like a power horse for 8+ years through till almost today. How would you categorize something with such compute longevity? Surely it was the better buy even if it operates slowly, then and today?
Now that we have iGPUs, it's even tougher to name things because you have to take into consideration the CPU AND the GPU.
That's a blast from the past for me. My first self built machine used that very Phenom. When I saw the performance that Bulldozer was offering, I was less than impressed. Part of me really misses that old thing. I sold it long ago though, and as far as I can recall, the friend who bought it off of me was quite happy with it for a few years. That was all well before Ryzen was ever a thing.
Had the 1090T myself... Sadly I wanted more single threaded performance so I ended up upgrading to the Intel 3930K. Now currently with the Ryzen 5950X.
The 1090T was a great chip for the time, was even a better chip than the first gen bulldozers in many respects.
Arguably, the 5000U naming system did make at least relative sense, even if they included different generations of core. The Lucienne "odd" numbered parts were arguably better than the next lower "even" numbered Cezanne parts in multiple ways. For example, the 5700U had 8 cores as opposed to the 6 of the 5600u, as well as having an additional Vega CU over the 5600u. In benchmarks, it wasn't far behind the 5600u in single thread situations and was near universally faster in multi-thread situations where N>6.
This new schema though, unless you've memorized the naming scheme, your SOL for being able to figure out value and performance without having to sit down and research what you're looking at.
Yeah, you see? You are confused, because that's not the full stack for 5000U series.
The 5000 series had 3 different parts in it. Lucienne, Cezanne, and Barcelo. Lucienne was a refresh of 4000U series Renoir, a Zen2 chip. Cezanne was the new Zen3 chips, but in very short supply. Barcelo was a refresh of Cezanne for 2022.
The Architecture largely tells you performance and how long the system will last. Intel did this with 10th gen laptops where it used Whisky Lake (3rd gen Skylake) in a lot of their SKUs. Lukily looks like Intel seems to have stopped this with 11th and 12th gen processors.
You can though... The 2 in the name tells you it's Zen 2 based. 7 means 2023. 1/2/3/5 means relative performance level. 2 means Zen2. 0 means 4 digits in the model number. U is broadly power range I believe
So from the name I can tell a 7120 is a Zen2 based CPU released in 2023 and is the lowest performance model in the 2023 Zen2 CPU line.
The CPU architecture is 2 gen old, but the GPU is state of the art and the manufacturing node is newer. I don't understand why - according to you - the naming should not be the 7*** series. It would have been just as inconsistent to refer to it as any other series.
If you're avoiding Pluton, make sure to avoid all Qualcomm and Apple CPUs as well, they have similar security engines. All available phones and tablets have one, along with Apple laptops. Windows PCs are just the last domino to fall.
If we're charitable and say that the quad-core models are the only ones that will be in the $400 to $700 price range, maybe the dual-cores will end up at $100 to $200 where they belong, after price cuts.
I just love the marketing showing a Ryzen 3 7320U with 4 GB of RAM. Let's pay $400 for that, lol.
Yeah price will affect greatly if this product is good or bad and I lean towards bad. $400 for the 4-core with 8 gb of ram in a small form factor would be a nice machine for traveling, surfing and office work. But I'm sure OEMs will be too greedy to offer something decent.
See how many better options we have in this price range... what reasons would anyone have to buy anything based on Medocino instead of a ryzen 5 ? In my opinion this is just a high-margin product (small and cheap die) to please the manufacturers.
If it had at least 4CU, I could call it decent/ok at least, but with 2CU that's a step backwards and a joke. Even the TG/AlderLake pentium has 48EU...
Any word on clock frequencies for the GPU and memory?
I currently have a laptop with a 3500U in it, which has 8 Vega CUs, but when on battery they clock down to a mere 200 MHz. If these 2 RDNA2 CUs clock to around a GHz or so, they might allow to keep around the same level of performance but potentially at a fraction of the power consumption, which would be quite interesting to me.
I'm actually looking forward to these chips more than the future Phoenix APUs, it'll be very interesting to see how they perform when they hit actual products. It is a bit weird that they decided to brand the top model as a Ryzen 5, though. It really seems to me that it belongs firmly in the Ryzen 3 category.
On the AC adapter, the 3500u should still be a better performer in games. On Battery, with the agressive downclocking of the iGPU on the 3500U, Mendocino may actually wind up being faster. Those 2 CUs are much more performant than the Vega CUs on a 1:1 basis, and should be able to maintain well over three times the clock speed on battery. The memory bus, while only being half the width of the 3500U, will still likely have similar performance to the one on the 3500u given the improvements that the DDR5 interface has over DDR4. Battery life should be much better per watt capacity.
I don't understand why these 7020 "Zen2, but with DDR5 and RDNA2" parts exist. Why would AMD use Zen2 here, rather than Zen3 or Zen3+? Does Zen3, 3+ have poorer yields compared to Zen2?
Because if it's battery life, I don't think I noticed any difference between Zen2/Zen3
Power management depends on each manufacturer's implementation and laptop design. There is huge variation, there are laptops based on Zen2 with higher efficiency than some based on Zen3 and vice versa.
Notebookcheck tested the same chassis with Zen2 Lucienne, and Zen3 Barcelo- and (with whatever updates AMD did for Lucienne), Zen3 had no benefit in battery life.
Soooo .. desktop Zen 4 with 2 CU isn't APU (by AMDs own words) but Mendocino with same is suddenly an APU? I thought those were just to "light up the display and help with diagnostics". Change of heart?
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shabby - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
Pathetic, naming all cpus as 7000 series, without a chart newbies can't tell these apart if they're good or old junk.Tom_Yum - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
Why does the specific architecture of the core (which is a small part of the larger platform) matter to the average consumer? What matters is how it stacks up against competitors which for Intel are the Celeron/Pentiums (soon to just be 'Intel Processor'). With LDDR5 and RDNA2 graphics it is modern from a feature set perspective within its market segment.ballsystemlord - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
Because it tells you what sort of single threaded performance to expect. # Cores, # Threads, # Frequency/GHz, # Arch.Now we know it all. I welcome this much needed change.
Tom_Yum - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
I agree with the change in naming making it clearer. I just struggle to understand why people would refer to it as 'old junk' like the architecture in isolation matters. Hence why I said what matters is how it stacks up again it's competitors like the Intel Celeron and Pentiums. Knowing it is Zen 2 makes it easy for us tech enthusiasts to estimate performance, but for the general comsumer all they care is whether it is faster than that similarly priced laptop over there rocking an Intel Celeron.ballsystemlord - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
But even with a brilliant naming scheme, that question cannot be answered so easily.Exhibit A: The 1090T Phenom II 6-core processor and it's Intel counter part.
At the time, the Intel part was ahead in single threaded workloads, very far ahead. But for mutli-threaded ones it was behind, far behind. What number do you propose to show where each belongs?
As the processors aged, the Intel part fell by the wayside, so much so that I can't even recall it's number or name. But the 1090T, according to my experience and at least one review I read on newegg, continued to work like a power horse for 8+ years through till almost today. How would you categorize something with such compute longevity? Surely it was the better buy even if it operates slowly, then and today?
Now that we have iGPUs, it's even tougher to name things because you have to take into consideration the CPU AND the GPU.
Robert Pankiw - Monday, September 26, 2022 - link
That's a blast from the past for me. My first self built machine used that very Phenom. When I saw the performance that Bulldozer was offering, I was less than impressed. Part of me really misses that old thing. I sold it long ago though, and as far as I can recall, the friend who bought it off of me was quite happy with it for a few years. That was all well before Ryzen was ever a thing.StevoLincolnite - Monday, October 3, 2022 - link
Had the 1090T myself... Sadly I wanted more single threaded performance so I ended up upgrading to the Intel 3930K.Now currently with the Ryzen 5950X.
The 1090T was a great chip for the time, was even a better chip than the first gen bulldozers in many respects.
shabby - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
You must work for marketing...meacupla - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
Do you have a short memory?AMD has a history of selling Zen2 parts right along side Zen3 parts, in the same 5000U series.
lightningz71 - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
Arguably, the 5000U naming system did make at least relative sense, even if they included different generations of core. The Lucienne "odd" numbered parts were arguably better than the next lower "even" numbered Cezanne parts in multiple ways. For example, the 5700U had 8 cores as opposed to the 6 of the 5600u, as well as having an additional Vega CU over the 5600u. In benchmarks, it wasn't far behind the 5600u in single thread situations and was near universally faster in multi-thread situations where N>6.This new schema though, unless you've memorized the naming scheme, your SOL for being able to figure out value and performance without having to sit down and research what you're looking at.
meacupla - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
Yeah, you see? You are confused, because that's not the full stack for 5000U series.The 5000 series had 3 different parts in it. Lucienne, Cezanne, and Barcelo.
Lucienne was a refresh of 4000U series Renoir, a Zen2 chip.
Cezanne was the new Zen3 chips, but in very short supply.
Barcelo was a refresh of Cezanne for 2022.
5300U 4C/8T, 6CU (Lucienne)
5400U 4C/8T, 6CU (Cezanne)
5425U 4C/8T, 6CU (Barcelo)
5500U 6C/12T, 7CU (Lucienne)
5600U 6C/12T, 7CU (Cezanne)
5600U 6C/12T, 7CU (Barcelo)
5700U 8C/16T, 8CU (Lucienne)
5800U 8C/16T, 8CU (Cezanne)
5825U 8C/16T, 8CU (Barcelo)
dotjaz - Friday, September 30, 2022 - link
And now uou don't have to remember any of the dufferent rules, just Year-Perf-Gen-Tier-TDP.Byte - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
The Architecture largely tells you performance and how long the system will last. Intel did this with 10th gen laptops where it used Whisky Lake (3rd gen Skylake) in a lot of their SKUs. Lukily looks like Intel seems to have stopped this with 11th and 12th gen processors.Samus - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
nVidia just released the GeForce GTX 1630 based on 2019 hardware so I don't see your point.Lonyo - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
You can though... The 2 in the name tells you it's Zen 2 based. 7 means 2023. 1/2/3/5 means relative performance level. 2 means Zen2. 0 means 4 digits in the model number. U is broadly power range I believeSo from the name I can tell a 7120 is a Zen2 based CPU released in 2023 and is the lowest performance model in the 2023 Zen2 CPU line.
yankeeDDL - Thursday, September 22, 2022 - link
The CPU architecture is 2 gen old, but the GPU is state of the art and the manufacturing node is newer. I don't understand why - according to you - the naming should not be the 7*** series. It would have been just as inconsistent to refer to it as any other series.ballsystemlord - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
Will these processors (unfortunately) have Pluton?nandnandnand - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
Yes, all will have Pluton.https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-athlon...
ballsystemlord - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
ThanksFlunk - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
If you're avoiding Pluton, make sure to avoid all Qualcomm and Apple CPUs as well, they have similar security engines. All available phones and tablets have one, along with Apple laptops. Windows PCs are just the last domino to fall.beginner99 - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
ELI5 why this is bad?TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
Pluton has direct network access and allows Microsoft to enforce signage on software and drivers. It's a privacy and totalitarian control nightmare.nandnandnand - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
If we're charitable and say that the quad-core models are the only ones that will be in the $400 to $700 price range, maybe the dual-cores will end up at $100 to $200 where they belong, after price cuts.I just love the marketing showing a Ryzen 3 7320U with 4 GB of RAM. Let's pay $400 for that, lol.
beginner99 - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
Yeah price will affect greatly if this product is good or bad and I lean towards bad. $400 for the 4-core with 8 gb of ram in a small form factor would be a nice machine for traveling, surfing and office work. But I'm sure OEMs will be too greedy to offer something decent.Dante Verizon - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
https://www.amazon.com/Processor-Accessories-HP-15...See how many better options we have in this price range... what reasons would anyone have to buy anything based on Medocino instead of a ryzen 5 ? In my opinion this is just a high-margin product (small and cheap die) to please the manufacturers.
If it had at least 4CU, I could call it decent/ok at least, but with 2CU that's a step backwards and a joke. Even the TG/AlderLake pentium has 48EU...
TallestJon96 - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
Is this the steam deck APU turned around for laptops?nandnandnand - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
It's similar, but it has a smaller die size from dropping 6 CUs and maybe other stuff.Now imagine paying $700 for it.
shing3232 - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
I would think this is for chromebooknandnandnand - Thursday, September 22, 2022 - link
Doesn't make it a good price. Mendocino is a chip that's smaller, cheaper, and less powerful than Van Gogh in the $400 Steam Deck.shing3232 - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
steam deck APU is 163mm,Mendocino is 100~mm.Dolda2000 - Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - link
Any word on clock frequencies for the GPU and memory?I currently have a laptop with a 3500U in it, which has 8 Vega CUs, but when on battery they clock down to a mere 200 MHz. If these 2 RDNA2 CUs clock to around a GHz or so, they might allow to keep around the same level of performance but potentially at a fraction of the power consumption, which would be quite interesting to me.
I'm actually looking forward to these chips more than the future Phoenix APUs, it'll be very interesting to see how they perform when they hit actual products. It is a bit weird that they decided to brand the top model as a Ryzen 5, though. It really seems to me that it belongs firmly in the Ryzen 3 category.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
"Any word on clock frequencies for the GPU and memory?"1900MHz for the GPU on all SKUs.
Memory is LPDDR5-5500 on a 64-bit bus.
lightningz71 - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
On the AC adapter, the 3500u should still be a better performer in games. On Battery, with the agressive downclocking of the iGPU on the 3500U, Mendocino may actually wind up being faster. Those 2 CUs are much more performant than the Vega CUs on a 1:1 basis, and should be able to maintain well over three times the clock speed on battery. The memory bus, while only being half the width of the 3500U, will still likely have similar performance to the one on the 3500u given the improvements that the DDR5 interface has over DDR4. Battery life should be much better per watt capacity.meacupla - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
I don't understand why these 7020 "Zen2, but with DDR5 and RDNA2" parts exist.Why would AMD use Zen2 here, rather than Zen3 or Zen3+?
Does Zen3, 3+ have poorer yields compared to Zen2?
Because if it's battery life, I don't think I noticed any difference between Zen2/Zen3
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
Zen 2 is smaller, and the IP was built around a 4 core CCX. So it's a relatively straightforward assembly of different IP blocks.Conversely Zen 3 is larger, and the CCX is designed for 8 cores. They'd have to design a new CCX layout just for Mendocino.
Dante Verizon - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
The difference between zen2 and zen3 in mobile apus is small. That's not the bad part, the horrible part is having only 2CU on the iGPU..TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
zen 3 was noticeably better on battery usage, where on earth are you guys reading reviews at?Dante Verizon - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
Notebookcheck.Power management depends on each manufacturer's implementation and laptop design. There is huge variation, there are laptops based on Zen2 with higher efficiency than some based on Zen3 and vice versa.
neblogai - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
Notebookcheck tested the same chassis with Zen2 Lucienne, and Zen3 Barcelo- and (with whatever updates AMD did for Lucienne), Zen3 had no benefit in battery life.krumme - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
Is this to move GF capacity untill the WSA expires?krumme - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
meh aparently its TSMC 6nm?https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-promises-more-th...
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
Correct. When AMD first announced Mendocino, they also announced it would be made on TSMC 6nm.https://www.anandtech.com/show/17400/amd-announces...
SteinFG - Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - link
Cute little chip. We need to see the dieshotsutamatamasu - Thursday, September 22, 2022 - link
Finally, Athlon got new CPU and GPU architecture.I hope desktop version will got same treatment.
nandnandnand - Thursday, September 22, 2022 - link
They should put it in desktops or mini PCs. It supports four display outputs.t.s - Sunday, September 25, 2022 - link
Seconded. Make something like intel NUC with these SoC.LuxZg - Thursday, September 22, 2022 - link
Soooo .. desktop Zen 4 with 2 CU isn't APU (by AMDs own words) but Mendocino with same is suddenly an APU? I thought those were just to "light up the display and help with diagnostics". Change of heart?nandnandnand - Thursday, September 22, 2022 - link
This isn't really a serious issue, even if they are identical. It's all marketing.But what you're seeing with Mendocino is the equivalent of cheap Vega 3 mobile APUs.
m3m3 - Saturday, September 24, 2022 - link
Weird to name it after Intel's CPU https://www.pctechguide.com/celeron-cpus/celeron-m...