Laptop Vendors Will Pair AMD's Cezanne (Zen 3) with High-End GPUs
takyon writes:
Vendors Finally Pair Ryzen CPUs and High-End GPUs In Laptops
AMD's Ryzen 4000 (Renoir) processors may be mobile powerhouses, but for reasons unknown, laptop vendors were reluctant to pair the Zen 2 chips with high-end graphics cards. Ryzen 5000 (Cezanne), on the other hand, appears to have won over manufacturers as there are already retailer postings of upcoming laptops (via Tum_Apisak) with options that span up to a GeForce RTX 3080.
[...] The Ryzen 9 5900HX broke its cover recently, but the Zen 3 chip's secret remains to be unraveled. It's plausible that the Ryzen 9 5900HX is just a faster variant of its H-series counterpart or that AMD may have finally unlocked the multiplier for enthusiasts to overclock the processor, like what Intel allows with its HK-series SKUs.
[...] No one has any idea of when AMD will release Ryzen 5000, but the sudden appearance of benchmark submissions and retailer listings point to an imminent launch. CES 2020 is coming up, and AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su is scheduled to deliver the keynote speech. It would be the ideal venue to announce the mobile Zen 3 chips since the desktop counterparts are already out.
"Cezanne" is the Zen 3 version of AMD's Zen 2 "Renoir" 4000-series APUs. "Lucienne" will consist of Zen 2 APUs (a Renoir refresh) confusingly given the same 5000-series naming as Cezanne.
One of the common theories behind a lack of high-end GPU options has been that AMD's Renoir limits a discrete mobile GPU to a PCIe 3.0 x8 connection (instead of x16), which can be a slight bottleneck for higher end mobile GPUs. Others believe it's just due to OEMs cheaping out on AMD systems.
Upcoming mobile GPUs (like the mobile RTX 3080 mentioned) could bring up to 16 GB of VRAM to laptops.
Related: AMD Ryzen 4000 'Renoir' APU Runs Crysis Without Any Cooling Solution
AMD Succeeds in its 25x20 Goal: 2020 "Renoir" Over 31 Times More Efficient than 2014 "Kaveri" Chips
AMD Launches Ryzen 4000G Desktop APUs: OEM-Only at First
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