AMD recently held their first ever virtual press event to launch their slate of 7nm technology. In the James Bond-themed virtual presser, Pete Chambers, AMD’s Managing Director for APAC, opened the meeting comparing how James Bond always had the coolest toys and how AMD’s coolest toy is set to change the computing space, and well 007 fits the bill with the 7nm processors.
Pete also dubbed the latest products to be AMD’s best product portfolio ever, providing unmatched performance and solutions for consumers and big businesses alike. Industry-leading datacenters now harness the power of the AMD Epyc processors with up to 64 cores but at a lower total cost of ownership by up to 50%. The unmatched price/performance leadership of AMD Radeon’s RDNA architecture are set to power the next generation of gaming consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X without pushing the price upwards. And don’t forget the 7nm RX5000 series of GPUs powering the mainstream PC gaming space, another value product that gives you more bang for your buck. He also highlighted the partnership with Samsung to introduce the GPU technology of AMD to the mobile market, giving the mobile gaming space a bright future to look forward to.
The Threadripper suite of products that powers the high-end workstations of content creators offers up to 64-cores of raw power, revolutionizing and streamlining their workflows. Pete gave the example of Dan Akers of Academy Award-winning Blur Studios, where they used Threadripper-powered machines to render a portion of Terminator: Dark Fate that would normally take 5 minutes to process, took them 5 seconds.
AMD is the only company to offer up to 16 cores in a mainstream desktop solution.
Pete said.
Shifting over to the mobile space, Paige Shi, Head of APAC Consumer Business, gave a rundown of AMD’s history of mobile innovation. Back in 2011, AMD launched the first APU in the market, combining the CPU and the GPU chip in 1 die. Fast-forward to today, AMD releases their first x86 7nm mobile SoC. AMD’s drive to build the best laptop processor gave rise to the Zen 2 architecture where AMD was able to achieve 15% higher instructions per clock and higher clock frequency. The 7nm technology helped to double the transistor density of the chips and give them 20% lower SOC power and double the performance per watt it produces, stretching a laptop’s very limited battery life. This innovation also gave AMD its leadership in the mobile space, from graphics performance to multi-threaded performance.
With the promising 7nm architecture, AMD is expecting to launch over 100 Ryzen mobile designs with OEMs in 2020. It’s exciting to know that AMD also projects 2x gaming notebook launches year-on-year. Who doesn’t like choices? Bringing the cost of gaming laptops down is surely a win for the consumers.
Paige talked about the 3 brands of the AMD Ryzen Mobile 4000 Series. Starting with the U-Series, these are Ryzen processors that has the letter U at the end of their models, i.e., AMD Ryzen 5-4600U, AMD Ryzen 7-4800U. The U-Series is aimed to consumers who need the ultimate portability of ultrathin laptops. The U-Series ranges from the entry-level Ryzen 3 which offers 4 cores and 4 threads up to the high-end AMD Ryzen 7 4800U which has 8 cores and 16 threads. You should expect to see more ultrathin laptops that packs a mean punch in terms of processing power.
The H-Series processors are AMD’s mainstream CPUs that cater to gamers and content creators. With the latest trends in PC gaming, cloud computing, artificial intelligence or virtual reality, AMD’s H-Series processors are more than enough to power these technologies without breaking a sweat. The H-Series goes up to as many as 8 cores and 16 threads with the AMD Ryzen 9 4900H. Just to let you know, we’re still talking about the mobile space. These processors are laptop CPUs that perform equally or even better than their desktop counterparts.
The Pro series is catered to professional users who needs security features more than anybody in the market.
Following Paige, Frank Azor, AMD’s Chief Gaming Architect, took the stage with AMD’s AAA Solutions & Gaming Marketing. Frank goes into details about how AMD aims to deliver the best solutions to gamers and content creators this 2020. Much like Paige’s presentation, Frank dives deep how AMD was able to achieve desktop-caliber performance with AMD’s Ryzen 4000 H-Series Mobile processors. Benchmarks show that they even beat the competition’s flagship processors at a markedly lower cost. Frank also detailed the new AMD Radeon RX 5000M Series mobile GPUs. These mobile 7nm GPUs bring the desktop gaming experience to you anywhere. And in case you missed it, he recapped the AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition, which comes with a new UI upgrade. This software gives users a wide array of features that can help you with your gaming journey. You can access all your installed games in your machine in 1 app, regardless of which game launcher they come with. It can also help non-power users update their graphics card drivers if necessary. And another interesting feature is it can stream your AAA games to your mobile phone or tablet, for an even more portable gaming experience.
AMD’s AAA Solutions aims to help users build an ecosystem of harmonious products that maximizes your productivity. An ecosystem where everything just works and bolsters each component’s performance. AMD is the only company that has high performance CPUs, high performance GPUs and the technologies and software that gamers and content creators alike got used to over the years. This ecosystem of components unlocks an advantage unlike any other as all of them are developed and tested under one roof. One such feature to take advantage of this capability is AMD’s SmartShift feature. SmartShift allows the CPU and GPU to communicate with one another efficiently to provide optimum performance depending on your workload. If you’re gaming, for example, your machine knows which component needs power and completely shifts attention to that component for maximum performance without compromising overall performance. Same goes with CPU-intensive applications that need more of a CPU boost than a GPU’s. This technology has shown to improve performance by up to 14% against a similar-specced laptop of the previous generation, with no additional cost. You just need to check if the laptop you’re going to buy is equipped with the latest AMD Ryzen 4000 Series mobile processors. One such machine is the Dell G5 15, one of the first notebooks to feature the SmartShift technology.
Plus there’s plenty of new solutions coming out this year that features all of the said AMD advantage, so keep on the lookout for upcoming products. A few has already been announced like the ASUS G14/G15 that features the Ryzen 4000 H-Series processors fitted with NVIDIA GPUs that take advantage of AMD’s FreeSync technology; the MSI Bravo with the Ryzen 4000 H-Series and Radeon RX 5500M GPU, also with FreeSync technology; Lenovo’s Legion 5 with the Ryzen 4000 H-Series paired with NVIDIA GPUs; and like previously mentioned, the Dell G5 15 SE that features AMD Ryzen CPU and GPU with AMD FreeSync plus the latest AMD SmartShift technology.
AMD also partnered with renowned OEM companies to deliver an all-in-one solution to end users featuring widely-used applications and use cases. The virtual launch hosted presenters from 8 tech companies and shared to the audience what they bring to the market.
First up is Microsoft with their Director of Windows Consumer Category in Asia, Marivi Abueg. She presented where Microsoft’s partnership with AMD has been, future plans, and current solutions they offer to consumers and businesses. The past year’s partnership with AMD saw Microsoft’s fastest growth in the usage of the Windows operating system with nearly 1 billion Windows devices active monthly. AMD also helped in increasing ASPs and customer satisfaction across markets. Strong partnerships across AMD, Microsoft and partner brands helped to grow the reach of Windows by providing budget-friendly solutions, tapping a market that don’t even have computers to begin with.
Microsoft also saw the monumental shift to PCs, especially in these trying times where everyone is trying their best to stay at home. They saw an increased usage demand driving the need for a PC for each family member. There was also an increased PC usage as people turned to their devices to continue working from home, learning from home, to connect to loved ones and friends, play and stream for entertainment and even shopping and managing the family’s needs online.
The participants in the virtual launch each shared their latest devices equipped with the latest AMD Ryzen 4000 mobile CPUs and Ryzen 5000 mobile GPUs. The participants were James Liu, Acer’s Asia Pacific BM Director; Peter Chang, Asus’s Deputy General Manager of APAC; Alen Jose, Director of Marketing APJ, from Dell; Yep Yin Wee, Director of Consumer Personal Systems of Greater Asia in HP Inc.; Clifford Chong and Gregory Beh, Lenovo’s Asia Pacific Consumer Category Managers and Dennis Chang, MSI’s APJ Sales Manager. A myriad of extraordinary products created by world leaders in computing solutions powered by AMD Ryzen 4000 Series. I won’t be discussing the lengthy presentations by the participants, just stay tuned to our blog as we get updates on each company’s offerings.
After an hour of informative and exciting presentations, Pete Chambers offered closing remarks and how he’s excited with the direction of AMD. We’re also definitely excited to try the products with AMD’s latest Ryzen 4000 CPUs and do watch out for that as we have some in the pipeline, exclusively for you, our readers.