AMD's CES announcements include a tease about next-gen graphics cards, a new flagship desktop CPU, and a modest refresh of its processors for handheld gaming PCs. But the company's largest announcement, by volume, is about laptop processors.
Today the company is expanding the Ryzen AI 300 lineup with a batch of updated high-end chips with up to 16 CPU cores and some midrange options for cheaper Copilot+ PCs. AMD has repackaged some of its high-end desktop chips for gaming laptops, including the first Ryzen laptop CPU with 3D V-Cache enabled. And there's also a new-in-name-only Ryzen 200 series, another repackaging of familiar silicon to address lower-budget laptops.
Ryzen AI 300 is back, along with high-end Max and Max+ versions
Ryzen AI is back, with Max and Max+ versions that include huge integrated GPUs.
Credit:
AMD
We came away largely impressed by the initial Ryzen AI 300 processors in August 2024, and new processors being announced today expand the lineup upward and downward.
AMD's batch of CES announcements this year includes just two new products for desktop PC users: the new Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D. Both will be available at some point in the first quarter of 2025.
Both processors include additional CPU cores compared to the 9800X3D that launched in November. The 9900X3D includes 12 Zen 5 CPU cores with a maximum clock speed of 5.5 GHz, and the 9950X3D includes 16 cores with a maximum clock speed of 5.7 GHz. Both include 64MB of extra L3 cache compared to the regular 9900X and 9950X, for a total cache of 144MB and 140MB, respectively; games in particular tend to benefit disproportionately from this extra cache memory.
But the 9950X3D and 9900X3D aren't being targeted at people who build PCs primarily to game—the company says their game performance is usually within 1 percent of the 9800X3D. These processors are for people who want peak game performance when they're playing something but also need lots of CPU cores for chewing on CPU-heavy workloads during the workday.
Intel's Core Ultra 200 series is currently bifurcated between two architectures: Lunar Lake, which powers the Core Ultra 200V series of laptop chips; and Arrow Lake, which is included in the Core Ultra 200S desktop processors. Arrow Lake processors can include many more CPU cores, but only Lunar Lake uses Intel's latest GPU architecture and a neural processing unit (NPU) fast enough for Microsoft's Copilot+ functionality.
Intel is rounding out the rest of the Core Ultra 200 family today at CES, and the most important thing to know is that it's Arrow Lake, and not Lunar Lake, that is powering all of these new processors (though with a major caveat for 200U series chips, more on that in a bit).
This means that none of them are fast enough to earn the Copilot+ label or use upcoming features like Windows Recall, and none of them will have integrated graphics that are as good as the Core Ultra 200V. But it will make them a better fit for gaming laptops and other kinds of systems that prioritize CPU performance or include an external graphics card, as well as less-expensive ultraportable laptops.
Fresh off of its worst year since going public in 1971, Intel is announcing new chips at CES 2025 that it hopes will turn its fortunes around. The product announcement is Intel’s largest since the company’s board of directors forced out CEO Pat Gelsinger. That’s not the only reason stakes are high. Intel’s 13th- and […]
Intel's co-CEOs discussed splitting the firm's manufacturing and products businesses Thursday.
A separation could address Intel's poor financial performance. It also has political implications.
Intel Foundry is forming a separate operational board in the meantime, executives said.
Intel's new co-CEOs said the company is creating more separation between its manufacturing and products businesses and the possibility of a formal split is still in play.
When asked if separating the two units was a possibility and if the success of the company's crucial, new "18A" process could influence the decision, CFO David Zinsner and CEO of Intel Products Michelle Johnston Holthaus, now interim co-CEOs, said preliminary moves are in progress.
"We really do already run the businesses fairly independently," Holthaus said at a Barclays tech conference Thursday. She added that severing the connection entirely does not make sense in her view, "but, you know, someone will decide that," she said.
"As far as does it ever fully separate? I think that's an open question for another day," Zinsner said.
Already in motion
Though the co-CEOs made it clear a final decision on a potential break-up has not been made, Zinsner outlined a series of moves already in progress that could make a split easier.
"We already run the businesses separately, but we are going down the path of creating a subsidiary for Intel Foundry as part of the overall Intel company," Zinsner said.
In addition, the company is forming a separate operational board for Intel Foundry and separating the operations and inventory management software for the two sides of the business.
Until a permanent CEO is appointed by the board, the co-CEOs will manage most areas of the company together, but Zinsner alone will manage the Foundry business.The foundry aims to build a contract manufacturing business for other chip designers. Due to the sensitive, competitive intellectual property coming from clients into that business, separation is key.
"Obviously, they want firewalls. They want to protect their IPs, their product road maps, and so forth. So I will deal with that part of the foundry to separate that from the Intel Products business." Zinsner said.
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Ryzen AI is back, with Max and Max+ versions that include huge integrated GPUs.
Credit:
AMD
