What but happened? AMD's CES 2022 event has just wrapped up and we've got all the information for you lot, condensed into a nice, neat package. Here's a epitomize of what was announced and our thoughts on those announcements.

Permit's kick this off with a look at AMD's desktop announcements and if yous're a CPU enthusiast then the big one for yous will be the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the first Zen CPU from AMD to use V-Cache 3D stacking technology.

Ryzen 7 5800X3D: AMD'southward new top gaming CPU

V-Cache was previewed at Computex in 2022, and information technology works past stacking a cache die on top of the existing 7nm Zen three chiplet to significantly increase the amount of L3 cache. If we zoom into this rendered image of the 5800X3D, you can see the area in the heart where this extra silicon is layered on the existing CPU, with the CPU cores at the edges.

With Five-Cache, the 5800X3D goes from 32MB of L3 cache, to a total of 96MB – the original 32MB on the Zen 3 chiplet plus 64MB of 5-Enshroud. The rest of the CPU remains substantially identical to the 5800X – information technology's an eight cadre, 16 thread design, information technology'south an AM4 chip that works on 400 and 500 serial motherboards, and it has a 105W TDP. However, clock speeds are slightly lower than the regular 5800X, the base of operations has dropped from three.8 to 3.4 GHz, and the boost from 4.7 to iv.5 GHz. I doubtable this is a combination of needing to continue the extra cache within the same ability envelope, and limitations on how fast yous can clock the 5-Cache component.

At this stage, AMD are only maxim the 5800X3D volition exist available in the leap and no pricing has been announced. Information technology's also the just consumer V-Cache scrap that volition be released at that fourth dimension. We asked AMD whether they'd be bringing it to more than CPUs but they said this is the only one – for now.

That kind of makes sense because the major benefit to 5-Cache in a consumer CPU is gaming functioning. Our own testing has shown repeatedly that an increase to cache capacity can noticeably boost gaming performance, and that's what AMD is claiming every bit well, with a 15% average proceeds over the Ryzen 9 5900X, and slightly college performance than Intel's Cadre i9-12900K, enough for AMD to claim the fastest gaming processor crown in their eyes. These are just first party benchmarks though, and so we'll take to verify whether any of this is true and how much crimson picking is going on here.

Correct now, the 5900X and 5950X don't make a ton of sense for gamers, as performance isn't whatsoever higher than the 5800X for gaming workloads. Launching the showtime V-Cache office every bit a boosted 5800X is probably the sweetness spot for a premium gaming CPU.

The roadmap to Zen 4

Also on the CPU side, AMD teased upcoming products scheduled for release later this year.

Zen 4 will be coming to desktop platforms in the second half of 2022, using 5nm process engineering. AMD confirmed the CPU has a different visual blueprint every bit well, featuring what appears to exist a larger heatspreader with different cutouts and quite an unusual design compared to the cleaner heatspreaders we've seen on Ryzen so far.

Alongside Zen iv volition exist a new socket, unsurprisingly called socket AM5 which moves from a PGA to LGA layout, LGA 1718 to be specific. It will be uniform with existing AM4 CPU coolers, merely provide substantial I/O improvements, including DDR5 and PCIe v.0, giving AMD feature parity with Intel'due south current line-up.

Hopefully by the time AM5 is released, DDR5 will exist more available and more affordable (AMD gave no indication if DDR4 will be supported).

As both Zen four and AM5 are expected much later in 2022, details were light, but everything appears to be on rails for a launch this year.

New Upkeep Radeon RX 6500 XT

Moving into desktop graphics, AMD appear the Radeon RX 6500 XT every bit a new mainstream choice for gamers... if you tin can actually purchase ane, of course, which these days is non a given. This compact GPU features xvi compute units, sixteen MB of infinity cache, and a 2.6 GHz game clock, so information technology'south essentially one-half of a Radeon RX 6600 XT. AMD didn't reveal the retention subsystem specs, probably because information technology's expected to be but 4GB of GDDR6 on a weak 64-bit bus.

AMD's comparison points for the 6500 XT are the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 and the Radeon RX 570. AMD is saying performance should exist roughly 30 to 40 percent higher than the GTX 1650, and less of a gap to the RX 570, merely still a off-white bit faster at 1080p. These numbers should place information technology around the level of an RX 580 or GTX 1650 Super. So we'll see how that pans out in the next few weeks.

The 6500 XT will be available on January 19th at a $200 MSRP, which if we go on past GPU release trends is very likely to be a fake MSRP. Nosotros'll exist actually surprised if this price is maintained beyond the offset batch of cards. AMD told u.s.a. that availability is obviously a claiming, but should be similar to the 6600 series, which had reasonable stock.

The big question mark here is real pricing, and for that there's a few reference points we tin await at. Currently on the scalper market, the RX 6600 and RX 6600 XT are sitting at 75% inflation over the MSRP, the RX 6600 is $580 or so compared to its $330 MSRP. So nosotros likewise have AMD's comparison points, the GTX 1650 is a $270 used GPU (up from $150 at launch), and the RX 570 4GB used goes for $230 (upwards from $170) – noting this new GPU is supposed to exist faster. It's besides less likely to entreatment to miners with its probable 4GB of VRAM and limited memory bandwidth. My estimation is that the card will go for ~$300 in the current market.

The MSRP is also pretty underwhelming all things considered, and has clearly been pushed up due to insane GPU demand. This bill of fare is probably going to be RX 580 level in functioning, and that GPU launched in early 2022 for $200 in its 4GB configuration. Nearly 5 years after and it's looking like there's still very little movement in cost to performance in the mainstream, fifty-fifty without factoring in AIBs, distributors and scalpers inflating the price over again in the real GPU market. It's unclear whether something similar this would attract the usual mainstream buyer who already has a GPU at this level of functioning, given the affluence of GTX 1060s and RX 580s in systems today.

The 6500 XT with but 16 compute units looks more similar an RX 560 replacement, which was a $100 GPU back in 2022 (used cards can exist constitute for near $150 today). At most, a $150 MSRP would experience appropriate if still high. But these days GPUs sell for well above what they "should" be priced at, and if the real cost ends up being $250 or less, it will probable be better value than what y'all can actually buy correct now.

Radeon Super Resolution: What is it?

Moving on, AMD announced Radeon Super Resolution, which is a driver-based implementation of FidelityFX Super Resolution that can exist applied to any game. If y'all saw my recent video looking at Nvidia'due south alternative feature, Nvidia Image Scaling, you know what to expect equally they're both basically doing the same affair.

RSR is unlikely to be as effective as FSR, equally it will upscale the entire game including the UI, which does reduce visual quality compared to FSR every bit we saw with Nvidia's NIS. Merely it is dainty to have feature parity between GPU vendors, which we hoped would happen. RSR volition be included as part of AMD's Q1 2022 software release.

AMD Ryzen 6000 series for mobile: All-new hardware

AMD also spent a considerable portion of the upshot talking about new mobile products, headlined past the Ryzen 6000 series for mobile. This is a major overhaul of their APU pattern, bringing with it an enhanced "Zen three+" CPU cadre, TSMC 6nm procedure technology, and RDNA2 graphics along with big changes to their platform.

The Zen 3+ cadre is designed for efficiency. It's essentially the Zen 3 design that we all know, enhanced with new power features and ameliorate power management, along with performance per watt gains brought from the shift to 6nm. Given the mobile focus, nosotros're unlikely to see Zen 3+ come to the desktop, unless this exact sort of APU design is released as a socketed processor.

But the CPU cores are not the stars of the show. That goes to the new RDNA2 GPU design, which features up to 12 compute units. This is the starting time always APU to back up ray tracing, so yep, your ultrathin laptop design using a U-serial APU will exist able to run ray traced games (probably at a handful of FPS).

Moving to RDNA2 is a huge overhaul compared to the Vega design in the 5000 series, it includes more cache, more than return backends, a higher frequency, and thanks to other platform features, more memory bandwidth too.

Basically everything in the platform is brand new and overhauled. DDR5 and LPDDR5 are supported, massively improving the available memory bandwidth which is key for feeding the RDNA2 GPU. AMD has finally moved up to PCIe 4.0, with 16 lanes dissever amongst the GPU, storage and other devices (previous APUs simply had PCIe 3.0). USB4 is included, every bit is support for Wi-Fi 6E.

And in a surprise, these new APUs are DisplayPort 2 ready, also every bit supporting real HDMI 2.one. The media engine has been significantly overhauled too to improve performance and add together in features like AV1 hardware decoding. All in all, this is a massive upgrade to all aspects of AMD'due south mobile platform which did experience a bit outdated with Ryzen 5000 mobile.

DDR5 and hitting 5GHz

About memory back up... our agreement speaking to OEMs about upcoming laptop designs is that Ryzen 6000 APUs only back up DDR5. However, this isn't expected to significantly increase laptop pricing, as we've been told DDR5 supply to OEMs is significantly better than at retail, and pricing is only slightly higher than DDR4. Plus, it looks like most OEMs volition be using some form of DDR5 for both new AMD and Intel laptops.

Just there's more, as Ryzen Mobile 6000 will be the first Ryzen CPU to hit 5 GHz – that's the listed heave frequency of the Ryzen 9 6980HX. The 5980HX topped out at 4.8 GHz so information technology is merely a 4% increase but information technology'southward yet one of those key milestones for a CPU architecture.

Across the rest of the line-upwardly, boost frequencies are higher, too – the 6600H gets 4.5 GHz at present versus 4.2 GHz with the 5600H – while base clocks are roughly the same for the H parts. But nosotros exercise get a hint of the improved efficiency here with AMD'due south HS-series APUs for 35W class systems, the base clocks have risen past up to x percent which should deliver greater performance. The cache system remains untouched at 16MB of L3 plus 4MB of L2 in the full viii core parts.

Of class, at that place's as well new ultrathin U-series processors with a TDP range of 15-28W. Aslope some refreshed 5000 series parts, there are 2 new U-series SKUs, the best of which is the Ryzen 7 6800U that now tops out at 4.7 GHz (upward from 4.4 GHz with the 5800U) and gives us the total 12 compute unit RDNA2 GPU. That should be a real GPU beast in a portable organization. The six-cadre designs in both the H and U series (the 6600H, 6600HS and 6600U) all feature cut down GPUs with just half-dozen compute units and a lower 1.9 GHz clock speed, but it's good to run across all of the 8 core models getting the full 12 CUs at either 2.2 or ii.4 GHz.

To become with a large overhaul of their offering, AMD are making some large and bold functioning claims.

In the U-series, for example, AMD expects 1080p gaming functioning to double with the 6800U versus 5800U in a 28W power envelope. Alongside this nosotros should expect massive gains in whatever awarding that uses GPU acceleration or media encoding, including Adobe Premiere Pro and Blender. AMD expects the 6800U to hands beat Intel'due south Core i7-1165G7 and Nvidia's MX450 in gaming, although both of these parts will be updated in 2022 to newer designs. And with FSR enabled, AMD is touting roughly sixty FPS at 1080p in major titles like Far Weep 6 and Deathloop on the 6800U, which is impressive fifty-fifty if visual quality is reduced.

CPU functioning wasn't forgotten, and AMD is listing 10% higher single-thread and up to thirty% higher multi-thread performance for the 6800U vs 5800U at 28W in a couple of applications. Of course, nosotros'll take to appraise these performance claims ourselves, the usual gain of salt applies here.

But also with all the power management enhancements, AMD are expecting some designs to offer up to 24 hours of video playback on battery, with lower ability consumption for that task along with others like web browsing in Chrome. Unfortunately though, we didn't get whatsoever expected performance for the H-serial APUs, so we'll have to discover for ourselves how they stack up for loftier performance notebooks and gaming systems.

Ryzen 6000 laptops will be available starting in February and they will face up a off-white chip of competition. Intel are expected to announce new laptop processors of their own based on Alder Lake, which should be significantly faster than anything they currently offer going on how their desktop line-upwardly performs.

So while these performance claims are nice, and the platform overhaul is much needed, 2022 is fix to be a hotly contested boxing in the mobile space and AMD'southward key selling point volition likely exist their fast and new integrated GPU.

New Radeon Laptop GPUs

AMD announced the Radeon RX 6000S series, which are the regular RX 6000 GPUs optimized for thin and light laptop designs. The three offerings, the RX 6800S, RX 6700S and RX 6600S will run at lower wattages compared to their full M alternatives -- recollect Nvidia's now defunct Max-Q series -- except AMD are making information technology more than obvious with the naming scheme that these are lower power models.

On meridian of the S-series, AMD are releasing five new M-series GPUs for laptops. Three of these are enhanced, faster and more efficient variants of their existing line-up. AMD are claiming the RX 6850M XT should be 7% faster than the 6800M, while the RX 6650M XT and RX 6650M should exist 20% faster than the RX 6600M. Then at that place'southward two new mobile GPUs based on their Navi 24 die, the RX 6500M and RX 6300M, which are designed for entry-level laptops that typically use GPUs effectually the 35W mark.

Nosotros don't have many details on these products yet, but information technology sounds like the functioning gains are existence accomplished through a combination of higher GPU and higher memory clocks. The 6600M has some room to move up to 16 Gbps memory versus fourteen Gbps, and AMD could also enable the full 32 CU Navi 23 die for the 6650M XT if they wanted. We'll learn more about these closer to launch in the next few months.

For gaming laptops that use AMD discrete GPUs in 2022, several new features will be available. 1 is SmartShift Max, an improvement on their existing SmartShift technology that balances the power budget betwixt the CPU and GPU while gaming, typically lowering CPU power to give more juice to the GPU. With SmartShift Max, AMD have tweaked the algorithm to work in more titles, and provide a small functioning boost over SmartShift in others.

SmartShift Eco disables the discrete GPU while gaming on battery, allowing you to use the integrated RDNA2 GPU in the new 6000 series APUs instead.

And for the hardcore laptop fans out at that place, the final new Smart technology announced today will exist very exciting: SmartAccess Graphics. This is an automated mux switch that allows a direct connexion between the display and discrete GPU while gaming, and so switching over to the iGPU for efficiency when high operation graphics isn't required.

Mux switches have go a pop feature for gaming laptops equally straight GPU to display connections tend to amend performance by x to fifteen% compared to running the dGPU through the iGPU, and in the example of Nvidia GPUs allows G-Sync to work. SmartAccess Graphics will manage that switching automatically without a system reboot for AMD Advantage laptops that utilise both AMD CPUs and GPUs.

This is peculiarly cool because Nvidia's competing "Advanced Optimus" never really took off, and OEMs told us it was difficult to integrate, then hopefully AMD's solution is more feasible (and AMD claims nigh Advantage designs volition utilize information technology).

Those are all of AMD's primal announcements in a jam-packed CES briefing. We're very keen to check out the new 5800X3D CPU to see how V-cache performs, and on the laptop side the significant platform overhaul for Ryzen Mobile 6000 and the new mobile RDNA2 GPUs are certainly going to be interesting to benchmark.