AMD

There are three new 4000G APUs to cover in today’s announcement, each available in two configurations. The flagship model is the 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 4700G, which has a base clock of 3.6GHz and a (single-core) boost clock of 4.4GHz. These core/thread counts and frequencies are identical to the Ryzen 7 3700X desktop chip. Being an APU, the 4700G also has graphics cores — eight of them to be precise — with a maximum frequency of 2100MHz.

Next down the line is the 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 4600G, with a base clock of 3.7GHz and a boost clock of 4.2GHz, which is broadly equivalent to the Ryzen 5 3600 CPU. The 4600G has 7 graphics cores running at up to 1900MHz. 

The range is rounded out by the 4-core/8-thread Ryzen 3 4300G. With a base clock of 3.8GHz and a boost clock of 4.0GHz, performance should land somewhere between the Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X. It has 6 graphics cores running at 1700MHz.

All three chips, in this configuration, have a listed TDP of 65W, which is the same as the equivalent Ryzen 3000 CPUs. (It’s worth noting that this doesn’t really have much bearing on how much power they’ll actually draw.) Each APU also comes in a “GE” flavor, which is a low-power version rated at 35W, with significantly lower frequencies across the board but no changes beyond that.

AMD

On paper, these new APUs look extremely competitive. The 3000G chips they replace struggle when compared to even budget CPUs. The jump to Zen 2 alone will be a major improvement, as clock-for-clock these cores are close to 15-percent stronger than Zen+. The added cores and threads of the two higher-end chips, though, make them a compelling option for someone looking to build a workstation-like PC on a tight budget. In fact, they change who we would recommend even considering purchasing an APU in the first place.

While the 3400G is a decent single-chip solution for people on an extremely tight budget, it doesn’t leave much room to improve your PC down the line, especially as in regards to gaming, as anything beyond budget GPU options would be wasted. With the 4700G and 4600G, though, you could build a PC without shelling out any money on a graphics card, and then add pretty much any discrete GPU you wanted down the line to turn your PC into an extremely performant gaming rig. The Ryzen 7 3700X, which is broadly equivalent to the 4700G, can be sensibly paired with any high-end GPU on the market.

AMD

As for the performance of the integrated GPUs, things look extremely promising. Assuming proper cooling, the 4700G’s 8-core GPU should hit 2.1TFLOPs, which is 50-percent more raw compute performance than the 3400G can muster. That should be more than enough to play esports titles at 1080p, and just about hits the minimum spec for Death Stranding.

One thing worth noting is that, without dedicated video memory, the performance of the integrated GPU is tied to the speed and amount of system RAM you have. Ryzen CPU performance is already quite reactive to RAM speed, but you’d likely be wanting to pair the 4700G with 16GB of some decent 3600MHz DDR4 RAM — or very low-latency 3200MHz memory. This will give the GPU a fighting chance of running more demanding games well, but will also add to the cost of your overall build compared to slower RAM.

Of course, this is all “on paper;” we’ll have to judge for ourselves how well these new APUs hold up in the real world. The 4000G series should start appearing in pre-built desktops next month. We don’t have a date for a retail launch just yet, but we expect it won’t be too far behind. The other thing we’re waiting on is pricing, which will be key given the price-conscious consumers APUs are typically targeted at. If we had to guess, we’d suggest a starting point of around $140 for the 4300G, stretching up to around $300 for the 4700G. 

The references have prompted speculation that Apple may release Macs with AMD CPUs. At the moment, however, it’s far too early to make that jump. As MacRumors points out, there hasn’t been any corroborating evidence to suggest Apple plans to switch to AMD. In fact, if anything, it’s far more likely we’ll see Apple start to offer Macs which feature its own custom-designed chips. According to a Bloomberg report from 2018, Apple had planned to begin transitioning its laptops to ARM-based processors starting sometime this year.

More than anything, the testing likely speaks to how far AMD’s Ryzen chips have come in the past few years. In 2019, AMD’s desktop CPUs dominated Intel’s best chips, and PC manufacturers have recently started to turn to the company for their processor needs. This past fall, for instance, Microsoft launched a 15-inch model of the Surface Laptop 3 that features a custom Ryzen processor the company co-designed with AMD.

We hope you weren’t determined to build an all-out AMD gaming rig in September. AMD has delayed the release of its 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X processor by two months to sometime in November. The company wants to meet “strong demand” for the highly parallel CPU, the company said in a statement to AnandTech. In short, it wants to be sure there’s enough supply to justify a release. There is an upshot to this news for enthusiasts, though.

Computex has kicked off in Taipei today, so probably before you were even awake, AMD revealed its ambitious new CPU and GPU hardware additions. It’s going after NVIDIA’s middle-weight RTX 2070 graphics with the Radeon RX 5700. Not only will it be the first 7nm consumer video cards out there, the series will also tout PCIe 4.0 and GDDR6 memory support, ensuring the cards won’t be irrelevant a year or two down the road. Meanwhile, AMD’s third-gen Ryzen 9 CPU is a 12-core beast that’s priced to shake up Intel’s dominance, striking a strong balance between power efficiency, performance, and sheer bang for your buck. Want specific numbers? We’ve got them for you.

All of AMD’s 3rd-gen Ryzen chips will feature its new Zen 2 architecture, a chiplet-based design that’ll offer a 15 percent performance improvement across every application. They’ll also have double the floating point performance and double the cache over its last CPUs. The 3900X features a base/boost speed of 3.68GHz/4.6GHz and 70MB of total cache. The company claims it beats out Intel’s competing chip by 16 percent in Blender rendering. And if you’re looking for something to take on Intel’s i9-9900K, its current fastest consumer PC chip, there’s the $399 Ryzen 7 3800X, an eight-core/16-thread chip running at 3.9GHz/4.5GHz. Honestly though, I’d imagine many gamers would aim for the 3900X, given its astounding value proposition.

The last entry in the new Ryzen 7 lineup is the $329 3700X, an eight-core chip that’s even more efficient than its more powerful siblings, with a 65W TDP instead of 105W. AMD says it’s 15 percent faster than the last-gen 2700X in the single-threaded Cinebench R20 test, and 18 percent faster in multi-threaded performance. Compared to Intel’s $385 9700K, it’s 28 percent faster in the Cinebench multi-threaded test, and about the same for the single-threaded variant. I’d imagine this will be the more price-conscious buy for PC builders, especially since its lower TDP means you’ll be able to cram it in tighter cases.

Rounding out the new CPU family is the Ryzen 5 3600, a six-core/12-thread chip that’ll sell for just $199. For $50 more, you can snag the 3600X, which has a higher 95W TDP and 200MHz faster base and boost clock speeds. All of the new Ryzen CPUs will support PCIe 4.0, which will offer around 42 percent faster storage speeds than PCIe 3.0. That’s going to help future proof these chips a bit, since it’ll be the standard of choice for upcoming high-end graphics cards and nVME drives.

You’ll be able to pick up AMD’s 3rd Gen Ryzen CPUs on July 7th.

The PCs aren’t radically different beyond the CPU changes, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The Nitro 5 still boasts a 1080p display, CoolBoost to prevent overheating in gaming sessions and a reasonably slim (if slightly flashy) body. The Swift 3, meanwhile, has a 180-degree folding display and shouldn’t burden you between its 0.71-inch thickness and 3.2-pound weight.

Acer hasn’t outlined the configurations, ship dates or pricing for the AMD-powered versions of either system. It often provides that info shortly before release in a given region, though, so you’ll have a better sense of the laptops’ worth before too long.

The performance differences mostly boil down to clock speed. The Ryzen 3 starts with a 2.1GHz base clock speed, a 3.5GHz peak speed and a 6-core Vega GPU. Move to the Ryzen 5 and you’ll get a higher 3.7GHz boost speed and an 8-core GPU, while the Ryzen 7 ramps up to a 2.3GHz base speed, a 4GHz boost speed and a 10-core GPU. There’s also a dual-core, 2.4GHz (3.3GHz peak) Athlon Pro 300U chip for the cost-conscious with three-core graphics.

Not surprisingly, AMD is claiming a performance edge over Intel. It believes the Ryzen 7 Pro is as much as 14 percent faster for media creation and day-to-day office tasks than a comparable Intel Core i7 laptop. You’ll want to take claims like this with a grain of salt, as you do with other manufacturers, but it does bode well you want to wring every ounce out of productivity out of your portable PC.

You won’t have to search far to find systems. HP and Lenovo have committed to launching Ryzen Pro-based laptops later in the second quarter (no later than June), and other PC makers are waiting in the wings.

The team acknowledged that this isn’t great news for Indiegogo backers who’ve already been waiting several months for the VCS, but maintained that it should lead to “better overall performance” and a “cooler and quieter” machine without significant disruptions to manufacturing.

While this suggests you won’t be complaining too loudly about performance, it could still leave you frustrated. The team first vowed to ship a system in 2018, but it won’t show up until a year later. And however capable the hardware might be, the VCS will still depend heavily on software support. Developers will have to produce compelling titles optimized for the VCS, and you won’t know how that shakes out until sometime in the months ahead — assuming there isn’t another delay.