Enlarge / The most interesting thing about AMD's Ryzen 7 8700G CPU is the Radeon 780M GPU that's attached to it. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Put me on the short list of people who can get excited about the humble, much-derided integrated GPU.

Yes, most of them are afterthoughts, designed for office desktops and laptops that will spend most of their lives rendering 2D images to a single monitor. But when integrated graphics push forward, it can open up possibilities for people who want to play games but can only afford a cheap desktop (or who have to make do with whatever their parents will pay for, which was the big limiter on my PC gaming experience as a kid).

That, plus an unrelated but accordant interest in building small mini-ITX-based desktops, has kept me interested in AMD’s G-series Ryzen desktop chips (which it sometimes calls “APUs,” to distinguish them from the Ryzen CPUs). And the Ryzen 8000G chips are a big upgrade from the 5000G series that immediately preceded them (this makes sense, because as we all know the number 8 immediately follows the number 5).

Enlarge / AMD's Ryzen 8040 series is a lot like the 7040 series but with a higher model number. (credit: AMD)

Both Intel and AMD usually have processor updates to announce at CES in January, but AMD isn't waiting to introduce its next-generation flagship laptop chips: the Ryzen 8040 series is coming to laptops starting in early 2024, though at first blush these chips look awfully similar to the Ryzen 7040 processors that AMD announced just seven months ago .

Though the generational branding is jumping from 7000 to 8000, the CPU and GPU of the Ryzen 8040 series are nearly identical to the ones in the 7040 series. The chips AMD is announcing today use up to eight Zen 4 CPU cores and RDNA 3-based integrated GPUs (either a Radeon 780M with 12 compute units, or Radeon 760M or 740M GPUs with 8 or 4 CUs). The chips are manufactured using the same 4 nm TSMC process as the 7040 series.

There's also an AI-accelerating neural processing unit (NPU) that AMD claims is about 1.4 times faster than the one in the Ryzen 7040 series in large language models like Llama 2 and ONNX vision models. Both NPUs are based on the same XDNA architecture and have the same amount of processing hardware—AMD says that the AI performance improvements come mostly from higher clock speeds.

Enlarge / Unlike Intel's E-cores, AMD's Zen 4c supports all the same capabilities as Zen 4, just in a smaller package with lower clock speeds. (credit: AMD)

AMD sells a lot of 7000-series Ryzen processors for laptops, but the most advanced ones are in the 7040 family . These are the only chips that combine AMD's latest Zen 4 CPU architecture and its latest RDNA 3 graphics cores, whereas other 7000-series laptop chips mix and match various older CPU and GPU architectures.

Today, the company is announcing two new Ryzen 7040U-series chips for thin and light laptops, but with a twist: They combine regular Zen 4 CPU cores with "Zen 4c" cores that are designed to save space rather than hit high clock speeds (via AnandTech ). AMD says that a Zen 4c CPU core has the same capabilities as a Zen 4 core but takes up 35 percent less space in a silicon die.

These new chips are codenamed "Phoenix 2," denoting that they are similar to but distinct from the original Phoenix design used in earlier Ryzen 7040U chips. Phoenix 2 combines two high-performance Zen 4 cores, four high-efficiency Zen 4c cores, and a Radeon 740M integrated GPU with four RDNA3 graphics cores. They also lack the Ryzen AI neural processing unit that accelerates some AI and machine learning tasks in the regular Phoenix chips.

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  The Ryzen 9 7945X3D is essentially a desktop Ryzen 9 7950X3D repackaged for laptops. [credit: AMD ]

For a couple of years now, AMD has offered special versions of its desktop processors with an extra 64MB chunk of L3 cache included. This cache is layered over top of the existing CPU silicon, earning it the name "3D V-Cache," and it has proven especially successful for accelerating cache-sensitive software like games.

Today, AMD is announcing the first 3D V-Cache processor for laptops, the Ryzen 9 7945X3D. It's a version of the regular 16-core Ryzen 9 7945HX with that same 64MB chunk of cache added in, giving it a total of 144MB of L3 cache.

The 7945HX is essentially a version of the desktop Ryzen 9 7950X repackaged for use in laptops instead of high-end desktops; while chips like the similarly named 7940HS use one monolithic silicon die for everything from the CPU cores to the chipset to the integrated GPU, the 7950HX uses a pair of 8-core CPU chiplets and a separate I/O die.

Enlarge / AMD has announced pricing and availability for its newest 3D V-Cache desktop CPUs. (credit: AMD)

AMD's pumped-up, 3D V-Cache-equipped Ryzen 7000 desktop processors will be available to buy on February 28, the company announced today . The rollout will start with the 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X3D and the 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X3D, which will start at $599 and $699, respectively. A cheaper model, the eight-core Ryzen 7 7800X3D, will be available for $449 but won't launch until April 6.

All of these CPUs are successors to the original Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and their sales pitch is similar. AMD is stacking 64MB of additional L3 cache on top of the regular Ryzen 7000 CPUs, which can provide a big performance bump for software (like games) that is especially sensitive to cache sizes and speeds.

These prices are actually not all that much higher than the launch prices for the original Ryzen 7000 CPUs back in August—the 7950X3D has the same launch price as the 7950X, and the 7900X3D and 7800X3D are only $50 more expensive than their counterparts. But prices have come down a lot since then; the 7950X usually costs between $550 and $600 now , and non-X-series CPUs like the Ryzen 7 7700 and Ryzen 9 7950 are even cheaper. The X3D chips' prices will eventually come down, too, but they're still significantly more expensive than the versions without the extra cache.

Enlarge / AMD's "Mendocino" processor is coming to budget laptops soon in the form of the Ryzen 7020 series. (credit: AMD)

At Computex earlier this year, AMD announced a processor called "Mendocino" that was intended to bring modern technology and 12-hour battery life to laptops in the unexciting-but-important $400 to $700 price range. Today, the company is bringing Mendocino to market in the form of three Athlon and Ryzen processors, collectively dubbed the 7020 series. AMD says laptops with these Mendocino-based processors will be available starting in Q4 of 2022, which is nearly upon us; launch systems include Lenovo's IdeaPad 1, Acer's Aspire 3, and a 17-inch laptop from HP.

The processor in the 7020 series is its least interesting element. It's a quad-core, eight-thread CPU (in the Ryzen chips; the Athlon chip is dual-core) based on 2019's Zen 2 architecture, previously seen in 3000-series Ryzen desktop processors and 4000- and 5000-series mobile processors. A Zen 2 CPU should be fast enough to make most basic browsing and office apps feel snappy, and they'll be preferable to the likes of Intel's Pentium and Celeron Silver chips (and probably also many of the upcoming Intel Processors ). But they'll be slower than many 5000-series and 6000-series Ryzen CPUs, as well as quad-core-or-better, 11th-gen-and-up Core CPUs from Intel.

All three chips in AMD's 7020-series lineup. (credit: AMD)

All 7020-series CPUs include a new GPU based on AMD's RDNA2 GPU architecture, which is also found in its Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards, Ryzen 6000-series laptop processors, and the upcoming Ryzen 7000 desktop processors. AMD is including four of its graphics compute units (CUs) with every 7020-series CPU in a GPU that it has dubbed the Radeon 610M. That's one-third as many GPU cores as it includes in high-end Ryzen 6000 parts , but they should still be sufficient for very light gaming—AMD's press materials mention 720p gaming in competitive games like League of Legends , CS:GO , and DOTA 2 .

Enlarge / AMD's new naming scheme for Ryzen 7000 laptop CPUs, broken down. (credit: AMD)

Even for someone who pays a lot of attention to them, processor model numbers can be hard to parse. Ideally, each model number would communicate information about the chip's underlying technology and capabilities, making it easy to quickly tell the difference between a new chip and an old chip or a fast chip and a slow chip. But these model numbers also serve a marketing purpose, both for AMD and for PC makers who want to advertise that their systems are using the latest and greatest chips.

AMD is making an effort to resolve this tension with a revamp of its laptop CPU model numbers , which will go into effect in 2023, when Ryzen 7000-branded laptop processors begin shipping. Here's how AMD breaks it down:

• The first digit now indicates the year in which the CPU was launched, with Ryzen 7000 CPUs coming in 2023, Ryzen 8000 in 2024, and Ryzen 9000 in 2025.
• A higher second digit indicates better performance. It will no longer have anything to do with the underlying CPU architecture, as it sometimes does for older chips (Ryzen 5 5500U is Zen 2-based, for example, while Ryzen 5 5600U is Zen 3-based).
• The third digit will now indicate the CPU architecture being used. A "1" means either the original Zen or Zen+, a "2" denotes Zen 2, a "3" denotes either Zen 3 or Zen 3+, a "4" denotes Zen 4, and a "5" will refer to the as-yet-unannounced Zen 5.
• The fourth digit is another loose performance indicator. CPUs ending in "0" will be slower, and CPUs ending in "5" will be faster (as of this writing, those are the only two numbers in use).
• The suffix will denote the TDP of the chip, as it currently does. HX-series chips start at 55 W TDPs, Hs-series chips start at 35 W, U-series chips range from 15 to 28 W, e-series chips are 9 W parts targeted at fanless systems, and C-series chips are just U-series chips in Chromebooks instead of Windows PCs.

AMD also provided this slide, showing how the new model numbers will work in practice for the Ryzen 7000 series (which will encompass at least four distinct CPU architectures, from Zen 2 to Zen 4).