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  • Olaf van der Spek - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    So what's the advantage / reason for AMD to go with Zen 2 for these chips? Is it old stock? If not, is it a smaller die and thus cheaper to produce?
  • HyperText - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    The last section explains this.
  • yankeeDDL - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    Well, as said in the last section, it is actually not clear if the silicon is exactly teh same or not (It appears that it is).
    There is an improvement, but it appears on MCM and firmware level, while the silicon is exactly identical to that of Ryzen 4000.
    It's information, but it does not really address the question of why not having only Zen3 on the 5000.

    I would speculate teh following: Zen2 cores are smaller, and Zen2 8 core chips are made with 2 chiplets, hence the cost of manufacturing the 5700U should be noticeably lower than that of the 5800U.
    Let's also not forget that the 5700U is substantially equivalent to the 4800U, which is practically impossible to find anywhere so - if the 5700U really comes available in the market - it could enable a price range in between the 5800U and the 5600U without any real correspondence to other laptops around, as the offering of laptops with the 4800U is non-existent.
  • Freeb!rd - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    Laptop & APUs are monolithic dies, not MCMs.
  • Dorstlesser - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link

    Source?
  • scineram - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link

    Our brains.
  • richardnpaul - Monday, February 1, 2021 - link

    Picture at the top of this article, picture at the top of the article that announced Renior a year ago. YankeeDLL was confused between chip let's and CCX which make up the CCD.
  • schujj07 - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link

    The 8c/16t Zen2 CPU does not have 2 chiplets, it uses 2 CCX to give 8 cores, but it is still done on one chip. Now on desktop it does have the standalone IO die, but that is the same with Zen 3. However, for use in the mobile space both Zen 2 and Zen 3 are a single die and not an MCM.
  • ikjadoon - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    Does it?

    Why waste time tweaking old Zen2 silicon, when AMD already has newer, better Zen3 silicon? Zen3 has *all* the optimizations of Zen2 and then many, many, many more.

    Olaf is right: AMD is obviously coy to admit why they're rummaging around old silicon, i.e., aka AMD wants to sell year-old hardware with a new misleading name. Intel did the same and it was just as asinine: "10th" gen was both Ice Lake & Comet Lake. Though at least Intel changed the numbering scheme.

    AMD copied the naming scheme between old Zen2 rebrand vs new Zen3 w/ IPC & silicon. For a desktop example, imagine if a Ryzen 5700X was just a rebranded 'tweaked' Zen2 3800X.

    CPU & GPU manufacturers just love rebrands: note how it's always misleading in AMD's / Intel's favour...
  • vladx - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    "AMD is obviously coy to admit why they're rummaging around old silicon, i.e., aka AMD wants to sell year-old hardware with a new misleading name."

    Nailed it and here we got Dr. Ian Cutress trying his best to find excuses for AMD's disgraceful marketing.
  • Calin - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link

    Zen2 is about 10 percent smaller in die area. Due to how cutting a round silicon wafer into rectangles works, that could mean quite a bit more than 10% entire dies out of one wafer (or maybe less, it depends on a lot of factors).
    So, basically I think they can get quite a few more Zen2 cores out of a wafer. They can also have more working cores for Zen2 than for Zen3 (cores that don't quite work at a low voltage). Not to mention that they could have a lot of "wafer starts" (i.e. the 3 month or so process of going from silicon pancakes to baked processors) for Zen2 and they must sell them, and all OEMs want the new shiny 5-series processor and not the old, decrepit 4-series (end sarcasm)
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, February 3, 2021 - link

    "AMD's disgraceful marketing"
    Yeah, how dare they sell two different core designs in the same generation!
    *Intel's 10th and 11th gens shift uncomfortably in their seats*

    They're claiming to provide several value-adds over the old 4000 series designs - testing will bear that out one way or the other, but idle battery life should see improvements and the performance difference for end users ought to be largely irrelevant - unlike, say, Intel's 10th and 11th gens...
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, February 3, 2021 - link

    Lucienne has a smaller die than Cezanne. Simple economics.
  • ZoZo - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    No the last section does not explain at all why AMD went for Zen 2 on some of those chips instead of Zen 3 throughout the whole range.
    If it's exactly the same silicon as Ryzen 4000, then wanting to recycle CCDs that have already been produced would maybe explain it, but I would expect them to run out of those rather quickly because of high demand. After that, why keep producing Zen 2 at all and not just use the whole manufacturing capacity to produce Zen 3?
    On the other hand if it's not the same silicon as Ryzen 4000 then I fail to see why they're doing that, unless Zen 2 dies are significantly cheaper to produce. Are they?
  • Calin - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link

    They're 10% smaller, so they could get the same, 10% more or maybe up to 30% or so more rectangles from a circular wafer.
  • Samus - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link

    Same stepping, no retooling or manufacturing changes, mature yields and still competitive performance allow AMD to sell these 'old' designs cheaper than Zen3 while still enjoying some tweaks to power savings that will benefit the cheap mobile devices they will inevitably find themselves in.
  • nandnandnand - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    Lucienne/Renoir does have a smaller die size than Cezanne.
  • MrSpadge - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    That's the only reason that makes sense. I read it's ~170 mm² vs. ~150 mm². Not huge but it adds up when going for million chips. I think it's not so bad to get the still very good Zen 2 cores (with enhanced power efficiency) in a configuration which uses all of that silicon. And which is cheaper than the Zen 3 versions because it's cheaper to produce. They can also make more of them due to the smaller die size, which matters right now and for the coming months. The alternative would be a cut-down Zen 3 die, which in terms of ressource usage is less efficient.

    Personally I'd still want the Zen 3 version but would not hesitate to recommend the Zen 2 version to non power users if the price is right.
  • Dorstlesser - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link

    Yields are significantly better of Zen 2 because it uses 4-core CCXs instead of 8-cire CCXs which Zen 3 uses. This means cheaper CPUs for consumers and more profit for AMD.
  • RapterNSX - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    Overall they put some teaks in which was nice. The real winner though was enabling SMT across the whole U series line which no one seems to be commenting on. I bought a 2 in 1 with a R5 4500u and that has 6 cores 6 threads. The only way before was to get a 4600u to get 6 cores 12 threads.

    For the same model level and probably same or similar price, they added in a lot of extra multi core power. So sure it wasn't great overall, but not bad overall for the average user. No one is putting a U series in a gaming laptop where there would be a performance loss.
  • RapterNSX - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    Since I can't edit, yes I am aware there is a difference between Zen 2 and 3 but not enough of one where the average user could pick up on it. Hence why I added in about gaming at the end. But overall multi core power is way up over the 4000 series U processors with the addition of SMT alone.

    Trickery... yes it kind of is but labeled enough for the users that care can decipher it.
  • Arsenica - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    An average user is more likely to notice the improvement in graphics clocks and units than Zen 3 or SMT improvements (1.5 GHz with 6 GPU cores in 4500u vs 1.8 GHz with 7 GPU cores in 5500u)
  • RapterNSX - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link

    That definitely is a good step up with the higher clocks and extra CU. But utilizing much of that comes down to cooling solutions and that can vary so much. Anything that is not labeled as "gaming" typically has just enough cooling capacity which is pretty crappy all around to me anyway. Then again even a lot of gaming laptops have subpar cooling. But some are pushing much higher power draw than they used to in a laptop form factor
  • Targon - Friday, January 29, 2021 - link

    There are two sides to this, the increase in the number of threads from 4500u to 5500u(and 4700u to 5700u), so that is the big improvement for those sticking with Zen2. It's not just a refresh in that case, though you could call the 5500u a 4600u, and a 5700u a 4800u since that is basically what those are. The move to Zen3 is then the IPC improvements from the move from Zen2 to Zen3, along with a higher clock speed. Most people don't care too much about the gaming performance in one of these u series chips, so GPU improvement is something that can be ignored by most.
  • AMDNeedsCompetition - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    I think you let them get away too lightly with this. I see no mention of the fact that even the 5000 series APUs still use Vega graphics.
  • Death666Angel - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    That is literally the first headline in the dedicated R9 5980HS article for the Zen3 APUs. It is also in the tags for this article and since this hammers home the fact that these specific Ryzen 5000 APUs are basically Renoir and a bit and nothing more, it is implied if you know and care about AMD APUs.
  • Ian Cutress - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    ^ This
  • vladx - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    Just another AT article showing just how biased towards AMD Dr. Ian Cutress really is, if it was Intel doing this he would've bash them to hell.
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, February 3, 2021 - link

    Just another vladx comment whining petulantly about a site that they continue to return to, week after week, so that they can whine some more. Jog on.
  • Targon - Friday, January 29, 2021 - link

    Zen2 to Zen3 shouldn't be ignored. The 5500u is basically a 4600u, and a 5700u is a 4800u. For those using integrated graphics, they generally don't care about gaming performance, and those who want to game should be on a H series chip with discrete graphics for the better performance.
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, February 3, 2021 - link

    You're saying that they're extremely capable chips being slotted into a lower price tier than before.

    Oh no, woe and such.
  • deil - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    PCVC is a big deal in laptops, it was a lot of wasted juice that now both wont heat up and stay in battery....
  • MrSpadge - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link

    "the latest systems from AMD and Intel have done it much faster, often within 16 ms"

    Ian, I'm confused by this section. Actually since some time. AMD was claiming this 1-2 ms of "frequency selection" time before, I think already in the original Zen 2. And they seem to be careful to talk about the "selection time", not switching time. Your 16 ms is switching time. Selection time may simply be the time required to notice "oh, it's time again to bring out the big guns". It's important but just a part of the switching process. Maybe you can clarify this with AMD at some point.
  • Smell This - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link


    Like I reallly know BUT processors from AMD used to have Cool and Quiet ('CnQ'). This was about the time that Chipzillah was using Speed-Step. CnQ used 'P-States' to throttle the CPU to a minimum 800MHz. If I recall correctly, at the time the Ph-II's had 4 different P-States.

    "In Renoir, all of the cores can adjust their frequency, but they all had to run at the same voltage. Lucienne changes that such that each core can adjust its voltage independently, enabling a finer grained power management and a more optimal power-efficient system."

    Presumably, the 16ms fully loads all the cores in their maximum P-State. A single core, however, could boost into a mini- P-State at 2ms.

    Did that make sense?
  • MrSpadge - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link

    I don't think so :)
  • Santoval - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link

    All the above are merely power optimizations presumably implemented in firmware. I still don't get why AMD started copying Intel by releasing both year old and fresh CPUs in the same generation. They actually went beyond Intel : Intel called parts with a different design and μarch "10th" generation but at least they marketed the individual parts differently (with confusing and unfortunate alphanumeric codes but still differently). I don't think Intel ever pulled what AMD just pulled. i.e. a release of two different APU generations with a seamless and continuous 5800U/5700U/5600U/5500U/etc branding ripe for customer confusion..
  • Targon - Friday, January 29, 2021 - link

    AMD is no longer using SMT as a way to differentiate the chips. Ryzen 5 4500u was 6 core/6 thread, 4600 was 6 core/12 thread, 4700u was 8 core/8 thread, 4800u was 8 core/16 thread. So, for this new generation, SMT is on for all of them, but the lower tier has the previous generation cores, so 5500u is really a 4600u, and 5700u is really a 4800u with a new name and maybe some tweaks. The 5600 and 5800 are the Zen3 versions, so they have that 19 percent IPC boost in addition to other improvements.

    Intel was worse about causing confusion, dual-core Intel i7 in a generation at the same time they offer quad-core i5 laptop chips and some quad-core i7 as well. Since dual-core is HORRIBLE in the modern age when it comes to overall computer performance, dual-core i7 laptops really were the most misleading pieces of garbage to ever show up in the industry.
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, February 3, 2021 - link

    Intel released designs based on a 5-year-old core design and new stuff in the same "generation". The performance and power profiles are completely different.

    I'm not a *huge fan* of this, but thanks to the feature uplifts, from a customer perspective it's just going to look like a straight descent in performance from top to bottom of the range. That seems okay by me, tbh, and is a smart way to handle OEM's needing to shift older CPU stock. The old design really isn't that old to begin with, either!
  • 12345 - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link

    So it's like how zen 1 didn't have per core voltage and frequency control ready on consumer chips despite all the hardware being there already.
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, February 3, 2021 - link

    Pretty much!
  • zamroni - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    But still, making lucy eats amd's already limited capacity in tsmc
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, February 3, 2021 - link

    It's a smaller chip, so it does the precise opposite.
  • SolarBear28 - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    I wonder if it would be possible to enable some of these features on Renoir with a firmware update.
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, February 3, 2021 - link

    I wondered that, but I think there are changes to the platform too - PMICs and such.
  • Tamdrik - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    Yeah, the proper, transparent thing to do would have been to release a line 4X50U processors. Labeling Zen 2s as 5X00U processors is just a deceptive marketing decision. Disappointed in AMD.
  • pugster - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link

    I wish AMD would update their sub $100 cpu's lineup, even if they are made in the 12nm process. I was so glad that I brought the AMD ryzen 2600x last year for $80 plus $20 off when you buy a motherboard at Microcenter.
  • Targon - Friday, January 29, 2021 - link

    For those confused, the basic way to look at it is that for the Zen2 based 5000 series, you get double the thread count from the 4000 series. The 4500u for example is 6 core/6 thread, the 5500u is 6 core/12 thread. The 4700u is 8 core/8 thread, the 5700u. 8 core/16 thread. The even numbers on Zen3 will have the Zen3 benefit of a 19 percent IPC improvement, so even with the same core/thread count, the Zen3 chips will have a significant performance advantage.
  • watzupken - Tuesday, February 2, 2021 - link

    In my opinion, whether Lucienne is a Renoir+ or not doesn't really matter because it is not something that will make people dash out to buy one. The performance improvement is marginal, so those who are already using a Renoir based APU will not be enticed to upgrade. In fact if one can get a Renoir laptop at a cheaper price, I feel it may be a better deal to just get a Renoir based laptop/ mini PC.

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