CES 2022: AMD Ryzen 6000 CPUs bring 6nm, Zen 3+ cores, alongside new RX 6000 GPUs

AMD has had its say at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2022. Right after Intel’s showcase of its 12th generation Alder Lake CPUs that the company claimed is the world’s fastest processor made for laptops, AMD has announced 20 SKUs (stock keeping units) of its new generation Ryzen 6000 CPUs. 

The company claimed that its latest crop of Ryzen 6000 processors will be found in over 200 laptop models by OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), of which about 20 would be AMD Advantage Edition models. The latter refers to all-AMD gaming laptops featuring Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs. 

Coming to Ryzen 6000, the chips offer 6nm Zen 3+ core architecture, and RDNA 2 architecture integrated GPUs. The company claimed that the latter offers the most powerful integrated graphics chips among all commercially available laptop CPUs right now. The lineup will be divided between Ryzen 6000U chips for efficiency, which will feature in thin and light laptops, and Ryzen 6000H -- the more powerful CPUs for gaming and performance laptops. 

Also read: CES 2022: Intel unveils new lineup of Alder Lake processors, new discrete graphics

The Zen 3+ 6000 series Ryzen processors offer comparable connectivity options with Intel Alder Lake, including LPDDR5 memory, Wi-Fi 6E, PCIe Gen4 and Bluetooth 5.2. Like Alder Lake laptops, AMD’s new chips will also be seen in new notebooks starting next month. The range is topped by the AMD Ryzen 9 6980HX, with eight cores, 16 threads, 45W TDP and 5.0GHz boost clock. 

Along with the new CPUs for laptops, AMD also diversified its GPU classification for laptops. The company has a new Radeon RX 6000 ‘S’ series of GPUs, which will offer discrete graphics in slim laptops. The more performance oriented stuff, which AMD hopes to rival Nvidia with, will be classified under Ryzen 6000 ‘M’. There are two new middling desktop GPUs as well for 1080p gaming and semi-pro video rendering, under AMD Radeon RX 6400 and RX 6500 XT. 

Zen 4, 5nm architecture preview 

AMD chief executive Lisa Su also showcased a preview of the company’s next generation CPU architecture, unsuspectingly named Ryzen 7000. The new chips will be the first generation of AMD’s new chipset lithography process, with 3D-stacked chiplets in the core. Su showcased the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D that demonstrated the 3D-stacked chip design. 

Ryzen 7000, meanwhile, only got a preview in terms of the advantages that its 5nm process in the Zen 4 core architecture would bring. The new processors would also bring to the table a new, AM5 socket design, which would also bring support for PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 memory.