AI computing is the huge talking point of Computex 2024 — that much is obvious. But outside of Snapdragon X Elite, what’s going to power this new slate of Copilot+ PCs? Microsoft said other chipmakers are getting involved at Build 2024, and now AMD has revealed its chips.
Claimed to be the “world’s best processor for Copilot+ PCs,” AMD has just announced the Ryzen AI 300 Series. Alongside this, the new Ryzen 9000 series of desktop CPUs touts huge gaming power increases too. Let’s take a closer look.
Ryzing to 300?
AMD’s laptop processor naming just got a whole lot more confusing with the Ryzen AI 300 Series, and as you can tell by the fact it's in the name, this one is all about AI.
With 50 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of AI performance, this is the most powerful NPU, which has outshined the 45 TOPS of Snapdragon X Elite and 38 TOPS of Apple’s own M4 in the new iPad Pro.
Alongside this, RDNA 3.5 gives the integrated graphics a big old boost — AMD claims a 60+% increase in GPU performance compared to the X Elite, and up to 147% more power pumped into Cyberpunk 2077 when faced off against Intel Core Ultra 7.
And those new Zen 5 CPU cores (up to 12 of them), which achieves an over-70% multitasking performance improvement over Apple’s M3. Nothing is being said about battery life, but we’ll find that out soon enough with some real hands-on time when we start to see what new laptops pack these chips at Computex.
It’s over 9,000!
Alongside this is AMD’s official announcement of its Ryzen 9000 series desktop CPU: codenamed “Granite Ridge.” For the company to claim its the “world’s most powerful desktop processor,” it better deliver with the next gen Zen 5 architecture.
And in that sense, it absolutely does with huge claimed performance increases over Intel Core i9-14900K — including a 56% improvement in Blender performance, and a 23% increase in frame rate for Horizon Zero Dawn.
As for those AI-intensive tasks, the Ryzen 9950X touts 100% more graphics bandwidth for GPU-centric AI, and 20% faster AI acceleration on Large Language Models. On top of that, some good news for the PC builders too, as AMD has confirmed it will extend the AM5 platform commitment beyond 2027. That means if you have a motherboard with this kind of socket, you’ll be able to keep using it for years to come.
More from Tom's Guide
- Microsoft testing shows Surface Laptop 7 besting the MacBook Air M3 - but what about M4?
- Spacetop G1 — I just went hands on with the world’s first screen-free AR laptop
- Mini PC maker GPD unveils the GPD Duo, a dual-screened folding laptop
