Tuesday, April 4th 2023
AMD Designs Orange Case Badges to Solve Ryzen 7000 Mobile Branding Mess
When you buy a notebook powered by a Ryzen 7000 series mobile processor, you're either getting a cutting-edge chip powered by the company's latest "Zen 4" CPU cores, or one that has been rebadged from the company's previous-gen Ryzen 6000 "Zen 3+" or even Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" (DDR4) processor series. The question on the tech buyer's mind will be "how to I spot a Ryzen 7000 series processor-powered notebook that actually gives me "Zen 4" CPU cores?"
AMD attempted to answer this with an exclusive new case badge for Ryzen 7000 series processors with "Zen 4" CPU cores. This new case badge looks not much different from the AMD Expo logo, in that the AMD Ryzen main branding is set against an orange backdrop. This bit is surrounded by a silver-metallic frame, with the 5/7/9 brand extension on its corner, along with "7000 series" marked. This case badge is only to be included with a Ryzen 7040 series "Phoenix" or Ryzen 7045 series "Dragon Range" processor present, and cannot be used with Ryzen 7035 series "Rembrandt Refresh" or Ryzen 7030 series "Barcelo Refresh," or Ryzen 7020 series "Mendocino."
For Ryzen 7000 series mobile processors with older "Zen 3+" or "Zen 3" CPU cores, under the Ryzen 7035 series, 7030 series, or 7020 series, AMD is using a familiar-looking case-badge that has the classic AMD Ryzen logo with its round motif, set against a gray backdrop, with that silver-metallic frame. Interestingly, this case-badge isn't all too different from the one AMD includes with its Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" desktop processors.
Sources:
VideoCardz, Notebook Check
AMD attempted to answer this with an exclusive new case badge for Ryzen 7000 series processors with "Zen 4" CPU cores. This new case badge looks not much different from the AMD Expo logo, in that the AMD Ryzen main branding is set against an orange backdrop. This bit is surrounded by a silver-metallic frame, with the 5/7/9 brand extension on its corner, along with "7000 series" marked. This case badge is only to be included with a Ryzen 7040 series "Phoenix" or Ryzen 7045 series "Dragon Range" processor present, and cannot be used with Ryzen 7035 series "Rembrandt Refresh" or Ryzen 7030 series "Barcelo Refresh," or Ryzen 7020 series "Mendocino."
21 Comments on AMD Designs Orange Case Badges to Solve Ryzen 7000 Mobile Branding Mess
CPU architecture versions in 7000 mobile:
Zen 2, Zen 3+, Zen 4
GPU architecture versions in 7000 mobile:
GCN, RDNA2, RDNA3
A sticker ain’t gonna fix this.
Building a computer with miniITX AM5 is a steal, and it's cheaper to buy a minipc for example.
Intel does the same thing with their -HX branding, which is already a huge mess honestly.
It's different to -P/-U which each of those has a different die. Though features are well, more consistent across Intel line-up.
AMD's trying to market like Intel, but doesn't know how to pull it off, clearly.
It got especially bad around Broadwell's and Skylake's era. With HP(primarily) going out of their way to hide what CPU was in their consumer PCs.
Source: I sold and serviced PCs in B&M retail before, during, and after that era. When trying to help customers pick out a laptop, I had to cursorily glance @ the CPU badge to even get an idea what was in it. (IIRC, HP's demo Software blocked the common ways to find specs in Windows. DXdiag, 'System', etc.).
Just watching the marketing materials over the years educated me immensely on how normal and acceptable outright deception had become in marketing:
The more technical the product, the more BS and subterfuge was involved.