Thursday, December 19th 2024
AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 Benchmark Tips Cut-Back Radeon 860M GPU
AMD's upcoming Ryzen AI Kraken Point APUs appear to be affordable APUs for next-generation thin-and-light laptops and potentially even some gaming handhelds. Murmurings of these new APUs have been going around for quite some time, but a PassMark benchmark was just posted, giving us a pretty comprehensive look at the hardware configuration for the upcoming Ryzen AI 7 350. While the CPU configuration in the PassMark result confirms the 4+4 configuration we reported on previously, it seems as though the iGPU portion of the new Ryzen AI 7 is getting something of a downgrade compared to previous generations.
While all previous mobile Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 APUs have featured the Radeon -80M or -90M series iGPUs, the Ryzen AI 7 350 steps down to the AMD Radeon 860M. Although not much is known about the new iGPU, it uses the same nomenclature as the Radeon iGPUs found in previous Ryzen 5 APUs, suggesting it is the less performant of the new 800 series iGPUs. This would be the first time, at least since the introduction of the Ryzen branding, that a Ryzen 7 CPU will use a cut-down iGPU. This, along with the 4+4 (Zen 5 and Zen 5c) heterogenous architecture, suggests that this Ryzen 7 APU will prioritize battery life and thermal performance, likely in response to Qualcomm's recent offerings. Comparing the 760M to the single 860M benchmark on PassMark reveals similar performance, with the 860M actually falling behind the average 760M by an average of 9.1%. Take this with a grain of salt, though, since there is only one benchmark result on PassMark for the 860M.
Source:
PassMark
While all previous mobile Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 APUs have featured the Radeon -80M or -90M series iGPUs, the Ryzen AI 7 350 steps down to the AMD Radeon 860M. Although not much is known about the new iGPU, it uses the same nomenclature as the Radeon iGPUs found in previous Ryzen 5 APUs, suggesting it is the less performant of the new 800 series iGPUs. This would be the first time, at least since the introduction of the Ryzen branding, that a Ryzen 7 CPU will use a cut-down iGPU. This, along with the 4+4 (Zen 5 and Zen 5c) heterogenous architecture, suggests that this Ryzen 7 APU will prioritize battery life and thermal performance, likely in response to Qualcomm's recent offerings. Comparing the 760M to the single 860M benchmark on PassMark reveals similar performance, with the 860M actually falling behind the average 760M by an average of 9.1%. Take this with a grain of salt, though, since there is only one benchmark result on PassMark for the 860M.
14 Comments on AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 Benchmark Tips Cut-Back Radeon 860M GPU
The 860M would be my only concern, but it should still be better than the Aerith APU's older 8 CU RDNA2 cores.
Strix Point APUs (HX 370 and 365) can do this somewhat well since its mostly 4+8c/6c and the "c" cores power down to just under 500mW each which is why it can still be more efficient than the full fat 8-cores in than Phoenix/Hawk Point. It still suffers when TDP is set to below 13W-15W, but better efficiency than last gen.
Intel recently did this surprisingly well with Lunar Lake, especially the 258V, which is expected since its literally 4+4e without HT. On this new ExpertBook that I'm testing (63Wh battery), I'm getting 10+ hours of battery life with normal usage (Salesforce, JIRA, CodeCommit, GlobalProtect VPN, some internal work-developed software, Spotify in the background, etc.) at 7W to 25W TDP, what ASUS calls "Standard" mode.
Z2X or Z2 Extreme perhaps. But 3 full and 5c cores does sound more gaming-oriented since even today most games really just utilize around 4 cores heavily, unless you crank up the graphics with a dGPU since the CPU needs to process more data to feed it.
If that 3+5c+16CU is in the works, I'll welcome it, either for handhelds or ultrabooks.
EDIT: Also that PassMark benchmark between the 760M and the alleged 860M lacks a lot of info. Maybe the 860M is falling behind because its being run at a lower TGP? I see no reason why a RDNA3.5/RDNA4 part with the same amount of CUs would be weaker than the RDNA3 predecessor (e.g. 680M vs 780M, both 12 CUs).
And who knows if the same thing will happen with the rumored new Steam Machine.
I'm guessing if they would have their own in-house Steam Machine, they would most likely use Strix Halo with the 20/40+ CUs.