Tuesday, January 28th 2025
AMD Focused on Delivering RDNA 4 to Desktop, Mobile a Secondary Concern
AMD's small portfolio of current-gen (RDNA 3) mobile-oriented Radeon dedicated GPUs pales in comparison to a wide selection of related desktop offerings—a certain demographic of PC gamers have wondered whether the incoming RDNA 4 generation will produce more options for portable platforms. An extensive Notebookcheck article indicates that Team Red is not (immediately) interested in catering to mobile dGPU enthusiasts—the online publication conducted an interview with Ben Conrad, director of product management (client-side). The "Navi Mobile" Radeon RX 7000M range is an uncommon sight on gaming laptops—relative to NVIDIA's wide rollout of dedicated GeForce RTX 4000 Mobile GPUs—normally, higher-end models are present on ultra-expensive specification sheets (paired with "Dragon Range" Ryzen HX CPUs). Industry experts believe that lower-end options are more likely to turn up inside external enclosures.
One of Notebookcheck's questions focused in on this topic—they believe that: "the number of AMD dGPU-based laptop SKUs have been pretty anemic." Their interviewee was ambushed with a query regarding his company's outlook for mobile RDNA 4 options. In response, Conrad stated: "our current graphics strategy is focused on the desktop market with RDNA 4. So, I think you'll see those types of products first in the future. Certainly, RDNA 4 and future graphics technologies will make it into mobile, whether they be on APUs or future products." VideoCardz has read "between-the-lines" and posits that Team Red could skip a generation—UDNA is possibly a better fit for a new wave of laptop dGPUs. A sort-of stopgap has appeared on the horizon—in the shape of AMD's forthcoming "Strix Halo" RDNA 3.5-based integrated solution. The flagship chip's Radeon 8060S iGPU looks promising when compared to a current-gen dGPU, but it will likely struggle when pitted against Team Green's "Blackwell" dedicated mobile platform. Upcoming competition in the APU field will arrive in the form of Intel's "Panther Lake" processors—slated for launch later this year. Its next-gen iGPU is said to utilize the Xe3 "Celestial" architecture.
Sources:
Notebookcheck Article, Tom's Hardware, VideoCardz
One of Notebookcheck's questions focused in on this topic—they believe that: "the number of AMD dGPU-based laptop SKUs have been pretty anemic." Their interviewee was ambushed with a query regarding his company's outlook for mobile RDNA 4 options. In response, Conrad stated: "our current graphics strategy is focused on the desktop market with RDNA 4. So, I think you'll see those types of products first in the future. Certainly, RDNA 4 and future graphics technologies will make it into mobile, whether they be on APUs or future products." VideoCardz has read "between-the-lines" and posits that Team Red could skip a generation—UDNA is possibly a better fit for a new wave of laptop dGPUs. A sort-of stopgap has appeared on the horizon—in the shape of AMD's forthcoming "Strix Halo" RDNA 3.5-based integrated solution. The flagship chip's Radeon 8060S iGPU looks promising when compared to a current-gen dGPU, but it will likely struggle when pitted against Team Green's "Blackwell" dedicated mobile platform. Upcoming competition in the APU field will arrive in the form of Intel's "Panther Lake" processors—slated for launch later this year. Its next-gen iGPU is said to utilize the Xe3 "Celestial" architecture.
18 Comments on AMD Focused on Delivering RDNA 4 to Desktop, Mobile a Secondary Concern
Makes sense if that's the case, given how powerful AMD's integrated graphics has become.
AMD’s own website lists nine laptop offerings for their RX7000S/M(XT) lineup. Nine. Their dGPUs just aren’t competitive in the laptop sector and haven’t been for over a decade if we’re being honest. The performance and VRAM advantage AMD enjoys in the desktop dGPU market does not exist in the laptop space unfortunately. Hence why I said they’d have to offer a 12GB laptop dGPU to compete with the 8GB 4070M soon to be 8GB 5070M.
Strix Halo can’t be too expensive. I’ve heard some speculate it to start around $2200 for 32GB RAM, but if AMD were serious it’d have to start around $1600-1700. They can’t keep overvaluing their brand. No way is anyone going to spend $2200 on an entry-build 120W Strix Halo laptop with 32GB RAM to trade blows with a 5060 at best, when they can instead get a 5080 laptop for the same price, or even a nicely equipped 5070Ti laptop for slightly cheaper. No way José.
Their iGPUs are NOT rDNA3 anyway. They are rDNA3.5. These iGPUs have 0 competition. Intel's Arc based iGPUs are extremely rare and in games struggle against the 680m, the 780m leaves it in the dust and the newer models have upgraded to 16CU from 12, only further widening the gap. We havent even gotten to strix halo yet. Nvidia currently has NOTHING in this space, that may change with the rumored ARM laptop chip, but nothing is official yet.
In APUs, AMD is competitive. In dGPUs, they are nowhere to be seen, and the 7000m series was so lackluster they may as well not have bothered. Most likely, they are skipping rDNA4 for iGPUs because they're all about RT, and the iGPU is too restrictive to make use of the tech. They will likely skip to uDNA once that is ready.
But I’d disagree with your premise: by building bigger iGPUs, Intel and AMD are not actually ceding the high-performance laptop graphics market to nVidia. They are simply changing their approach. Remember, nVidia already owns basically 99% the high-performance notebook graphics sector, so Intel/AMD aren’t ceding any ground there because there really isn’t any ground left for them to cede.
Strix/Lunar Halo are the new/old approach of tech consolidation: cramming more performance and functionality into a single chip. From the Intel/AMD perspective, it allows them to advertise those SOCs in higher-end markets. From the OEM perspective, it presents the attractive proposition of reduced complexity vs having to design a notebook with a dGPU. So maybe they don’t quite achieve 4070M performance. But who cares? It turns out, x70 and higher dGPUs represent an increasingly small size of the market anyway! It’s the x60 segment and below where most customers are, and that’s exactly what needs to be targeted for any real market share to be recovered from nVidia.
And, bigger picture, even with AI, it is highly likely that the mobile dGPU market as a whole will begin to experience a decline in the coming years if it hasn’t already. Besides the fact that technology has a well-established tendency to consolidate, which we have already seen for years with APU/iGPU, the majority of the most actively played games are either several years old or not graphically demanding to begin with. That leaves professional/creative work, which comes with the general preference of those markets for sleeker, more professional looking devices over edgy and RGB. They, for the most part, are happy accelerating their workloads with iGPU, especially when they’re away from their desks.
With all that to consider, investing in iGPU is exactly the correct move to make. It’s also why nVidia themselves are getting ready to jump into the SOC market. That, and, the very real threat that Intel and AMD could simply choose to lock nVidia out of their laptop ecosystems at any point in the future (Apple, is that you?).
AMD mobile dGPUs are irrelevant. There were so few of them, and so weak performance. So this is completely fine, to drop these, since the laptop makers will stick with intel/nVidia, AMD/nVidia anyway. What they better to focus on, is power efficient laptops, with powerful iGPU instead, further improving them. And release iGPUs with RDNA5 iGPUs ASAP along with their newest CPU parts, instead of sticking with outdated solutions, like RDNA3, and RDNA3, like they did with Vega, with Zen 3.
After all, the Strix Halo, IMO, is the beginning of "fruition" of "fusion" idea, they were bearing all these years, and why they've bought ATi, back in the day. AMD simply has no other way, but focus on increasing the amount of these things, right now, and to make sure it has the sane price. Either to make off the money, they've put into it's R&D, and also to their overall "fusion" idea was correct. AMD has went a long way, to prove the APU idea that is capable of gaming is possible.
Now, here comes the most important part: they just have to get enough allocation, and price them properly, to outsell every low end mobile dGPUs, and even desktop dGPUs. Otherwise, they will lose, not only the high and mid end dGPU space, but the entire iGPU market as well. Because AMD's presence in both mobile and APU space is just barely existant.
This is where, IMHO, AMD should put a lot of efforts and money. Because dGPUs would inevitably sink into oblivion, as more compact solutions will come from all GPU and CPU vendors. APU is the future. Better to keep, and increase/improve this advantage, they have now. As the competition will be dire.
A 4070 laptop might be cheaper and might even win on some tests but it won't be as small, as quiet and it's battery won't last half as long. That's what this new crop of APU's is aiming to solve.