AMD "Renoir" APU iGPU Configuration and Platform Spread Detailed

[btarunr]

AMD's upcoming "Renoir" silicon will be the company's most important, as it will sit at the heart of not just desktops, but also notebooks and ultraportables. A brilliant report by _rogame on Reddit compiles the chip's many iGPU variants along with iGPU device-IDs, and slots them in various platform variants. Renoir will target four key market segments characterized by TDP: 15 W ultraportables, 45 W mainstream notebooks, 65 W mainstream desktops, and 35 W low-power desktops.

As for the iGPU itself, "Renoir" was last reported as being a processor that combines "Zen 2" CPU cores with an iGPU that has SIMD machinery from the "Vega" architecture, but with updated display- and multimedia-engines from "Navi." According to _rogame, Renoir's iGPU will have up to 13 NGCUs, which work out to 832 stream processors. AMD internally marks the iGPU as RV B##, where RV refers to "Radeon Vega," and B## referring to the iGPU variant. The commercial name of the iGPU will be different. B12 is the highest variant, with 12-13 CUs, B10 has 10-11 CUs, B8 has 8-9 CUs, B6 has 6 CUs, and B4 has 3-4 CUs. The B12 configuration will be exclusive to the mobile parts. The desktop parts cap out at B10. Renoir is expected to dominate AMD's processor launch cycle through the first half of 2020.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Cheeseball]

No Navi yet? VCN 1.0 would be perfect for a potential 4400G, especially in a HTPC for HEVC/H.265 decoding/transcoding.

 

[xkm1948]

No Navi yet? VCN 1.0 would be perfect for a potential 4400G, especially in a HTPC for HEVC/H.265 decoding/transcoding.

With current driver state of RDNA, GCN based APU might be safer.

 

[GoldenX]

Well, Vega is not the best option either. To me Polaris sounds like a better option for APUs until we get Navi on them, but somehow AMD likes Vega. Better OpenCL?

 

[Deleted member 67555]

I just don't see enough of anything worthwhile to upgrade from a R3-2400..
I guess I'll have to wait and see but bleh.
This is more for notebooks..

 

[R0H1T]

Renoir is hugely relevant to the notebook space, of course that's not to say that desktop SKU aren't. But given Zen2 performance & AMD's class leading performance for the IGP, you'd think barring supply constraints or price these parts should fly off the shelves & be hugely successful in that very important part of the consumer market. I'd argue AMD needs it more than their regular CPUs because this is the the most popular front to regular consumers & the easiest/best way to gain that mind-share which Intel has dominated with their big bucks! This thing will hurt Intel way more than the DIY market, probably also a reason why they're rushing in TGL.

Intel Corporation Tiger Lake Client Platform vs Generic - Geekbench

 

[INSTG8R]

This will hopefully put AMD back into the notebook/laptop space again with a bit more presence than they’ve had of late.

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

I really hope AMD doesn't change the iGPU naming scheme again. Current Vega 3/8/11 is short and concise. If it's a mix of Navi and Vega like the leak claims just name it Vevi or better yet Naga.

I swear AMD is the fucking worst when it comes to naming their products. They ditched Radeon HD 8000, 9000 and went straight to Rn 200. Then after RX 500, they leaped back to RX 5000. Jesus fuck! And just forget about whatever they named their mobile and desktop APUs in the meantime. People make fun of Intel's 10k series naming scheme but at least they and Nvidia to some extent follow the numbering scheme.

 

[Tomorrow]

I really hope AMD doesn't change the iGPU naming scheme again. Current Vega 3/8/11 is short and concise. If it's a mix of Navi and Vega like the leak claims just name it Vevi or better yet Naga.

I swear AMD is the fucking worst when it comes to naming their products. They ditched Radeon HD 8000, 9000 and went straight to Rn 200. Then after RX 500, they leaped back to RX 5000. Jesus fuck! And just forget about whatever they named their mobile and desktop APUs in the meantime. People make fun of Intel's 10k series naming scheme but at least they and Nvidia to some extent follow the numbering scheme.

To be specific the RTG naming scheme has been horrible. The CPU side has been more coherent. Especially since Ryzen debuted. Granted the Zen+ generation screwed things up a little where Ryzen 2000 was Zen+ not Zen2.

Intel and Nvidia have the advantage of time. Core and GTX have been around for a long time with well understood naming schemes (if you don't account for rebrandings). Its only recently that these things have derailed too with Intel's absurd i9-10900KFS or whatever and Nvidias RTX confusion along with endless GTX 1660 variations.

In the end - no company is perfect in their naming because often it's a marketing decision that can change on a whim.

 

[londiste]

12-13 CU on mobile sounds OK but 11CU still at the top of desktop lineup?
Everything so far points at this being Vega, so not that big of an improvement.
At least hopefully higher clock speeds due to 7nm.

Intel and Nvidia have the advantage of time. Core and GTX have been around for a long time with well understood naming schemes (if you don't account for rebrandings). Its only recently that these things have derailed too with Intel's absurd i9-10900KFS or whatever and Nvidias RTX confusion along with endless GTX 1660 variations.

Getting to number 10 or the next generation after 10 have always been problematic and marketing decisions at that point have been strange.
10900KF sounds stupid but actually follows their established naming model. 10 - 10th gen, 900 - higher end, K - unlocked multiplier, F - without/disabled iGPU.

 

[Cheeseball]

With current driver state of RDNA, GCN based APU might be safer.

Well, can't really deny that considering I have a 5700 XT myself and it's not-so-perfect debut with drivers.

 

[Vayra86]

I think AMD Is shooting for good enough IGP not 'killer IGP' here with these APUs. And they should, that A10 also never made any waves because it could play some 720p games and for notebooks it won't be much different. The demand just isn't there I think. If people really want to game, they get a dGPU that does everything a hundred times better. And for everything below that, the IGP and its meh perf is just fine. The focus is on CPU, and that is quite fine. But still.... a halo notebook product wouldn't hurt.

I really hope AMD doesn't change the iGPU naming scheme again. Current Vega 3/8/11 is short and concise. If it's a mix of Navi and Vega like the leak claims just name it Vevi or better yet Naga.

I swear AMD is the fucking worst when it comes to naming their products. They ditched Radeon HD 8000, 9000 and went straight to Rn 200. Then after RX 500, they leaped back to RX 5000. Jesus fuck! And just forget about whatever they named their mobile and desktop APUs in the meantime. People make fun of Intel's 10k series naming scheme but at least they and Nvidia to some extent follow the numbering scheme.

LOL

spot on. At least they got Zen / Ryzen / Threadripper right in naming. I wonder if they can keep that current convention up or feel obliged to follow Intel/Nv again and pick at their modelnumbers.

But yeah... for GPU its pretty ridiculous. We went from HD to R---(X) to RX and got none the wiser, and Vega is all over the place. Then again, Nvidia is also going borderline these days with 20xx and 16xx side by side... never mind the jump from 10xx to 20xx. WTF was that anyway.

I think the theme here is: slow GPU progress in absolute performance per gen = more naming confusion to hide it.

 

[notb]

No Navi yet? VCN 1.0 would be perfect for a potential 4400G, especially in a HTPC for HEVC/H.265 decoding/transcoding.

I bet they simply can't find a solution for multi-screen power draw.

Look at RX5500 review on TPU:

AMD Radeon RX 5500 Review

The RX 5500 Navi is AMD's ambitious attempt to disrupt the sub-$200 graphics card market just as the RX 5700 series did to the sub-$400 market, bringing in much needed competition. It won't be easy as NVIDIA tried to preempt it with the GTX 1650 Super and GTX 1660 Super.

www.techpowerup.com

Vega idle power draw is very high, but multi-monitor is just +2-3W.
Radeon VII is exactly the same.
However, RX5500 gets +14W (4->18).

Even if we assume there's a 3W measurement error, Navi figures are absurd (even if it becomes something like 2W->9W in a smaller mobile SoC).

So AMD has to stay with Vega for most important segment: mobile <=25W SoCs (and likely the desktop 35W as well).

I guess dividing the lineup and making larger SoCs on Navi didn't make much sense.

 

[londiste]

Do TPU reviews use 2 monitors?

Multi-monitor power draw is a tricky thing. 2 vs 3 monitors are different, high refresh rate monitors are different plus combinations. This seems to heavily depend on power management implementation in drivers. 2 monitors are generally figured out but if one of them is a high refresh rate one, both vendors' GPUs tend to run higher than expected. Once you add a third display you usually get a very noticeable increase in clocks and power consumption. Add to this that monitors can be hotplugged and that will throw another wrench into it.

I have mostly had Nvidia cards and both Maxwell and Pascal cards went a little back and forth on how they handled multiple monitors, mostly with driver versions. Somewhere right before Turing was released Nvidia managed to semi-reliably fix clocks/power for 2 monitors with one high-refresh rate one. Then it was broken for several months again. Right now, everything works again for my Turing GPU, including lowered clocks and power for all 3 screens connected at once (1440p 165Hz, 1440p 60Hz, 2160p 60Hz). I have no faith in this being permanent

AMD had a pretty good handle on single and dual monitor power with Vega. Single-monitor idle was and is downright impressive, dual-monitor is OK but at least once the early issues were resolved it worked reliably. Triple-monitor seems to be hit and miss. Mostly miss with load clocks applied. I have much better impression from Vega with this but I did not use the card for nearly as long periods of time. I have the same impression from Vega 11 in my 2400G but this one only rarely has more than one monitor connected.

 

[Deathy]

I bet they simply can't find a solution for multi-screen power draw.

If they use an updated display engine from the Navi product, that would not help much though, right?

 

[notb]

Do TPU reviews use 2 monitors?

2 monitors with different resolution, so likely the most common setup.
Resolutions in this scenario are 1920x1080 and 1280x1024, so likely lower than we would expect in 2019, so power consumption could be even worse.

AMD had a pretty good handle on single and dual monitor power with Vega.

Basically, it was very bad with Polaris, but they somehow fixed it in Vega (and in Polaris-based Radeon Pro for Apple).

Now it's (kind of) a new architecture and power issues came back.
There's no way Apple could accept this, so they'll help them with optimization (I guess: again).

 

[yeeeeman]

A bit low CU count if I am honest. 3780U in Surface pro with 11 cores is just slightly better than the 1065G7 as shown in Anandtech review.
Tigerlake will add, according to rumours a lot of GPU power to the already good Ice Lake GPU, so we will see how this ends up.

As for desktop, yes, these APUs won't have any competition.

 

[R0H1T]

A bit low CU count if I am honest. 3780U in Surface pro with 11 cores is just slightly better than the 1065G7 as shown in Anandtech review.
Tigerlake will add, according to rumours a lot of GPU power to the already good Ice Lake GPU, so we will see how this ends up.

As for desktop, yes, these APUs won't have any competition.

That was with an over 50% mem bandwidth deficit, or if you take AIDA64 screenshot as evidence then ICL had 100% more bandwidth to play with

Vega on 7nm will still lead Intel's TGL in most cases IMO, unless of course Intel does something ridiculous & just dedicates like 50~75% die to the IGP & doesn't go beyond 4c/8t for ULV versions. Remember those AVX512 instructions, they take a helluva lot of Si real estate!

 

[notb]

As for desktop, yes, these APUs won't have any competition.

I would expect no less from AMD. This has always been their niche.

That said, this is the moment where chiplet design gets in the way a bit.
Assuming no changes to the general SoC layout, it'll be 80mm2 max for the GPU chip.
I bet AMD would love to use a larger one if possible.

Ice Lake 1065G7 is relatively tiny for what it offers. The GPU part is around 40mm2.
Imagine what will happen when they start making larger SoCs for desktop...

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I don’t think more CUs will help until memory bandwidth can be increased, especially if they ever start going to 6C or 8C mobile parts. AMD doesn’t have a solid mobile reputation, which means they probably have tighter margins and barely adequate OEM cooling solutions on these chips than the comparable Intel model would. Die size and power management will be key factors.

 

[Chrispy_]

12 or 13 CUs is a little underwhelming but it's an improvement over 10 I guess. Rumours pointed to the top SKU being a 15CU part. If the Surface Laptop 3 is any indication, it may be that the 12 or 13 CU parts aren't fully-enabled dies and that the flawless, best yields actually do have 15CU are being reserved as Apple/Microsoft exclusives?

Even so, Zen2 and 7nm should help with power efficiency. The current APUs are hampered by a slightly disappointing idle power that affects on-paper battery runtimes that a lot of people use to make their purchasing decisions, and additionally, the older manufacturing process meant that the 15W 3700U throttled under combined CPU+GPU load unless given an extra 7-8W. 2500U/2700U/3500U/3700U run games almost 100% faster if you can give them 50% more TDP - beyond that you're well past the efficiency sweet spot and get almost nothing more out of the IGP.

I'm hoping that we can see ultraportables in 1H2020 with 15W Vega12 and an efficiency sweet spot for CPU+GPU combined loads that more closely match the sustained 15W TDP.

 

[Vya Domus]

There is no point in drastically improving the GPU, the memory bandwidth isn't there and unfortunately that's not up to them to improve.

 

[Chrispy_]

There is no point in drastically improving the GPU, the memory bandwidth isn't there and unfortunately that's not up to them to improve.

Do we know what memory specs Renoir will support? It's kind of sad that even the best examples of current laptop APUs are 2666MHz at best, and most of them are 2400.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

There is no point in drastically improving the GPU, the memory bandwidth isn't there and unfortunately that's not up to them to improve.

the memory performance Is there, AMD refuses to use it. Look at the surface book 3. The AMD model has dual channel DDR4 2400, the intel model has dual channell 3733 LPDDR4X. That is nothing short of a MASSIVE jump in bandwidth. And it's not because MS is anti AMD, its because AMD only supports 2400MHz memory on their NEWEST APU!

AMD refuses to employ a better memory controller to take advantage of higher memory speeds that could feed a newer, better iGPU. AMD's refual to embrace higher memory speeds, LPDDR4X, refual to use the latest transistor processes, refual to use the newerst CPU arch, and refusal to use the latest GPU arch merely shows AMD doesnt take mobile seriously, or doesnt care about mobile users. They are content to simply absorb those $450 walmart specials and leave the high margin machines to intel. Again. The 3000 series APUs should have had 7nm zen 2 cores and 7nm rDNA cores for this upcoming holiday season, instead of launching in the spring with last gen hardware.

I know some will tout the argument that AMD just doesnt have the resources to do all this at once. Fine, just like ryzen APUs launching without AMD supplied drivers, if AMD cannot give their all in this market, they shouldnt bother. They are just wasting money and time when they could be putting those resources into the server market and its rediculous margins, or inject some life into their comotose GPU driver department, or invest even more into zen 4 and 5.

 

[R0H1T]

NEWEST APU

Well tbf their newest "yet to be released mass market" APU supports better mem speeds than Intel. It just so happens that ICL will have better lead time in the market, although with limited availability. If AMD can release Renoir till BTS then they'll have a great chance at capturing a huge chunk of the market, especially during the holiday sales. It also depends on TSMC though ~ which is my biggest concern considering they have to have AMD relatively lower down their priority list.

AMD "Renoir" APU to Support LPDDR4X Memory and New Display Engine

AMD's next-generation "Renoir" APU, which succeeds the company's 12 nm "Picasso," will be the company's truly next-generation chip to feature an integrated graphics solution. It's unclear as of now, if the chip will be based on a monolithic die, or if it will be a multi-chip module of a 7 nm...

www.techpowerup.com