AMD today announced its 4th Generation Ryzen 4000G and Ryzen PRO 4000G desktop processors for pre-built OEM desktops. The company also expanded its entry-level Athlon 3000G series and debuted the Athlon PRO 3000G series. The Ryzen 4000G and PRO 4000G mark the Socket AM4 desktop debut of the 7 nm "Renoir" silicon, which combines up to 8 CPU cores based on the "Zen 2" microarchitecture, with a Radeon Vega 8 iGPU. These processors benefit from the 65 W TDP and increased power limits of the desktop platform to dial up CPU- and iGPU engine clock speeds significantly over the Ryzen 4000U and 4000H mobile processors based on the same silicon. The new Athlon 3000G-series and Athlon PRO 3000G-series parts are based on a 12 nm die that has "Zen+" CPU cores.

All of the processor models announced today are OEM-only, meaning that you'll only find them on pre-built consumer- and commercial desktops by the likes of HP, Lenovo, Dell, etc. Not even the system-integrator (SI) channel (eg: Maingear, Origin PC, etc.,) gets these chips. OEMs will pair these processors with motherboards based on the AMD B550 chipset, although the chips are compatible with the X570 chipset, too. The Ryzen PRO 4000G processors are targeted at commercial desktops that are part of large business environments, and launches along with the new AMD PRO565 chipset. Since they are OEM-only, the company did not reveal pricing for any of these chips. They did however mention that for the DIY retail channel, they do plan to update their product stack with processors that have integrated graphics at a later time (without going into specifics of the said time).

The "Zen 2" based Ryzen 4000-series mobile processors and Threadripper 3990X HEDT chip dominated headlines throughout AMD's CES 2020 event, but an important product announcement slipped past us: the mobile Athlon 3000 Gold and 3000 Silver families of entry-level mobile SoCs. These are 15-Watt SoCs targeting low-cost ultraportables, convertibles, and straight up Windows x64 tablets, competing against Intel's Pentium Gold 5000U "Whiskey Lake" and Pentium Silver "Gemini Lake Refresh" series. The family currently only consists of two SKUs, the Athlon Gold 3150U and Athlon Silver 3050U.

The two chips are based on the "Dali" silicon, and feature "Zen" CPU cores. The Athlon Gold 3150U features a 2-core/4-thread "Zen" CPU clocked at 2.40 GHz with 3.30 GHz boost. The Athlon Silver 3050U, on the other hand, is configured with a 2-core/2-thread CPU clocked at 2.30 GHz with 3.20 GHz boost. The CPUs on both models is configured with 4 MB of L3 cache, which takes their "total cache" (L2 + L3) figure up to 5 MB. The iGPU on the 3150U is a Radeon Vega 3 with 192 stream processors, clocked at 1.00 GHz. The one on the 3050U, is AMD's smallest, with just 2 compute units, working up to 128 stream processors, but the engine clock is set at 1.10 GHz.

A Geekbench database submission from an HP "17-ca2xxx" laptop (likely a prototype), spilled the beans on an upcoming AMD Athlon Gold 3150U processor, with nomenclature that looks inspired from the Pentium Gold. Intel uses the "Gold" and "Silver" brand extensions to distinguish processors based on its performance microarchitectures from those based on its low-power microarchitectures (eg: a "Skylake" based Pentium Gold, and a "Goldmont" based Pentium Silver). The addition of "Gold" to the Athlon brand could denote performance rivaling mobile versions of Pentium Gold found in entry-level full-size notebooks.

Moving on to the test itself, and we see the Athlon Gold 3150U being listed as a "Raven Ridge" derivative featuring a 2-core/4-thread CPU and Radeon graphics (likely "Vega 3" as with its desktop counterpart). The CPU is shown having a 2.40 GHz base frequency, and 3.30 GHz boost, 512 KB L2 cache per core, and 4 MB shared L3 cache. The chip scores 3,559 single-core points, and 7,336 points multi-core, comparable to entry-level dual-core processors from this generation. This makes us wonder what the Athlon "Silver" could be, and whether AMD is working on a new low-power microarchitecture in the near future.