AMD’s 2018 Roadmap For Zen+, Desktop & Mobile APUs, Vega On 7nm

At a pre-CES 2018 keynote, AMD briefed members of the press and media about how far its come over the last year with the successful launch of the Zen and Vega architectures, and what it plans to do over the next year, including a number of earlier-than-anticipated surprises.

To call Ryzen a success would be an understatement, as AMD not only brought parity with Intel, but exceeded them on multiple price fronts. We’re not talking just mainstream parts as has been the case over the last few years, but also in the high-performance desktop market as well with Threadripper, a 16-core 32-thread CPU that’s at the same price point as Intel’s 10-core 20-thread CPU. 2017 also saw the launch of AMD’s new Raven Ridge Mobile market, bringing the benefits of the Zen architecture, and coupling it with Vega GPUs.

So what can we expect to see this year?

AMD is a complex company, as it’s competing on two fronts, CPUs with Intel, and graphics with NVIDA, so we’re going to see a little bit of both markets this year, the integration stage and some refinement. The first bit of news is confirmation of Zen+, a sort of tick-tock strategy that Intel used to use. Zen+ is not Zen 2, but a process refinement of the existing Zen architecture, taking Ryzen from 14nm down to 12nm. This results in the usual bump in clock speeds, but also lower power and better integration of graphics cores from Vega. Zen+ CPUs will launch some time around April this year, with further details to come nearer launch. This also ties in with a new motherboard chipset, the 400-series, so expect to see X470 boards around April as well.

Unlike Intel, Ryzen launched all of its desktop CPUs without any kind of IGP, but most desktop users would opt for discrete graphics anyway, so this isn’t much of an issue. On the budget side of things, there was no clear choice for AMD. This now changes with the introduction of the Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G.

The 2400G is a 4C/8T CPU with 11 Vega CUs, ready to go on the AM4 platform (motherboard compatibility check required), and with a launch price of $169. AMD’s aim was a single chip solution for 1080p gaming at medium graphics. Internal benchmarks have the APU playing most modern competitive titles at 50 FPS, including Overwatch and Rocket League. More heavy-handed games like the Witcher 3 (an NVIDIA optimized title), were playing at 30 FPS, and older titles like Skyrim at nearly 100 FPS.

The Ryzen 3 2200G is a step down at 4C/4T and 8 Vega CUs, priced at $99. The 2200G is interesting because it’ll out-perform the existing Ryzen 3 1200, at the same price, but with the added benefit of an integrated GPU, representing some real value on a low-end chip. Both these new desktop APUs are 1st gen Zen on 14nm, and not Zen+ or 12nm, despite the 2nd gen naming. Select motherboards will work out of the box at launch if they have an APU sticker on them, otherwise a UEFI/BIOS update will be required.

AMD did bring up Zen 2 briefly, and noted that the design was ‘complete’ and ‘on track’ for a launch some time around 2020, beyond that, little else was said apart from the usual improved performance and power efficiency that’s expected from a new generation.

More on the mobile side of things, we’ll see the Ryzen Mobile launch complete with Ryzen 3 Mobile APUs coming out in the next few days, since Ryzen 7 and 5 Mobile have already launched. These low-end chips are aimed at the ultra-thin market. Towards the second half of the year, we’ll also see the launch of the Ryzen PRO APUs, catering to business needs with extra security requirements in a mobile form factor.

The last major piece of news comes in the form of a surprise announcement about a new 7nm Vega GPU that’ll be coming out later this year. This is the smallest manufacture process currently available, and the most expensive. For all you gamers out there, don’t get your hopes up. These 7nm Vega cards are for exclusive use in AMD’s Radeon Instinct range, or compute cards that are to compete with NVIDIA’s Tesla range. The Radeon Instinct MI25 was announced quite a few months ago, but barely anything has been mentioned since. These “Radeon Instinct “Vega” 7nm” cards (the official title given in the press decks) is listed separately from the M125, but we’re unsure if they are the same card. We’ll have to wait and see if a new card will come out, or this is just the Instinct MI25.