Computex 2024: AMD Announces Zen 5-Based Ryzen AI 300 Series Processors for Laptops With XDNA 2 NPU and RDNA 3.5 Graphics
The company claims that it is the third generation of AI processors but what happened to second generation? Find the answer here.
AMD just announced its latest Zen 5-based Ryzen AI 300 series processors for laptops to target the AI needs of upcoming Copilot+ PCs. The company claims it is the "world's best processor for Copilot+ PCs".
In addition to the Zen 5 (along with Zen 5c) CPU core, the Ryzen AI 300 series also comes with the latest XDNA 2 NPU and RDNA 3.5 integrated GPU. Here is everything you need to know about the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series processors, including a comparison with the competition.
AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series Processors Details
As per the announcement, the Ryzen AI 300 series processors will come with "up to" 12 4nm-process based Zen 5 CPU cores and "up to" 16 RDNA 3.5 Compute Units. However, as outlined above, the focus has primarily been on the XDNA 2 NPU with 50 TOPs (Trillions of Operations Per second or Tera of Operations Per second). AMD also compared its TOPs capability with Qualcomm, Intel, and Apple.
The Ryzen AI 300 lineup includes two processors, the top-of-the-line Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and Ryzen AI 9 365. You can check all the features of both these processors in the table below:
AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series Processor Lineup: Specifications| Processor | Cores | Threads | Base/Boost Clock Speed | Cache (MB) | TDP | NPU (TOPs) | Graphics |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | 12 (4x Zen 5, 8x Zen 5c) | 24 | 2.0 GHz/Up to 5.1 GHz | 36 | 28W | 50 | Radeon 890M (16 RDNA 3.5 CUs) |
| Ryzen AI 9 365 | 10 (4x Zen 5, 6x Zen 5c) | 20 | 2.0 GHz/Up to 5.0 GHz | 34 | 28W | 50 | Radeon 880M (12 RDNA 3.5 CUs) |
Several laptop makers, including Asus, Lenovo, MSI, HP, and Acer, are set to launch Ryzen AI 300 series-powered devices from July 2024.
Gaming Performance and Comparisons
Regarding gaming, AMD claims that Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 will offer "up to" an average of 36 percent better performance than Intel Core Ultra 185H. However, IGN India believes this primarily concerns Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5 instead of AI (XDNA 2).
The company also compared the performance of HX 370 in 3DMark Night Raid Graphics with Snapdragon X Elite. As part of this chart, AMD claims "+60%" better performance because it does not need to emulate the software. We must take these comparisons with a grain of salt until we can verify the performance.
The company highlighted that with the help of XDNA 2, Ryzen AI 300 series will be ready to offer the upcoming Copilot features. These include Microsoft Recall, Co-creator, live captions and real-time translation. According to AMD, XDNA 2 offers "up to 5x" improvement in capacity to compute and "up to 2x" better power efficiency when compared to the first generation of XDNA.
New AMD Processors and New Branding (Again!)
AMD has yet again introduced a new branding with the launch of the 300 series of AI-focused processors. According to the branding, "AMD Ryzen AI" is the main brand, followed by "9 HX" as the processor level. This is followed by 370, where 3 denotes the series of the processor, and 70 outlines the actual model (SKU) number. This must be better for consumers in an already convoluted AMD processor lineup.
It is also interesting that AMD has directly launched a 300 series of Ryzen AI processors, but we didn't really see the 100 or 200 series. Here, the 300 series is referred to as the "3rd Generation" of "AMD AI PC." To do this, AMD refers to the Ryzen 7040 series as the first generation (with 10 TOPs) and the Ryzen 8040 series as the second generation (with 16 TOPs).
