AMD at CES: Ryzen 4000, Threadripper 3990X, Radeon RX 5600 XT and more

AMD has been on a roll for a couple of years now. The company has been bulldozing any competition that tries to stop it. Earlier last year, the company revealed its third-gen Ryzen processors that completely changed the game in the CPU market. Based on the new Zen 2 architecture, the processor lineup managed to overtake Intel after almost a decade of team blue supremacy.

In terms of graphics though, while the new Navi graphics cards are very competitive against the NVIDIA RTX lineup, they still haven’t been able to compete at the enthusiast level. However, it seems like AMD isn’t targeting that part of the market just yet as the company has come out with yet another graphics card in the ‘budget’ segment.

AMD didn’t just stop there at CES though, they also revealed the new Ryzen 4000 mobile processor lineup along with an absolute beast of a Threadripper 3990X, with some monstrous specs and a price tag to rival those. So, let’s go through all of these announcements one by one and see how well did AMD do at its CES press conference.

AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT – 7.2 Teraflops for $280

After months of speculation and rumours, AMD finally revealed its latest graphics card, the Radeon RX 5600 XT. Aimed at the budget market for 1080p gaming, the graphics card will be available on January 21 for $279 USD.

Best Graphics Cards to buy in 2020 – Detailed Review

In terms of internals, the RX 5600 XT is based on the 7nm process but somehow still has relatively low clock speeds. At the press conference, AMD compared it to NVIDIA GeForce 1660 Ti and, as expected, the 5600 XT managed to beat it substantially. The card is capable of running games like Apex Legends and Fortnite at 120 fps on 1080p which is pretty impressive for eSports.

Under the hood, the RX 5600 XT comes with 6 GB of GDDR6 memory, the first card in the Navi family with this spec. Other than that, the RX 5600 XT has a 192-bit bus width and 2304 cores clocked at a modest 1560 MHz. All of this will result in a combined output of around 7.2 Teraflops, which is reasonable.

The graphics card has a TDP of 150W and is based on the RDNA1 architecture. As it is the RX 5600XT, you can expect it to perform like the RX 5700XT’s little brother. According to AMD’s comparisons, the RX 5600XT offers around 75% the performance of an RX 5700XT.

Here are the full specifications for the card:

• Clock: GPU / Memory
  Boost Clock: Up to 1560 MHz / 12.0 Gbps
  Game Clock: 1375 MHz / 12.0 Gbps
  Base Clock: 1130 MHz / 12.0 Gbps
• Key Specifications:
  Radeon RX 5600 XT Graphics
  2nd Gen 7nm GPU
  Up to 1560 MHz Boost Clock
  6GB GDDR6, Up to 12.0 Gbps Speed
  1 x 8-pin Connectors
  3 x DisplayPort / 1 x HDMI
  240.6 x 126.5 x 53.0 mm
• Key Features:
  Long Life Dual Fan Design
  Metal Backplate
  0dB Silent Cooling
  AMD Eyefinity Technology
  Radeon FreeSync 2 HDR
  8K Resolution Support

AMD Ryzen ‘Renoir’ 4000 – 7nm Zen 2 APUs coming to laptops

AMD also changed the laptop game when it brought its 2nd Gen Ryzen mobile APUs to the market. Offering much better graphical performance at a cheaper price, the Ryzen based laptops were the obvious choice for people looking to game on a budget.

However, the processors and optimization were still better on the Intel chips. AMD was still using older Zen 1 cores though even for the Ryzen 3000 lineup. Now, things will change drastically as AMD has finally shifted its mobile APU lineup to Zen 2 as well.

Called the Ryzen 4000, the APU family is aimed at consumer notebooks, especially for people looking to game as well. Offering greater IPC performance and higher clock speeds, the Ryzen 4000 will compete with Intel’s 10th gen Ice Lake and Come Lake CPUs.

In terms of segmentation, AMD has taken the Intel route and has divided the lineup into two parts, the 4000 U series and the 4000 H series. The U series, much like Intel, will have lower powered APUs while the H series will be focusing on top notch performance.

AMD revealed multiple APUs in the lineup with the Ryzen 9 4900H being the flagship SKU coming with 8 cores and 16 threads. The lower priced Ryzen 7 4800H also offers the same core count but with lower clock speeds.

Here is the full lineup of the AMD Ryzen 4000 series:

AMD compared the Ryzen 7 4800U to the Intel Ice Lake Core i7-1065G7 and the Ryzen chip was almost 90% faster in multi-threaded performance with the numbers being much closer for single-threaded tests.

The graphics performance on the Ryzen 4000 series is also touted to be almost 30% faster than Intel’s Gen 11 graphics, which is impressive. The first batch of Ryzen 4000 laptops will start shipping in Q1 2020 with over 100 models coming throughout the year.

AMD RX 5600M and RX 5700M will boost mobile gaming

AMD isn’t just stopping at the Ryzen 4000 series though as the company had a surprise in store for everyone. To compete in the higher end gaming laptop market against, AMD has launched its own set of mobility GPUs. Based on the 7nm process, the Radeon RX 5700M and RX 5600M will compete with the likes of RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 from NVIDIA.

While the company did not reveal any specifications for these two graphics cards, we can expect them to be pretty close to the desktop variants, the RX 5700 and RX 5600. However, AMD did state that these would offer the “ultimate” mobile gaming experience.

In addition to the performance, the mobility graphics are also expected to be very efficient thanks to the 7nm technology and you can expect longer battery life while gaming.

The Radeon Mobility graphics will be making an appearance on gaming laptops later this year with the first laptops coming out in Q2 of 2020.

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X – The 64 Core beast

While the entire AMD lineup for both mobile and desktop was impressive, the company had one massive bomb left to drop. The Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, which is AMD’s flagship processor for 2020 was finally announced after months of anticipation.

Sporting some absolutely ridiculous specs, the new Threadripper will be the ‘ultimate computing chip’ according to AMD. In terms of actual specs though, hear this out. The Threadripper 3990X has 64 cores and 128 threads, a number which is mindbogglingly high.

The impressive list of specifications doesn’t just end there as the processor features 288 MB of total cache and around 128 Gen 4 PCIe lanes. And, to top it all off, the 3990X manages to run all 64 cores with only 280 Watts of TDP.

All of this doesn’t come cheap though as the top of the line Threadripper 3990X can cost you as much as $3990 but, for something so powerful, that price point is to be expected. Here’s the full 3rd Gen Ryzen Threadripper lineup:

The AMD Ryzen Threadripper will be available on store shelves as early as February 7, 2020.

So, how did AMD do this year at CES? Let us know down in the comments below!