CES 2022: AMD Unveils Radeon Graphic Cards and Ryzen Processors

CES 2022 has come and gone but the memories linger. AMD a computer processors developer just like Intel unveiled technologies that fit for both business and consumer markets. AMD unveiled new wallet-friendly graphics cards that fit perfectly for desktop PC. The new wallet-friendly graphics cards are called the Radeon RX 6500 XT and RX 6400. Over the past few weeks, the new releases have actually been the subject of rumour.

The new wallet-friendly graphics cards come at affordable prices and are targeted at delivering 1080p gaming, – the 6500 XT starts at $199. As for the RX 6400, no price is available yet, but the price obviously will be a bit cheaper compared to the 6500 XT. This graphics card will only be sold to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), not consumers. OEMs traditionally refers to a company whose goods are used as components in the products of another company, which then sells the finished item to users.

The RX 6500 XT processor is a Navi 24 (6nm) GPU that boasts 1,024 Stream Processors, with a memory of 4GB GDDR6 memory and also a memory bandwidth of up to 144GB/s. The speed of the base clock is 2610MHz and boost up to 2815MHz. These cards have been tested by AMD in 1080p (high settings), claims are it’s up to 35% faster when gaming compared to Nvidia’s GTX 1650. (Note that this includes the 6500 XT setup benefiting from Smart Access Memory, and applying the usual caveats about internal benchmarking and potential cherry-picking, of course). Various third-party graphics card manufacturers are getting set from January 19 to produce using the 6500 XT. These manufacturers include the likes of ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, PowerColor, Sapphire and XFX.

The RX 6400, will not be sold as boxed products on shelves, but will only be available to OEMs. It’s not surprising that both RX 6500 and RX 6400 would be available to OEMs only, although It’s not the first graphics card to be sold just to PC manufacturers, it won’t be the last either–  but who knows if they could be available as a standalone product in the near future. This means that these chips would come in a prebuilt system on selected launch dates. The RX 6400 will be in PC systems starting June 2022. This GPU will possess 768 Stream Processors and again 4GB of GDDR6 VRAM, with base and boost clocks of up to 2039MHz and 2321MHz.

Also on the list of AMDs new releases is the Ryzen 6000 and Ryzen 7000 chips, an upgrade to the Ryzen 5000 chips, surpassing Intel in both gaming and productivity. In 2016, AMD was essentially dead in the water, but with the launch of its Ryzen chips, the company returned to form making Intel uncomfortable. Fast forward to several years down the line the company has released chips with capabilities that scare the competition. But for now, Intel has cemented itself for the top spot especially with the release of its 12th-Gen Alder Lake chips.

According to reports, the Ryzen 6000 will be a mobile-only part meant for laptops just like the Ryzen 4000 series. While the 4000 series was known to have been developed based on AMD’s regular Zen 2 architecture, the AMD 6000 series chips are something different as they will use an all-new, not yet used architecture: Zen 3+. As the name suggests, the Ryzen 6000 is a modest improvement to the Zen 3 architecture that makes up the Ryzen 5000 chips. Some of the key improvements include, it’s fabricated on a 6nm process instead of the previous 7nm process used since Zen 2. This reason is something important especially to laptops as it allows for better efficiency and keeps temperatures low. Core configurations will possess quite a number of similarities to other AMD chips. For example, the Ryzen 5 6600U will start at six cores and 12 threads, while the highest-end Ryzen 9 6980HX will come with eight cores and 16 threads.

While there are those who preferred a desktop product, AMD also teased its proper answer in the form of the Ryzen 7000 chips. Although AMD reveals much, here are a few things we unravelled. While 6000 series chips will use Zen 3+ for laptops, AMD is jumping up straight to Zen 4 for desktop. Reports say that AMD has no plans to use the Zen 3+ architecture on desktop, at least not right now. Instead, it will be making use of a proper successor to Zen 3 for the Ryzen 7000. With this new introduction to chips, it’s goodbye to the old reliable AM4 socket—as an all-new AM5 socket emerges, which also sees the company move to an LGA design (where the pins are located on the motherboard instead of the processor).

Zen 4 chips are expected to be fabricated on a 5nm process, allowing AMD to cram more transistors into its CPUs. Additionally, Ryzen 7000 chips will allow the adoption of both DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 connectivity. Ryzen 6000 mobile chips also support DDR5 memory but have zero support for PCIe 5.0. For now, no price is attached to this chip AMD has assured of a full unveiling later in the year.

The first Ryzen 6000 laptops that were announced at CES 2022, are the likes of Asus, Alienware, and Lenovo, and would be available starting February. As for Ryzen 7000, AMD didn’t announce specific chips or when they’ll be available. AMD only discussed the Zen 4’s biggest improvements and the all-new AM5 socket, to be launched later in 2022.