An AMD processor has been spotted in a leak, and it looks like this chip supports DDR5 RAM, so those after Team Red silicon which runs with cutting-edge system memory can start to get (just a little) excited.
This one was flagged up by Benchleaks on Twitter (a bot that posts benchmarks for unknown hardware), and it’s identified as an engineering sample of an AMD CPU.
AMD Eng Sample: 100-000000560-40_Y (8C 16T)https://t.co/GVvZ6l2RlVDecember 13, 2021
As you can see, the chip has 8-cores (16-threads), and as the details of the linked BAPCo CrossMark benchmark show, the Asus system that the processor was in had two sticks of 8GB system RAM running at 4800MHz.
While the details say desktop, this could be a desktop or mobile CPU, and actually more likely the latter – possibly an Asus Vivobook M3402RA, as Tom’s Hardware, which spotted this, observes.
Whatever the case, given the memory speed, it’s likely to be DDR5 modules (or LPDDR5 if mobile), as current Zen 3 chips don’t support going as fast as 4800MHz.
So, the most likely candidates here are that the chip is either an early Zen 4 desktop CPU, or a ‘Rembrandt’ mobile APU (based on a purported Zen 3 refresh), the latter seeming the most probable. That is, however, just educated guesswork really, and obviously take all this with a high degree of caution.
The actual results of the benchmark aren’t all that good, but that doesn’t mean much given that this is a pre-release sample of the silicon.
Analysis: AMD could use a response to Alder Lake mobile
Ryzen 6000 ‘Rembrandt’ series chips are thought to be launching early in 2022, and could be revealed at CES 2022; that’s certainly a possibility, though they may not actually be available until later.
Rembrandt APUs are expected to pack integrated RDNA 2 graphics, and that could be a serious attraction. AMD will need something in its armory to combat what Intel has coming, for sure, and that’s Alder Lake mobile chips early next year, which will really feel the benefits of that hybrid architecture and efficiency cores.
Remember, Intel already has the lion’s share of the laptop market as it is, and AMD can’t afford to lose ground in that sphere (even if Ryzen is doing way better on the desktop). That said, it’s unclear if Rembrandt APUs will be enough to keep pace with Intel’s 12th-gen mobile products.
If Rembrandt turns up early in 2022, it may well be alongside the rumored Radeon RX 6000S mobile GPUs, which might be led by the RX 6800S. At CES, we’re also hoping Nvidia may unleash an RTX 3070 Ti mobile graphics card, and maybe other laptop models. So there might just be a lot of tempting new options for gaming notebooks in the pipeline very soon.
