AMD expands Ryzen range with Ryzen 200 and new Ryzen AI 300

AMD expands Ryzen range with Ryzen 200 and new Ryzen AI 300

AMD launched Ryzen AI 300 back in the summer of 2024, but the chip family remained very small for a long time. Now AMD is expanding the series with some new scions, aimed at mainstream laptops. Even more entry-level is the new Ryzen 200 series.

AMD is expanding its Ryzen AI 300 series for the laptop at CES in Las Vegas with four new processors: two classic chips and two Pro chips with advanced management capabilities on board. The range expansion comes ago: AMD announced Ryzen AI 300 back in June 2024, but only provided the lineup with high-end components under the Ryzen AI 9 banner. Now Ryzen AI 7 and Ryzen AI 5 chips will be added.

AMD Ryzen AICPU (Cores / Threads)GHz (Boost)Cache (MB)NPU (Tops)TDP (W)
7 350 (Pro)8 / 165,0245015-54
5 340(Pro)6 / 124,8225015-54

The Ryzen AI 300 series is built around AMD’s latest Zen 5 architecture for the CPU. The chips are baked by TSMC on the 4 nm node. The Pro chips and regular processors are copies of each other except for management functionality. The Pro CPUs will appear in the market in the second quarter of this year; the regular processors will still be on shelves this quarter.

NPU

AMD points out that its chips have an onboard NPU with a computing power of 50 TOPS. That should help support AI workloads on office laptops and is, on paper, faster than competitors’ NPU chips.

Although manufacturers such as AMD and Intel are betting heavily on the NPU, its impact on office workloads is almost negligible at the moment. The NPU does make filters and background blurring during video calls more efficient, but most other relevant AI applications today run in the cloud.

Ryzen 200

AMD is also announcing another large collection of Ryzen 200 processors. Those CPUs do not have “AI” in the name, although some examples do have a (light) NPU on board. AMD is focusing entirely on the mainstream experience with Ryzen 200.

Next chips will appear under the Ryzen 200 family name:

AMD RyzenCPU (Cores / Threads)GHz (Boost)Cache (MB)NPU (Tops)TDP (W)
9 2708 / 125,2241635-54
7 2608 / 165,1241635-54
7 250 (Pro)8 / 165,1241615-30
5 2406 / 125,0221635-54
5 230 (Pro)6 / 124,9221615-30
5 220 (Pro)6 / 124,922N/A.15-30
3 210 (Pro)4 / 84,712N/A.15-30

AMD confuses a bit with the naming. Ryzen 200 is a variant of Ryzen 8000, built on Zen 4. For the latest generation of Zen 5 laptop chips, AMD has changed its type numbers. In that regard, it is clearer to relaunch some Ryzen 8000 components in light variants under the Ryzen 200 name, as that makes its position in the current lineup (lower than Ryzen 300) clearer. However, we cannot really call the approach clear.

From announcement to laptop

With Ryzen AI 300, Ryzen 200 and now Ryzen AI Max (plus) (pro), there is a large lineup of laptop processors from AMD on the table. AMD is not lacking in components. As always, however, the manufacturer depends on the enthusiasm of manufacturers to actually incorporate the processors into elegant laptop designs.

The early signs are favorable in this regard. HP is paying as much attention to Intel as AMD at CES, for example, and for the first time, some AMD designs actually look as attractive or even more elegant that Intel equivalents.