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AMD announces Zen 2 design is 'complete', Zen+ now 'sampling' and more

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More processor news today, as AMD has released a fair bit of information from their plans including Zen 2 and Zen+. Firstly, they've announced a price-cut for existing Ryzen processors, although that does depend on what store you go with. I've checked a few UK stores today and their prices have not yet been adjusted.

AMD has confirmed that the Zen CPU core (known as Ryzen) is moving to 12nm with samples now shipping. They are planning to launch these Zen+ 12nm CPUs in April of this year and they confirmed they will be clocked higher and come with "Precision Boost 2". Since this is only a refresh, there shouldn't be massive differences other than AMD tweaking the design to get the most out of it. AMD confirmed Zen+ will continue to use the AM4 socket, but they will also launch the X470 chipset optimized for Zen+.

Moving onto Zen 2, this 7nm design is now "complete", although they aren't giving out a date for that yet. Most likely launching next year, it's quite surprising that they've finalised it so quickly, it seems AMD are firmly back on top-form with their processors now so it's going to be a fun two years for AMD fans.

A little further out, but Zen 3 using 7nm+ is currently planned to be release in 2020, although very little information is available on that.

They will be releasing the Ryzen 5 2400G (4 cores, 8 threads) and Ryzen 3 2200G (4 cores, 4 threads) APUs which will both come with Radeon RX Vega graphics. These should be launching February 12th this year along with mobile processors that will also come with Vega graphics.

Also, AMD will be releasing Radeon Vega Mobile GPU through this year, which will be primarily aimed at ultra-thin notebooks.

See more details here.

Fun fact: Some of the press slides I was sent, had a picture of the Ataribox in it.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: AMD, Hardware
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Shmerl Jan 9, 2018
Interesting. So it looks like they are skipping 12nm Vega, and going to 7nm right away.
Shmerl Jan 9, 2018
This doesn't sound very promising for those who wanted to get Vega refresh this year:

QuoteAlso on the list is perhaps the surprise announcement of the day: AMD will be bringing Vega to 7nm, with customer sampling expected to start in 2018. This ultimately means that Vega on 7nm will hit the shelves in 2019, but there is a twist to the tale. The first products off the line will be solely for the Radeon Instinct family and machine learning. Users who want 7nm desktop-class products will have to wait a little longer, but it does give an indication of how GlobalFoundries 7nm process is coming along.
<...>
As mentioned above, AMD plans to start sampling a machine learning focused version of Vega on 7nm much later in 2018, where ‘sampling’ in this case means pre-testing to select partners. This will likely lead to a Radeon Instinct product, initially perhaps with a small die size, being made available in early 2019. The big product on 7nm, however, will be AMD’s Navi GPU architecture. AMD did not go into specific details, but we suspect that Navi will be permeating through most of AMD’s discrete product line portfolio, as well as being implemented into APUs with Zen 2 processor cores. Given the timeframe here, Navi is certainly a 2019 product, although it might be debatable if that means early or late 2019.

Looks like it's another year to wait. Well, my current RX 480 performs well, even though some games like TW3 could benefit from stronger card.


Last edited by Shmerl on 9 January 2018 at 1:20 am UTC
TheRiddick Jan 10, 2018
Got a 1080ti mini turning up so I'm good for this year. And it will be interesting what happens with Vega at 7nm. Going to assume it just means a really nice TDP drop which is what they really need for the Vega cards, perhaps the TOP watercooled vega card will be able to bump up to 1080ti speeds without the high TDP.

THAT could change the playing field quite a bit but its also possible AMD will just focus on AI learning and ignore consumer option upgrades.
Trump Jan 13, 2018
Wasn't Vega aimed at work stations/mining/computing instead of gaming? Does suck though the 500's wasn't what we thought it was going to be.
Shmerl Jan 14, 2018
Vega was supposed to be general purpose. But it will take AMD another year to get to a competitive result on high end.
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