Warning: That new AMD Ryzen 7000 laptop may not be as fresh as you think

AMD has apparently dug deep into its spare parts bin with today's launch of its 7020-series mobile processors, which it says will bring all-day battery life to more entry-level notebooks. “At any price point, users should feel confident they are getting the best experience possible from AMD,” said Saeid Moshkelani, GM of AMD’s …

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Pico machine

The "smallest" dual core Athlon Gold 7220U would be a big upgrade for machines line Zotac Pico 336. Or for the nano class computers.

Two inherited Pico 335 are used here, one as backup-NAS with USB drives, only turned on when needed running Server 2022. The other is running Windows 10 was not used. But the raging energy prices made me resurrect it to run dumb download jobs or similar over night jobs when needed, saving energy instead of letting that do my normal gaming-centered computer.

[Henry Wertz 1]

I had one, no big deal

I had one, no big deal -- a Ryzen with 2nd gen CPU and 3rd gen graphics. I looked at a benchmark or two before I bought, found the speed acceptable in benchmark and in person found it fine too. This could have been to fit cost, it could have been to fit the power budget... whichever, it fit both in my case.

[Anonymous Coward]

A complete non-article

They are using older architectures in their line-up - so what?

They are publishing the details and specs and people will get what they pay for.

Just because it's not the latest and greatest shiney shiney doesn't mean it doesn't have a place.

[doublelayer]

Re: A complete non-article

"They are using older architectures in their line-up - so what?"

Most of the time, nothing. These are probably just fine for most use cases, and anyone who truly understands CPUs will look for benchmarks and see whatever difference there is. They've also cleaned up their numbers so it's at least possible to identify this without having to search through hidden docs.

The risk more generally with a policy like this is user confusion, where a user assumes a CPU will be using more modern cores and can be mislead into buying something they wouldn't if they understood it. Intel's done that before, which is probably why, even though their modern Celeron chips are pretty good, they still feel they have to hide the name because of its history (when they started using stuff from the Atom line that didn't produce great results). It's also done in stuff other than CPUs to make something sound like it's worth a higher price than it really is. I don't think AMD has done that here, but the proof of that is in the benchmarks and I'm not in the market, so I'll skip the comparison shopping this time.

[Vincero]

AMD were pretty honest about planning to do this earlier in the year and had a more than reasonable explanation - with Zen 4 being the main development focus and Zen 3 core complex being natively 8-core designs, to reach lower core counts would need to waste a lot of die space with disabled / defective parts and ultimately hurt battery life (and no doubt cost margins).

Far easier to recycle the Zen 2 core design in a new SoC, especially as the jump from Zen 2 to Zen 3 was comparatively minor compared to previous versions Zen iterations (probably more dependent on the bigger CCX caches seeing how the 3D cache aids performance). Where cache was constrained there seemed to be minor speed boosts, e.g. the performance between matching Ryzen 4xxxG and 5xxxG CPUs is more subtle compared to the normal 3xxx/5xxx non-G parts.

Yeah, these new chips are on a revised process but using the older core design probably means less validation compared to chopping the Zen 3 CCX down.

I can see this becoming a common embedded SoC.

Really am hoping to see some low power desktop parts with =< 35W TDP at max performance whilst also offering better than Intel UHD graphics... AMD could usurp the Intel 'T' desktop processor line - Intel are still a way off matching lower power consumption.

[Altrux]

Power to the processors

Surely power consumption will become more of a focus, in our current (no pun intended) climate? Of course, the Americans aren't really affected, but for us Europeans, building a machine with low idle power draw is surely a priority? I'm thinking of building a PC based on the Ryzen 5600G with integrated graphics, as I don't need a gaming monster, and that will hopefully be more power-efficient over all (with a decent PSU and no spinning drives)?

[Peter2]

Re: Power to the processors

Surely power consumption will become more of a focus, in our current (no pun intended) climate? Of course, the Americans aren't really affected, but for us Europeans, building a machine with low idle power draw is surely a priority?

Why?

Ok, this is the current UK power prices:-

https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/average-cost-electricity-kwh-uk

ie; 36p/kWh with the current price cap.

So if we accept that my first generation Ryzen with graphics card (gaming PC) draws 500 watts then running it for 12 hours a day would cost £4.32. If I spent lets say a thousand quid on a more efficient box that only draws 250 watts then the cost saving would be £2.16 per day that I used the PC for 12 hours.

It'd take ~462.9 days of using the PC for 12 hours a day to break even.

Now, I work so I couldn't possibly manage that sort of usage. Max possible usage would be something like using it 3 hours a day every evening 5 days a week which is ~15 hours, and assuming that I used the PC for a full 12 hours both days of the weekend that's be another 24 hours. That's a total of 39 hours a week, which i'm going to arbitrarily round it up to 40 hours. That's 120 hours a month. I don't think I could manage anywhere approaching that sort of usage as I suspect that my wife, friends and cats might have something to say about it, but just for the sake or argument...

5544 hours / 120 = 46.2 months runtime to breakeven, or just shy of 4 years. Assuming that my hasty math is right; and comments are welcome on this.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that in half way though 2026 chances are that Russian oil/gas will have been replaced with other energy sources and prices will have come down well before it'd be economically worthwhile to replace equipment, especially since my actual usage is a small percentage of the usage above.

[Alex Stuart]

Re: Power to the processors

Sounds about right. Whenever I've ran the numbers in the past for cost-savings from more efficient CPU/GPU, it's always the same story - extremely long break-even times for realistic usage scenarios. Specifically regarding idle draw - CPU/GPU in general have had very good idle power draw for years now.

[Peter2]

Re: Power to the processors

Reading through it again I did fail somewhat; I said 40 hours a week and so 120 hours a month; obviously I multiplied by three rather than four, so there should have been 160 hours a month, which would reduce the figure to 34 and a half months rather than 46 months.

As you say, I think the wider point stands though!

And my usage is well, well below those levels.

[juice]

Re: Power to the processors

> So if we accept that my first generation Ryzen with graphics card (gaming PC) draws 500 watts then running it for 12 hours a day would cost £4.32. If I spent lets say a thousand quid on a more efficient box that only draws 250 watts then the cost saving would be £2.16 per day that I used the PC for 12 hours.

Your maths might be a bit off; according to https://www.omnicalculator.com/everyday-life/electricity-cost, your 500W Ryzen would cost £2.16 per day if ran for 12 hours a day at full pelt, versus £1.08 for a 250W machine.

Which to be fair, helps to strengthen your argument!

Though equally: would you actually need to spend £1000 on a replacement? A quick peek at pcspecialist.co.uk suggests you could spec up a basic Ryzen 3 machine with 16GB ram from around £400, depending on how much stuff you want to bring over from your old machine (e.g. GPU, HDDs, OS licence, etc). Or you can buy a motherboard/CPU/RAM combo from scan.co.uk from around £250...

Also (and depending on the use-case), you could use something far smaller, lighter and cheaper. E.g. a Raspberry Pi 4 draws a maximum of 5W, which is handily just 1% of your Ryzen's power draw, or around 2.16p per day.

And at £57.50 for the 4GB model[*], plus another tenner or so for a case, that'd break even in about 5 weeks...

Admittedly, it'd entirely depend on whether a Pi 4 could perform the tasks that your GPU-equipped Ryzen can do. And that's not taking into account any peripherals (e.g. hard drives) which need to be plugged into your machine.

Anecdotally, I'm just about to switch from a dual-X5570 Xeon machine to a single E5-1650 which I picked up off Ebay for £165. Partly because even before the recent energy price hikes, the ancient dual-CPU beast was chewing through about 50p a day when idling.

It'll probably still take a year or so for the new machine to break even, but in the meantime, I also get a machine which is both faster and quieter. So it's generally a good thing :)

[*] Assuming you can find them anywhere...

[cornetman]

Re: Power to the processors

> Why?

Less power draw means less cooling requirements so smaller cooler perhaps (even passive so very quiet?) or even better the CPU runs cooler so good for the long life of the CPU.

You can use a smaller PSU, or more power headroom for a graphics card on the same PSU.

Less heat output means that the PC can be positioned where there isn't such good flow of air.

There are quite a few advantages of an energy efficient CPU if you really think about it.

And why not draw less power if you can? It's all very well saying that the reduced power draw is not really significant, but why would someone elect to use a CPU that draws *more* power if they don't need to? It's a bit backwards thinking.

[anonymous boring coward]

"In fact, AMD’s 7020-series mobile processors are a hodgepodge of tech. While they may be based on a three-year-old core architecture, the chips are manufactured using a TSMC 6nm process."

So it's new. Rubbish clickbait.

[Michael Wojcik]

modern?

That’s unless of course you thought you were buying something with a remotely modern architecture.

2019 is plenty modern enough for me. Both of the laptops I currently have – personal and work – are six years old. I routinely work with machines much older than that.

Goddamned kids get off my lawn.

[cornetman]

Re: modern?

My Lenovo W530 with an i7-3740QM is still a *beast* and many years old. Still relevant with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD upgrades. My daily development work machine on which I run multiple VMs and I don't find wanting for performance at all.

I wouldn't swap it for the world.

Even as a dev, you don't need the latest and greatest.