AMD Ryzen 6000U / H and Radeon RX 6000S for slim gaming notebooks

AMD wants to really attack again with notebooks and is bringing new processors onto the market as Ryzen 6000H and Ryzen 6000U, whose Zen 3+ cores reach up to 5 GHz, among other things because of 6 nanometer production (previously 7 nanometers) . Above all, however, the new integrated Radeon graphics have increased significantly thanks to the RDNA2 architecture: The Ryzen 7 6800U should be twice as fast as the predecessor Ryzen 7 5800U, can handle ray tracing and promise higher energy efficiency. There are also optimized graphics chips from the Radeon RX 6000S series and higher clocked RX-6000M GPUs.

The platform offers a lot of interesting technologies – partly also apart from the processors. Including fast USB 4, PCIe 4.0, (LP) DDR5 main memory, HDMI 2.1 and “Display Port 2.0” capability as well as AV1 decoding in hardware. All of this, along with new power management features, should contribute to both much higher performance and longer battery life. For new security functions under Windows 11, AMD relies on Microsoft’s Pluton controller.

AMD’s partners are expected to sell the first notebooks as early as February 2022. Experience has shown, however, that you have to wait a few months longer before devices with a German keyboard layout come on the market.

Ryzen 6000 Mobile

The Ryzen 6000U / H are AMD’s first combination processors (APUs) in TSMC’s refined 6-nanometer process (TSMC N6). The up to eight Zen 3+ cores included are actually old friends. AMD states that the microarchitecture has not changed compared to the Ryzen 5000, so the caches have remained the same size.

The Ryzen 6000U / H, however, support up to DDR5-4800 or LPDD5-6400. Previously, DDR4-3200 / LPDDR4-4266 was over. This increase alone helps the integrated graphics significantly. But their RDNA2 architecture with 768 shader cores (12 ComputeUnits) as well as doubled level 2 caches and raster output stages as well as ray tracing hardware helps to be significantly faster in games.

AMD says that compared to the Ryzen 7 5800U, the 6800U is twice as powerful in games, but uses a 5000 model with 15 watts for the comparison, while the 6800U can swallow up to 28 watts. Further tests have to show how much game performance is left under identical conditions.

Compared to the Ryzen 7 5800U, the 6800U should be around 70 percent faster in video encoding, and even 130 percent faster in GPU-accelerated 3D rendering in Blender.

In the single-threading test of Cinebench R23, AMD indicates 10 percent more performance, 6.8 percentage points of which are due to the higher clock rate of 4.7 to 4.4 GHz.

Better power management

According to AMD, the APUs with the code name Rembrandt have over 50 new functions for power management and new deep sleep states. On the one hand, they should help to save electricity, but on the other hand, they should also help to use the power consumed more efficiently. When browsing the web, the new 6800U is said to swallow up to 15 percent less electricity, and when it comes to video streaming even up to 40 percent less than the 5800U.

The Ryzen 6000U and 6000H are only available as 8 and 6 core CPUs with simultaneous multithreading (SMT). The U series can swallow 15 to 28 watts, HS models 35 watts, H versions 45 watts and the fastest HX variants a little more (“45+”).

The maximum turbo in the Ryzen 9 6980HX / HS is 5.0 GHz and even the slowest variants have 4.5 GHz. As usual, the base clock rates are significantly lower at 1.9 to 2.4 GHz. All Ryzen 6000 have activated the complete last-level cache of 16 MByte.

Below the new Ryzen 6000 processors, AMD brings three more infusions of the Ryzen 5000 series: Ryzen 7 5825U, Ryzen 5 5625U and Ryzen 3 5425U with a combination of older Zen 3 cores and Radeon Vega graphics.

For more details on each model, see the table at the end of the article.

Security Made by Pluton

As a hardware trust anchor with Microsoft signature, AMD builds the “Pluton” controller from Microsoft into the Ryzen 6000 chips and creates a “Root of Trust” infrastructure against manipulation.

Above all, Pluton functions should better protect the firmware (the UEFI BIOS) of future PCs and notebooks against manipulation and attacks. Later, Windows PCs and notebooks with Pluton will also protect passwords and personal user data – not only against malware attacks from the network, but also when a hacker has access to the physical PC. It is also about “Chip-to-Cloud Security”, that is, securing access to services in Microsoft’s Azure cloud.

Radeon RX 6000 S and M

AMD is also drilling into notebook graphics chips. The Radeon RX 6000 get new versions with more GPU and memory clock. If the notebook manufacturer adheres to these specifications, a Radeon RX 6850M XT should be 7 percent faster than the 6800M; with the smaller RX 6650M variants, it is up to 20 percent compared to the RX 6600M. AMD compares the new mobile GPUs Radeon RX 6500M and 6300M ​​with Nvidia’s entry-level GeForce MX 450 and promises up to twice the performance. These two smallest models have a new 6-nanometer GPU with a TDP of 35 watts, which is also used in the Radeon RX 6500 XT desktop version.

Also new are the S versions, which have been specially optimized for slim notebooks and are supposed to work more energy-efficiently than the M versions. AMD barely disclosed any technical details in advance, but the RX 6800S with 100 watts should be sufficient for 1080p gaming with maximum details and 100 frames per second. The RX 6700S should do this with a “high level of detail” at 80 watts, the RX 6600S still achieve 80 frames per second at 65 watts. According to AMD, the values ​​apply to an average of graphically demanding games such as Battlefield 5, Borderlands 3, Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War, F1 2021, Far Cry 6, but also simpler titles such as Overwatch, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive or DOTA2. So some run faster, others slower than the average.

(csp)