During the one-and-a-half-hour "the full nerd" online interview on Tuesday, Robert Hallock, AMD's technical marketing director, and the chief architect of game solutions answered a series of questions raised by PCWorld for the majority of netizens It covers some details of the company's announcement of the new generation Am5 consumer PC platform during the keynote speech of the Taipei Computer Show (Computex 2022) and the Zen 4 Raptor 7000 series desktop processor to be released this fall.
Video screenshot (from: PCWorld / YouTube)
First of all, some things confirmed during the online conversation include the following:
● Ruilong 7000 Series CPU has 125w / 170W TDP power consumption
● the 5.5 GHz frequency achieved during the demonstration is not hard pulled up by overclocking.
● dual L2 cache will bring some advantages in IPC performance
● CPU has 28 PCIe 5.0 channels (24 available)
● if bus (infinity fabric) can achieve 1:1 frequency division (exact data has not been disclosed)
● the entry-level b650 motherboard also supports overclocking (similar to b550)
● integrated rDNA 2 core display, supporting video codec acceleration, facilitating fault diagnosis, and committed to promoting the commercial market.
● special emphasis is placed on the functional details of smart access storage
(1) The nominal thermal design power consumption (TDP) of AMD Ruilong 7000 series desktop CPU is 125w, while the upper limit / package power (PPT) is 170W.
This means that the power limit (PPT) of Am5 package is about 28w higher than that of AM4 - the TDP of the previous generation CPU is 105W and the PPT is 142W.
Amd said that motherboard manufacturers can now deploy more excellent power features on their motherboards to benefit enthusiasts and overclocking enthusiasts.
It should be pointed out that even if the power of Am5 CPU slot can reach 170W, it does not mean that the TDP power consumption of each Ruilong 7000 series desktop CPU will be so exaggerated. It is speculated that AMD's move is mainly to significantly improve multithreading performance.
(2) Robert Hallock, technical marketing director of AMD, confirmed that the Ruilong 7000 Series CPU has 28 PCIe 5.0 channels, confirming the previous disclosure.
It should be pointed out that only 24 of them can be used freely for independent display + m.2 storage, because the other four PCIe 5.0 channels are dedicated to 600 series South Bridge (PCH).
As for the chipset itself, Robert also confirmed that the b650 will be able to fully support the overclocking feature as the old B * 50 motherboard (there are even rumors about the b650e chipset).
(3) The 5.5 GHz dominant frequency demonstrated during the Computex 2022 demonstration, Robert once again confirmed that the default setting can be so high. Sharp eyed friends should be able to infer from the data of 5.1 ~ 5.5 GHz fluctuation that it does not involve overclocking or frequency locking.
However, in order to demonstrate the effect (from 5.1 GHz to the maximum 5.52 GHz), the official admitted that it chose the supporting x670 reference design motherboard and asetek's 280 mm integrated cold row.
Interestingly, Robert pointed out that various game demos showed that the clock frequency of most threads can soar to 5.5 GHz (the prototype chip is 16C / 32t version). Of course, hardware manufacturers tend to choose game loads and running scenes that are more favorable to their products.
However, since the production date of the Ruilong 7000 series engineering sample (ES) processor is around the end of April to the beginning of May, we can expect AMD to further squeeze out the performance potential of the chip before and after listing.
(4) Robert also talked about that the Ruilong 7000 Series CPU can realize 1:1 if bus frequency division, and the L2 cache capacity is doubled - making the Zen 4 chip give better play to its IPC performance advantages.
On the one hand, a larger L2 cache is conducive to increasing the hit rate of CPU prediction execution. On the other hand, this also means higher delay and further increase of chip size. Therefore, manufacturers need to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of performance and cost as much as possible.
Overall, the Ruilong 7000 Series CPU will be able to improve its throughput and benefit many types of workloads - whether it is a game scenario focusing on integer computing or a work scenario focusing on scientific computing or creation.
In addition, when asked that the new generation Am5 platform can maintain 1:1 fclk memory frequency division, Robert also gave a positive answer. Unfortunately, he did not disclose more accurate data.
(5) Another exciting thing is that the Ruilong 7000 series desktop processor still has a high-performance APU version and supports graphics processing in application scenarios such as video codec.
Amd said that the company hopes to integrate rnda 2 igpu into the CPU lineup of the whole system to further expand its business to the commercial field.
For PC DIY enthusiasts, rDNA 2 igpu can also provide help in functional diagnosis when troubleshooting (as well as temporary emergency in case of chain loss alone).
Interestingly, even if the size of the graphics kernel is not as exaggerated as that of the mobile platform, the Raptor 7000 series desktop APU still has a smart eco bonus.
Although rDNA 2 GPU can reduce the power consumption to less than 50W in idle mode, smart shift technology can further help desktop computers move the lightweight workload from independent display to core display, so as to reduce the power consumption to less than 5W (even MW).
In addition, unlike Navi 24 GPU, the Ruilong 7000 series core display based on the same rDNA 2 core architecture @ 6nm Rembrandt version will also be equipped with a VCN engine supporting AV1 video encoding and decoding.
(6) Amd smart access storage is similar to Microsoft's direct storage technology, but SAS is better.
Frank Azor, AMD's chief game solution architect, added: in fact, SAS follows the same algorithm and application program interface (API) of direct storage and allows nvme SSD to communicate directly with independent display.
The difference is that AMD also has full platform coverage from the architecture level, end-to-end, CPU to storage subsystem, and then to graphics. This enables them to create more efficient game content and better sort out the circulation pipeline to GPU.
By bypassing some parts of the PC subsystem, this can reduce latency and improve performance, so as to resolve the bottleneck caused by decompressing game assets and streaming resources on the GPU.
In other words, smartaccess storage is more like a ubiquitous full platform solution, which can work on many different hardware combinations, even covering the hybrid scenario of AMD CPU + competitive graphics card.
Finally, Frank Azor said: Although amd Ruilong 7000 Series CPU / Am5 platform will fully support SAS, considering that not all Gen 4 / Gen 5 SSDs are compatible with this function, the company will kindly provide a list of compatible components.
If all goes well, amd Ruilong 7000 series desktop CPU will be officially released this autumn (or September 2022).