Ryzen 6000 Doubles GPU Performance
January 25, 2022 - Author: Aakash Jani
Rembrandt was a Renaissance master of light and shadow. Channeling the namesake, AMD’s RDNA2 GPU artistically and accurately portrays light using hardware-based ray tracing. That feature first comes to laptops in AMD’s new Ryzen 6000 processor, code-named Rembrandt. The chip integrates the RDNA2 GPU, which doubles graphics performance relative to the previous Cezanne (Ryzen 5000) generation. To keep up with its data-hungry GPU, the company is upgrading to LPDDR5/DDR5 memory.
AMD introduced Rembrandt models across its entire laptop portfolio, spanning 45W to 15W TDPs. Relative to the previous generation, the company raised CPU frequencies and added Tensilica DSPs for always-on AI workloads. Rembrandt-powered laptops should ship in 1Q22. They will compete against Intel’s 12th Generation Core processors based on Alder Lake.
The processor’s die has eight Zen 3+ CPUs with a divided 16MB L3 cache. The new design increases multicore performance by up to 30% compared with the Zen 3 cores in Cezanne. The bigger changes are in the GPU, however, where the company integrated its new RDNA2 architecture, added more compute units, and boosted the clock speed—all of which adds up to about twice the performance, on average, for graphics benchmarks and games.
Previously, hardware-based ray tracing (RT) appeared only in discrete graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia. Without these cards, PC processors had to employ software to simulate realistic lighting, consuming substantial CPU resources. Adding a laptop graphics card greatly improved RT performance, but doing so increased system power consumption, in turn reducing battery life. By integrating RDNA2 into Rembrandt, AMD enables power-conscious RT in new laptops.
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