Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

It’s the end of an era for AMD

By
An AMD Ryzen CPU socketed in a motherboard.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
Computex 2024 logo.
This story is part of our coverage of Computex, the world's biggest computing conference.

AMD is following Intel’s lead. The company is rebranding its Ryzen CPUs to closely align with what Intel is doing, shifting away from a long product string toward a three-digit part number that includes the phrase everyone is talking about: AI.

Starting with the new Strix Point CPUs, which sport the Zen 5 architecture, AMD is using “Ryzen AI” to differentiate its processors. In addition, instead of a string of four digits noting everything from the year released to the architecture the chip uses, AMD is using a three-digit part number, matching what Intel kicked off with its Meteor Lake CPUs.

Recommended Videos

AMD is calling it a “reset” on its naming convention. The company is starting with the 300 series for its Strix Point CPUs, and although they’ll carry the Ryzen AI branding, they’ll still be separated into different performance tiers. You can see how the new naming scheme breaks down below.

AMD's new naming convention for Strix Point CPUs.
AMD

In addition to the performance tier, AMD is using suffixes that should be familiar for mobile parts. HX parts draw the most power, for example, while HS parts are slightly more efficient.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!
Privacy Policy

Although this is a reset on AMD’s naming convention, AMD is still starting with the 300 series. The company says the reason behind that decision is that Strix Point represents the third generation of Ryzen AI, with both Ryzen 7000 and 8000 parts having the dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) built in. It makes the comparison with Intel a bit awkward, however.

With Meteor Lake, Intel started at the 100 series. AMD says it’s not applying the new naming scheme to existing Ryzen 7000 and 8000 parts with Ryzen AI, but going forward, AMD will look slightly ahead on future generations compared to Intel.

Although it’s a big shift for AMD, it only applies to its mobile product stack. Desktop chips, even if they use a Ryzen AI NPU, will continue on with the same naming convention we’ve seen up to this point.

Ryzen isn’t going away, but AMD is entering the AI PC era with its new naming update. Ultimately, it’s a good decision for its mobile product stack. Even after just a couple of generations, AMD’s previous mobile naming convention was a nightmare. Hopefully this new update clears the air a bit.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Jacob Roach
Jacob Roach
Lead Reporter, PC Hardware
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
Next-gen laptops may have a weird mix of components
A Razer Blade 14 gaming laptop on a coffee table.

Many gamers are awaiting CES 2025 with a great deal of excitement. Not only are we said to be getting Nvidia's RTX 50-series, but we should also see some of the next-gen top gaming laptops make their debut during the event. However, according to a new leak, these next-gen laptops may not be so next-gen across the board. With a lot of processors to choose from, we might end up with configurations that focus on new GPUs while sticking to older CPUs.

Given that Intel is said to be launching the laptop versions of Arrow Lake in early 2025, and AMD is working on the Ryzen AI 300 Max, one would expect some beastly laptops to be unveiled at CES 2025, but Golden Pig Upgrade Pack on Weibo begs to differ. This news was first shared by VideoCardz. While this user has been a fairly reliable source of hardware leaks up until now, it's important to take it all with a bit of skepticism.

Read more
The death of Moore’s Law is finally starting to stink
The back of the Core Ultra 9 285K CPU.

For more than two decades we've heard about the death of Moore's Law. It was a principle of the late Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, positing that the number of transistors in a chip would double about every two years. In 2006, Moore himself said it would end in the 2020s. MIT Professor Charles Leiserson said it was over in 2016. Nvidia's CEO declared it dead in 2022. Intel's CEO claimed the opposite a few days later.

There's no doubt that the concept of Moore's Law -- or rather observation, lest we treat this like some law of physics -- has lead to incredible innovation among desktop processors. But the death of Moore's Law isn't a moment in time. It's a slow, ugly process, and we're finally seeing what that looks like in practice.
Creative solutions

Read more
I tested the Core Ultra 9 285K against the Ryzen 7 7800X3D — and it’s ugly
Fingers holding an Intel 285K.

Intel's new Core Ultra 9 285K is finally here, promising a boost in performance with a significant reduction in power requirements, at least according to Intel. As you can read in my Core Ultra 9 285K review, Intel's performance claims aren't as rosy as reality, especially when stacked up against what is unequivocally the best processor for gaming you can buy: AMD's Ryzen 7 7800X3D.

I threw both processors on the test bench to pit them head-to-head, looking at performance across productivity and gaming apps, as well as thermals and efficiency. These CPUs target different users, but there are still a lot of interesting comparisons we can look at between them.
Specs

Read more