Discussion AMD’s Custom APU Discussion Thread

[Tigerick]

Next Gen XBox Consoles and Handheld Preliminary Specs

	ROG Xbox Ally / SteamDeck OLED	PS6 Handheld ?	ROG Xbox Ally X		PS5	Steam Console Fremont	Xbox Series S		Xbox Series X	X2 ?		PS5 Pro	PS6 ?
Date	2025	Early 2028	2025		2020		2020		2020			2024	Early 2028
Codename	Aerith Plus	Canis	Strix Point			Hawk Point				Magnus		Custom	Orion
Model	Z2A		Z2 Extreme AI
					N6	N4 + N6	N7			N3P + N3P ?		N4P	N3P Chiplet
					260 mm2	178 + 204 = 382 mm2	197 mm2			144 + 264 = 408 mm2		279 mm2
CPU	4 x Zen 2	4 x Zen 6c	4 x Zen 5 + 4 x Zen 5c		8 x Zen 2	6 x Zen 4	8 x Zen 2		8 x Zen 2	Zen 6		8 x Zen 2	8 x Zen 6
						128-bit 8GB DDR5
GPU	RDNA2 8CU	RDNA5 12-20 CU	RDNA3.5 16CU		RDNA2 36CU	RX-7600 RDNA3 32CU	RDNA2 20CU		RDNA2 52CU	RDNA5 68CU		RDNA2 60CU	RDNA5 ?
Memory	128-bit LPDDR5-6400	128-bit LPDDR5x-7500	128-bit LPDDR5x-8000		256-bit 16GB GDDR6	128-bit 8GB GDDR6	128-bit 8GB + 32-bit 2GB GDDR6		320-bit 10GB GDDR6 + 192-bit 6GB GDDR6	192-bit GDDR7		256-bit 16GB GDDR6	192-bit GDDR7
Memory Bandwidth	102 GB/s		120 GB/s		448 GB/s	288 GB/s	224 GB/s		560 GB/s	864 GB/s		576 GB/s	864 GB/s

 

[johnsonwax]

They aren't going to run upscalers on the NPU.

Apple does. MetalFX does temporal upscaling on ANE, spatial upscaling on GPU.

 

[Tigerick]

Valve Fremont Spotted With Custom AMD Hawk Point 2 SoC: 6 "Zen 4" CPU Cores, 16 MB L3 Cache, 4.8 GHz Clocks & Radeon RX 7600 "RDNA 3" GPU

Valve appears to be preparing a brand-new gaming console, called Fremont, which features a custom AMD SoC with 6 cores & a Radeon 7000 GPU.

wccftech.com

Steam console incoming. CPU should be using 6 x Zen4 Hawk Point APU (N4) and 8GB DDR5.

GPU might be using dedicated RX7600 with max 32-CU and 128-bit 8 GB GDDR6 (288GB/s). RX7600 is made by TSMC's N6, even though the die area is quite large, the performance should be much faster than Series S (10GB GDDR6) with 8+8=16GB total memory...

Selling price should be in range of $300 - $400 to remain competitive 

 

[ToTTenTranz]

Valve Fremont Spotted With Custom AMD Hawk Point 2 SoC: 6 "Zen 4" CPU Cores, 16 MB L3 Cache, 4.8 GHz Clocks & Radeon RX 7600 "RDNA 3" GPU

Valve appears to be preparing a brand-new gaming console, called Fremont, which features a custom AMD SoC with 6 cores & a Radeon 7000 GPU.

wccftech.com

Steam console incoming. CPU should be using 6 x Zen4 Hawk Point APU (N4) and 8GB DDR5.

GPU might be using dedicated RX7600 with max 32-CU and 128-bit 8 GB GDDR6 (288GB/s). RX7600 is made by TSMC's N6, even though the die area is quite large, the performance should be much faster than Series S (10GB GDDR6) with 8+8=16GB total memory...

Selling price should be in range of $300 - $400 to remain competitive 

If Valve finds a way to finetune the VRAM allocation, this could have GPU performance parity with the PS5 but with better CPU performance.
And if FSR4 finds its way to RDNA3 (which we now know AMD is working on, as proven by yesterday's FSR4 github "leaks"), this could be a nice little box full of potential. And hopefully pretty cheap.

 

[Tigerick]

And hopefully pretty cheap.

Yep, the most important is how much Valve is going to set the price for Steam console. Both Hawk Point APU and RX-7600 GPU are off-the-self silicons. Hawk Point is being cut off iGPU and NPU, thus it is considered rubbish bin. Meanwhile RX-7600 is considered EOL GPU. Thus, I can see Valve is choosing Hawk Point APU and RX7600 for one sole reason: BOM cost. Valve going to set aggressive price for Steam console, no doubt...And no more custom silicon for Steam console.

And AMD agrees to supply cut die of Hawk Point and RX7600. This is how business works: If Valve wants something at aggressive BOM; AMD will find something to meet the demand of value customers.

 

[marees]

Yep, the most important is how much Valve is going to set the price for Steam console. Both Hawk Point APU and RX-7600 GPU are off-the-self silicons. Hawk Point is being cut off iGPU and NPU, thus it is considered rubbish bin. Meanwhile RX-7600 is considered EOL GPU. Thus, I can see Valve is choosing Hawk Point APU and RX7600 for one sole reason: BOM cost. Valve going to set aggressive price for Steam console, no doubt...And no more custom silicon for Steam console.

And AMD agrees to supply cut die of Hawk Point and RX7600. This is how business works: If Valve wants something at aggressive BOM; AMD will find something to meet the demand of value customers.

What if it turns out in the end that this is only a dev kit and the real valve console is based on strix halo ??

 

[LightningZ71]

Yep, the most important is how much Valve is going to set the price for Steam console. Both Hawk Point APU and RX-7600 GPU are off-the-self silicons. Hawk Point is being cut off iGPU and NPU, thus it is considered rubbish bin. Meanwhile RX-7600 is considered EOL GPU. Thus, I can see Valve is choosing Hawk Point APU and RX7600 for one sole reason: BOM cost. Valve going to set aggressive price for Steam console, no doubt...And no more custom silicon for Steam console.

And AMD agrees to supply cut die of Hawk Point and RX7600. This is how business works: If Valve wants something at aggressive BOM; AMD will find something to meet the demand of value customers.

The way I've read the rumors, it's actually a custom floorplan that fully excludes the iGPU and NPU sections, minimizing silicon usage.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

The way I've read the rumors, it's actually a custom floorplan that fully excludes the iGPU and NPU sections, minimizing silicon usage.

If this is true, then what @adroc_thurston 's been saying about AMD refusing to do a semicustom for Valve's Deck 2 doesn't make much sense.

Why would AMD build a semicustom for Valve's Fremont CPU but not for Valve's Deck 2 SoC that will probably get higher sales volume?

 

[marees]

If this is true, then what @adroc_thurston 's been saying about AMD refusing to do a semicustom for Valve's Deck 2 doesn't make much sense.

Why would AMD build a semicustom for Valve's Fremont CPU but not for Valve's Deck 2 that will probably get higher sales volume?

AFAIK Valve has said current process nodes are too costly

Nothing until 2027 / 2028, I bet

 

[Kepler_L2]

Why would AMD build a semicustom for Valve's Fremont CPU

They aren't

 

[jpiniero]

I could see AMD still doing it though (a Hawk Point die with the IGP/NPU removed).

 

[coercitiv]

I could see AMD still doing it though (a Hawk Point die with the IGP/NPU removed).

Or just sell them salvaged dies.

 

[reaperrr3]

I could see AMD still doing it though (a Hawk Point die with the IGP/NPU removed).

Fixed cost for design, tape-out, masks etc. on modern processes are so high and get so much more expensive for each newer process that it would likely be more profitable (or even be a requirement for profitability) to use an existing design, partially disabled/clocked down to fit the use case.

That's the whole reason the Medusas and AT3/4 look the way they do.
AMD is trying to cover as many market segments as possible with as few chip designs as possible (and with as many of them as possible on the cheaper, higher-volume N3 instead of N2).

 

[adroc_thurston]

That's the whole reason the Medusas and AT3/4 look the way they do.
AMD is trying to cover as many market segments as possible with as few chip designs as possible

Ding-ding-ding!
The whole lineup there is carefully constructed around having maximum config pop options from the minimal TO count.
Extra creative work there.

 

[LightningZ71]

With as expensive as each wafer on N4 family nodes is, the cost re-floorplan and do a new mask set must be absolutely astronomical when the resulting chip could be as much as 30-40% smaller than the full dress die (no iGPU, no NPU, half the USB and PCIe root nodes gone, no SATA needed at all, no display engine, no media engine). Yields must be extremely high by this point to the point that I doubt that there will be few, if any "salvage" dies going towards Steam's usage and it'll be just intentionally crippled perfectly functional dies instead.