Discussion Squeezing the APU Zen2 refresh in the APU Zen 3 line-up, Why??

[Kedas]

So they really going to put the 4700U APU refresh inside the 5000 series line-up.

AMD Ryzen 7 5700U Lucienne 'Renoir Refresh' 8 Core APU Benchmarks Leak Out, On Par With The Ryzen 7 4800U Flagship

The first AMD Ryzen 7 5700U Lucienne 'Renoir Refresh' Zen 2 APU benchmarks have leaked out which show faster performance than Ryzen 7 4700U.

wccftech.com

Why??
The die size will be a little bigger for Zen3 due to extra cache but why would you start a new lineup of products that is worse that what you already have and give it a number like it belongs to the same series while we know it's not.
What is wrong with the number 4750U, 4850U for your refresh??

It's not like they made the 3800X -> 3800XT Zen2 refresh suddenly the 5700X because it fits about there depending on your use. (I hope I didn't gave marketing new ideas!)

There will always be older products that can be valued on the scale of the new line-up, it doesn't mean you have to rename them and put them IN the new line-up!

 

[chrisjames61]

"Normal" people don't know what Lucienne or Cezanne mean, something in the naming would not help. As long as the price/performance is correct, this sounds like a great solution to give customers more choice.

I agree with this. Only a handful of people on tech sites like this understand these names. Your average computer user only knows what a "I7" is. They have no clue about different generations.

 

[Gideon]

In the end it's required to look at specific benchmarks and reviews anyway when purchasing something new.

Yes reviews should be read, but it's not always trivial to find good ones if you know nothing of the subject (if you google "Processor X vs Processor Y" you'll be directed to userbench for example) and the reality is people don't actually tend to do this all that much. Tech-enthusiast usually read more than most, but it certainly isn't a norm.

Now on the other hand, if you DO google for reviews, it's quite easy to see whether the laptop model itself is new rather than the processor model inside it. So I fail to see hot the series number helps things.

Average consumers do not really care about what is Zen2/Zen3.

Yes they don't. They might care a bit more about the 19% Single-Theraded IPC loss, if they knew (same as Ivy Bridge to Skylake). I agree that it won't change the user experience as much as some think, but I fail to see how this somehow is a good move that needs defending.

 

[dacostafilipe]

I agree that it won't change the user experience as much as some think, but I fail to see how this somehow is a good move that needs defending.

It's about choice.

If you have more SKUs, the OEMs will have more products to sell and the consumer will have more options to choose from.

But OEMs will not create new products based on "old" Zen2 4000 series, so having an Zen2 "refresh" will increase the SKUs for the 5000 series and give you more to choose from, specially in the lower price bracket.

Would it be better if AMD would release multiple Zen3 dies instead of making Zen2 refreshes? Yes! But if the alternative is to only have a single die, I will go with the Zen2 refresh.

 

[coercitiv]

I agree that it won't change the user experience as much as some think, but I fail to see how this somehow is a good move that needs defending.

It's not a good move without the appropriate context: end users care about a combination of performance, power, availability and price. As long as AMD manages to fit Lucienne in a way that makes sense through a combination of higher performance and competitive pricing over Renoir, they get away with just a frown from me. It doesn't smell 100% right, but if I see SMT & 20%+ extra GPU performance for the same price that Renoir came with, I can't really complain for now.

Things will get complicated with Zen 4 though, as moving to a next gen node would make Zen 3 look very bad in 6000 series, so I hope they thread lightly with this tactic.

 

[moinmoin]

Things will get complicated with Zen 4 though, as moving to a next gen node would make Zen 3 look very bad in 6000 series, so I hope they thread lightly with this tactic.

Yeah, it may well work this time since both Zen 2 and 3 are on the same node anyway. I really hope AMD doesn't consider mixing different nodes within a single gen. AMD should just continue pushing the last gen nodes as lower end Athlon/Chromebook/embedded chips as it already does.

 

[zir_blazer]

The most obvious thing I would have done (and should have done already with the Picasso 3xxxU series) is add a 50 to the model number.

e.g: 4800U -> 4850U

The problem with this approach is that they already named the PRO versions with 50 in the end for absolutely no reason, so they can't do that. The other one why the continue to do this is that OEMs push for new model numbers constantly (so that their new models look better).

Something something 3900XT. Could have been 4800XU/UT for a Renoir refresh.

 

[jpiniero]

Things will get complicated with Zen 4 though, as moving to a next gen node would make Zen 3 look very bad in 6000 series, so I hope they thread lightly with this tactic.

IMO, with TSMC getting really crowded that seems pretty likely to happen.

Luciene might exist more because OEMs didn't want to revalidate their laptops for Cezanne but wanted 5000-branded CPUs.

 

[moinmoin]

Luciene might exist more because OEMs didn't want to revalidate their laptops for Cezanne but wanted 5000-branded CPUs.

That a good point especially due to the continued scarcity of Renoir...

 

[scineram]

I guess I would be fine with this if they only did it for some lower end SKUs, like 4 cores and below. And maybe one 6 core under the Cézanne SKUs. But this interleaving is just scummy.