AMD Renoir APUs released as 4000-series Zen 2

Anyone familiar with AMD chipsets in the Ryzen era just read that headline and got rather confused. AMD has just confirmed their new lineup of ‘Renoir’ APUs via an announcement this week, labeling them as 4000-series Zen 2. It’s very strange indeed to hear Zen 2, which is the current third generation of Ryzen, getting another refresh for some. AMD started with the first Ryzen 1000-series; moved over to Zen+ with the 2000-series, and the current crop is the Zen 2 3000-series of CPUs. Many were expecting the first launches of the long-awaited 4000-series CPUs to be based on a Zen 2 update, possibly Zen 2+. That’s obviously not the case in this regard.

Instead of continuing with the Zenx+ moniker, AMD launched the 3000G series to add Vega graphics to the architecture.

There were already leaks that confirmed the new APU lines with Renoir and Vermeer, and now we have solid confirmation from AMD on these leaks. The Renoir APUs are badged as 4700G, 4600G and 4300G. Being APUs they will all ship with integrated Vega graphics. So what do they come packing?

Ase those leaks confirmed, they are all based on a 7nm process, and feature TDPs in the 35W-65W range. The top processor is the Ryzen 7 4700G, coming in at 65W TDP with a base frequency of 3.6 GHz and a turbo frequency of 4.4 GHz. It uses all eight compute units for the graphics, running at 2100 MHz.

The Ryzen 3 4300G, with four cores and eight threads, and a base of 3.8 GHz and a turbo of 4.0 GHz, will round out the bottom offerings.

Check out the image below for each of the core clocks and TDPs listed for each model.

The lower end of these APUs is clearly aimed at OEMs or specialist applications. The lower TDP is perfect for bottom-barrel system builders who are looking to build small form-factor, or low powered, machines. In a call with various tech outlets, AMD said that was the plan. AMD specified OEM and not system integrators (SIs) would be the primary targets here, not customizing enthusiasts. So expect mass-market prebuilts like HP and Dell to start using the new Renoir APUs.

AMD says that they are planning a consumer-grade release of APUs ‘soon’.  So some kind of Zen2 APU will come in the future, just not with Renoir. One potential shift that could show it coming soon is that the new 4000G series has support for both 400-series and 500-series chipsets, while the planned consumer Zen2 release will target 500-series motherboards exclusively.

AMD did release their own internal benchmarks, with all three APUs compared to Intel. According to these tests, the 4000G series reliably beat Intel’s 9th gen offerings. AMD tested the following PC games: DOTA 2, Rocket League, CS:GO, Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, Hitman (2016), and GTA 5.

The comparisons went like this: Ryzen 3 4300G vs. Intel i3-9100, Ryzen 5 4600G vs. Intel i5-9500, and Ryzen 7 4700G vs, Intel i7-9700.