AMD CES 2020 Press Conference: Lisa Su on 7nm CPUs and GPUs

AMD CEO Lisa Su will soon take the stage here at CES 2020 for the company's press conference. We expect to hear news about the new 643-core 128-thread Threadripper processors, AMD's Renoir Ryzen 4000-series APUs, and Radeon graphics cards. 

This is live coverage, please refresh your browser as the event unfolds. Coverage begins at 2:00pm PT.

Lisa Su took the stage to discuss the company's focus on high performance computing, which she says is the confluence of the company's customers, partners, and technology. 

Su provided a synopsis of the company's 2019, with Ryzen and Threadripper 3000 processors, along with Radeon GPUs and EPYC data center chip launches being among the company's biggest in history as it launched its 7nm lineup. 

Su talked about laptops, and how there hasn't been much innovation in that segment over the last few years. Su says that AMD will introduce the "best laptop processor every built" in reference to its new Ryzen 4000 series mobile processors. Like the Ryzen 3000 desktop models, this comes with the 7nm Zen 2 process. These new Renoir APUs stretch up to eight cores and 16 threads. Su says these are the first 7nm x86 processors for the mobile market. 

The new Ryzen 4000 series processors will span from U-series (15W), H-Series (45W), and Pro series (45W). 

The top of the stack Ryzen 7 4800U has eight cores, 16 threads, boosts to 4.2 GHz and has eight Vega graphics core. However, each graphics core now offers up to 59% more performance per CU due to the advantages of the 7nm node. Due to 7nm on both the CPU and GPU cores, AMD can squeeze eight cores and 16 threads into a mere 15W package, the first. 

Su showed test results against the Ice Lake Core i7-1065G7, with big wins in compute-bound applications in both single- and multi-threaded workloads. Gaming, too. 

Su said that changes to the power management subsystem have resulted in large gains in power efficiency, and thus power life. Su then showed the Yoga 7, the world's thinnest 8-core laptop. It comes with LPDDR4x and has a 14" FHD panel. 

Su says over a dozen designs will come to market in Q1, and another 100+ designs throughout 2020. 

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Laura Smith, the senior director of AMD's technology group, came onto stage to discuss the company's continuing advances in key gaming technology areas. She touted the expansion of FreeSync and FreeSync Premium panels, along with FreeSync Premium Pro, which adds HDR support. 

Smith also talked up the latest Radeon Adrenalin 2020 Edition driver, which brought faster performance and more sophisticated features. 

Adrenalin 2020 has had over 300 million downloads since launch. Smith then recapped the launch schedule of GPUs with the RDNA architecture and the 7mm process. 

Smith announced the Radeon RX 5600 XT. This new graphics card comes with 36 compute units, 1375 MHz game clock, boost clock of 1560 MHz, and has 6GB of GDDR6. Smith says this is the ultimate 1080p GPU. 

Smith showed game results that show the 5600 XT taking on the 1660 Ti in several game titles, with convincing wins. 

Smith also showed a range of 5000 Series GPUs from the major GPU vendors, including ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, PowerColor, and others. 

The GPUs will be available Jan 21st for $279. Available worldwide. 

The 5600 will also come to mobile. AMD is working to launch the 5600M and 5700M for notebooks. 

Frank Azor took the stage to talk about the company's new systems strategy. AMD is working to redefine the mobile space. AMD projects there are roughly 90 million creators and gamers using laptops today. AMD wants to deliver desktop-class performance with laptop-class efficiency.

Azor says the new H-series Ryzen 4000 processors will offer desktop-class performance in mobile systems. 

Azor highlighted that boosting mobile performance, but requires much more power. Azor presented the Ryzen 7 4800H beating the desktop-class Core i7-9700K in several workloads. 

Azor demoed the new Asus Zephyrus laptop. Sub-18mm Z-height and Ryzen 7 4800H. It also has a new lighting system integrated into the back of the laptop lid. This laptop will only be available with AMD processors. 

AMD develops all of the key components for computing: CPUs and GPUs. Azor says that gives it an advantage compared to its competitors, so the company is working on a new A+A+A initiative that includes using AMD CPU, GPUs, and drivers on new laptops. 

This allows AMD to use a new technology called SmartShift, which allows the platform to modulate power between the CPU and GPU, thus saving power and increasing performance. Azor says the new system offers 10% more performance in The Division 2, but the software is still under development. He also claimed 12% more performance in Cinebench. 

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Ryzen 4000 H-series processors, Radeon 5600M graphics, and SmartShift technology in the Dell special-edition G5 laptop that comes to market in Q2. 

Azor says this is just "the tip of the spear," and that we will see more new mobile technology and solutions coming from AMD soon. 

Su returned to the stage to talk about the recent Threadripper launch, and shared pictures of people waiting in line for the new chips in both Tokyo, Japan and the US. 

Su showed the company's current advantage over Intel processors in Cinebench tests, which is a massive lead, and said that it wanted to unveil yet another new chip to take things a step further: The Threadripper 3990X. 64C/128T, 2.9GHz base, 4.3 GHz boost, 288MB cache, $3,490 MSRP. 

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Su then demoed the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X chewing away at a scene with V-Ray of the recent Terminator movie. Threadripper 3990X took 1 hour nad 3 minutes, while two Intel Xeon Platinum 8280's took 1 hour and 30 minutes, which is 30% more time. That's two $10,000 server parts against a single AMD desktop chip that will retail for $3,490. 

The 3990X will land on shelves on Jan 21, 2020.