AMD Mendocino APU's Leaked Slide Alleges Just Two CUs
'Navi2 Small GFX' – could be an apt description.
AMD's Mendocino APU, launched at Computex with just the briefest of technical details, doesn't seem to be as exciting as many had hoped. One of the major omissions of the Mendocino Computex briefing was any talk about the number of RDNA 2 graphics compute units (CUs) it would come packing. Now a leaked slide via Olrak seems to indicate that the best Mendocino APU device buyers can hope for is two CUs, which means 128 stream processors (SPs). As this is a leak, take the news with a pinch of salt.
Putting the above CU and SP counts into perspective, the Steam Deck Aerith APU has eight CUs (512 SPs). Meanwhile, the Radeon 680M, Rembrandt's highest-end iGPU, comes with 12 CUs (768 CUs) – matching the Radeon RX 6400 desktop graphics card in this respect.
Before going on to talk about the purported AMD Mendocino APU specs slide, let us first recap the confirmed specs of this affordable mobile form factor targeting processor. Most of what we know is embodied in the Lenovo Ideapad 1 laptop slide you can see above; Mendocino is built on the TSMC 6nm process, and at best features a 4C/8T Zen 2 architecture CPU, with an RDNA 2 architecture GPU. It is claimed to be highly power efficient enabling thin, light and accessibly priced portables to offer over 10 hours of mixed use on the go.
The leaked slide above alleges that Mendocino's GPU is much weaker than it had been hoped. We've read about enthusiasts eager for the Mendocino APU release so they can enjoy some Steam Deck style action in an affordable portable laptop which would also be good for office tasks, browsing, school work and so on. This slide asserts that Mendocino has a GPU with a quarter the number of CUs available as the Steam Deck, and is basically a bare minimum GPU.
Elsewhere in the revelatory slide from Olrak we see that the CPU could be limited to a two-pipe floating point unit. Mendocino seems to have twin LPDDR5 channels to support from 4 to 32GB of RAM, says the slide. Another interesting thing to see is that the multimedia experience appears to be quite well rounded, with support for up to four displays, plus AV1 and VP9 video decoding in hardware.
In related news, earlier today we reported on the launch of the $289 AyaNeo Air Plus. Now we are pretty sure this processor's CPU cores are a match for those in the Steam Deck (both use 4C/8T Zen 2 CPU architecture) but the lower RDNA 2 architecture CU count is not going to impress in any modern 3D gaming.
AMD Mendocino is expected to arrive in Windows and ChromeOS devices from Q4 2022. There should be plenty of designs to choose from, with laptops between $399 and $699 according to our earlier information. However, devices like the AyaNeo Air Plus, and some tablets and 2-in-1s could will be cheaper still, with their lower build costs.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
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InvalidError Can't expect much (other than extreme cost, power and performance reduction) from Atom-class SoC.Reply
If you want a big (relatively-speaking) IGP, wait for the 7000G/Phoenix series and its mobile counterparts. -
salgado18 It is meant to be cheap, so why would it have lots of processing power? I think this is good enough for basic office usage, watching movies, playing old or 2D games or even by streaming with Steam Link, Parsec or other online services. Want big? Pay big, this is not for you.Reply
That said, I think 4 cores is the minimum these days, a dual-core Zen 2 would be underwhelming even for basic usage. -
KananX Reply
It’s already here since months, with Ryzen 6000 on laptops.InvalidError said:If you want a big (relatively-speaking) IGP, wait for the 7000G/Phoenix series and its mobile counterparts. -
InvalidError Reply
Rembrandt may be a decent step up from other IGPs but still falls short of most entry-level GPUs including the RX6500. The Phoenix leaks and rumors on the other hand suggest its IGP could be powerful enough to make anything slower than an RTX3060 or RX6600 obsolete.KananX said:It’s already here since months, with Ryzen 6000 on laptops. -
gggplaya I don't know why people are complaining. Not everything needs a beefy GPU.Reply
Most laptop buyers use it for Web Browsing, photos, office work and emails. This processor is plenty more than enough for students, business office workers, and people that simply need a general purpose laptop for things other than gaming. This will serve a vast majority of the productivity market. especially with 10+ hours of battery life. -
hotaru251 Reply
exactly.InvalidError said:If you want a big (relatively-speaking) IGP, wait for the 7000G/Phoenix series and its mobile counterparts.
the 2cu is fine for extreme budget laptops that are gonna be for spreadsheets/browsing web. -
KananX Reply
Leaks and rumors aren’t really relevant in a discussion, if you want a powerful IGPU there is Ryzen 6000 now or consoles :D. Steam Deck isn’t bad either. We will talk about a more powerful APU if and when it’s released.InvalidError said:Rembrandt may be a decent step up from other IGPs but still falls short of most entry-level GPUs including the RX6500. The Phoenix leaks and rumors on the other hand suggest its IGP could be powerful enough to make anything slower than an RTX3060 or RX6600 obsolete. -
renz496 Reply
Because some people want the low end or mid range APU to get top of the line iGPU. that way they can entirely ditch the need to buy discrete gpu. It is an idea that AMD not interested to entertain.gggplaya said:I don't know why people are complaining. Not everything needs a beefy GPU.
Most laptop buyers use it for Web Browsing, photos, office work and emails. This processor is plenty more than enough for students, business office workers, and people that simply need a general purpose laptop for things other than gaming. This will serve a vast majority of the productivity market. especially with 10+ hours of battery life. -
KananX Reply
And that’s why I’m very sceptical they will ever release a “powerful” APU aside from consoles, which obviously don’t count for PC users. They have no interest to produce a big APU chip, anyone who wants more power can buy a discrete GPU. And for those who don’t, the regular APU with up to 12 CUs is easily enough. It’s over 50% faster than 5700G which already was able to play games. It’s just not released for PC desktop yet.renz496 said:Because some people want the low end or mid range APU to get top of the line iGPU. that way they can entirely ditch the need to buy discrete gpu. It is an idea that AMD not interested to entertain.