AMD quietly reveals cheapest Ryzen AI yet — AI 5 330 is a quad-core budget processor with a 50 TOPS NPU

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A cheap CPU for Copilot+ PCs.

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(Image credit: AMD)

AMD on Wednesday added the sixth processor to its Ryzen AI 300-series lineup. The CPU in question is the quad-core Ryzen AI 5 330 product that will be the entry-level product in the family, thus priced below others and making Ryzen AI more accessible to customers on a budget. While the CPU will come with a reduced number of general-purpose cores, it will still offer a 50 TOPS NPU, thus being fully compliant with the requirements of Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs.

AMD's Ryzen AI 5 330 is a quad-core processor operating at 2.0 GHz – 4.50 GHz, equipped with an AMD Radeon 820M integrated GPU featuring 128 stream processors (two GPU clusters) and an NPU with 50 TOPS performance. Just like other members of the Ryzen AI 300-series family, the model 330 comes with a dual-channel DDR5 memory controller, but unlike other CPUs in the lineup, the new unit has a configurable TDP (cTDP) of between 15W and 28W.

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Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Notton
    I'm surprised they still call it a Ryzen 5 when it is a Ryzen 3.
    4C/8T and 2CU is a defining feature of R3.
    The lesser R3 is 4C/4T + 2CU.

    Also very disappointed to see R7 only come with 8CU, when it used to be a 12CU product.
    Reply
  • usertests
    This Ryzen 330 quad-core is probably 20% faster multi-thread, 80% faster single-thread than the N300/N305 that it might be said to compete with (my guesstimate is based on this). Graphics is faster, mostly from having 2x RDNA3.5 instead of 2x RDNA2, but also higher bandwidth from dual-channel memory. Then it has an NPU which Alder Lake-N lacks.

    It's conceivable that Wildcat Lake will jump over that entire performance gap, particularly in single-thread by including P-cores in Atom for the first time. It could move to Xe3 and include an NPU. Judging by recent generations, Intel will offer its low-end product at lower prices and in higher volume than AMD's, leading it to be used in more SBCs and mini PCs.

    The Ryzen AI 5 330, reportedly based on a cheaper "Krackan 2" die, would be great competition for the low-end, but AMD has pivoted to premium pricing.
    Reply
  • TJ Hooker
    Notton said:
    I'm surprised they still call it a Ryzen 5 when it is a Ryzen 3.
    4C/8T and 2CU is a defining feature of R3.
    The lesser R3 is 4C/4T + 2CU.

    Also very disappointed to see R7 only come with 8CU, when it used to be a 12CU product.
    This is a mobile chip, those have never followed strict core count rules like the desktop parts do. There are examples of 4C/8T R5s and 8C/16T R7s in every Ryzen mobile generation.
    Reply
  • superm1
    The sku page appears to be here:

    https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/laptop/ryzen/ai-300-series/amd-ryzen-ai-5-330.html
    Reply
  • Notton
    TJ Hooker said:
    This is a mobile chip, those have never followed strict core count rules like the desktop parts do. There are examples of 4C/8T R5s and 8C/16T R7s in every Ryzen mobile generation.
    Nope, not entirely correct.
    The baseline R5 is 6C/12T + 6CU
    4000, 6000, 7035, 7040, and 7045 all follow this rule. I won't bother with mobile 2000/3000 series because those are unserious garbage chips.
    The R5 with 4C/4T are exceptions in the lineup.
    You can literally count them with one hand. 5500H, 7520U, 7235H/S, and now AI 330. That's 5 total.
    An R5 with 2CU is highly uncommon, and the only other one is the 7520U.
    In fact, you used to get 4CU with R3.

    Besides that, why would you defend paying more for less?
    Are you happy with the 50TOPS NPU?
    Reply
  • TJ Hooker
    Notton said:
    Nope, not entirely correct.
    The baseline R5 is 6C/12T + 6CU
    4000, 6000, 7035, 7040, and 7045 all follow this rule. I won't bother with mobile 2000/3000 series because those are unserious garbage chips.
    The R5 with 4C/4T are exceptions in the lineup.
    You can literally count them with one hand. 5500H, 7520U, 7235H/S, and now AI 330. That's 5 total.
    An R5 with 2CU is highly uncommon, and the only other one is the 7520U.
    In fact, you used to get 4CU with R3.

    Besides that, why would you defend paying more for less?
    Are you happy with the 50TOPS NPU?
    Sure, I guess I overstated it (also misread your comment about Ryzen 7s, thought you said they had 12 cores, not 12 CUs). Not trying to paint it as a good thing (i.e. "defend" it), just point out it isn't new or one-off. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter how it's branded (Ryzen 3/5/7/9, whatever), just performance/features vs price. With laptop chips that price gets abstracted so much it's hard to really talk about the value of the chip on its own, you kind of have to look at the value of a given laptop model as a whole.

    But yeah, if a laptop with this chip is priced similarly to other laptops with similar specs but 6C/12T then it'd be pretty poor, unless you care about the NPU (I don't, maybe some do).
    Reply