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

(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.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Model	# of CPU Cores	# of Threads	Base Clock	Max. Boost Clock	GPU Model	GPU Clusters	NPU Performance	Default TDP
AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375	12	24	2 GHz	Up to 5.1 GHz	Radeon 890M	16	50 TOPS	28W
AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370	12	24	2 GHz	Up to 5.1 GHz	Radeon 890M	16	50 TOPS	28W
AMD Ryzen AI 9 365	10	20	2 GHz	Up to 5 GHz	Radeon 880M	12	50 TOPS	28W
AMD Ryzen AI 7 350	8	16	2 GHz	Up to 5 GHz	Radeon 860M	8	50 TOPS	28W
AMD Ryzen AI 5 340	6	12	2 GHz	Up to 4.8 GHz	Radeon 840M	4	50 TOPS	28W
AMD Ryzen AI 5 330	4	8	2 GHz	Up to 4.5 GHz	Radeon 820M	2	50 TOPS	28W

AMD clearly positions its Ryzen AI 5 330 as an entry-level solution for Microsoft Copilot+ PCs, which is why the CPU comes with only general-purpose cores and a very low-end integrated GPU that will barely be enough even for casual gaming. The main feature of the processor is its NPU, which exceeds Microsoft's requirements for Copilot+-badged systems and therefore delivers all the AI features of Windows 11.

"The new AMD Ryzen AI 5 330 processor is designed to offer incredible everyday compute experiences in mainstream and affordable Copilot+ PCs," a statement by AMD reads. "With 50 NPU TOPS, notebooks powered by AMD Ryzen AI 5 330 exceed Microsoft's requirements for Copilot+ PCs, offering true next-gen AI experiences built for Windows 11."

By offering a cheap Copilot+-compliant processor, AMD probably attempts to capture a sizeable part of the AI PC market as inexpensive machines tend to sell in high volumes, particularly in retail. Such a move will strengthen AMD's market position and enable the company to sell cut-down versions of its Ryzen AI 300-series CPUs with disabled general-purpose cores and GPU clusters.

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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).
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