News AMD's Strix Halo Zen 5 APU tested in Geekbench AI benchmark — Ryzen AI Max 390 sample falls behind Ryzen 7 7840HS

[Admin]

AMD's upcoming Ryzen AI Max 390 was tested in Geekbench AI's openVINO CPU test. The 12-core chip failed to outperform a previous generation Zen 4 eight-core mobile CPU.

AMD's Strix Halo Zen 5 APU tested in Geekbench AI benchmark — Ryzen AI Max 390 sample falls behind Ryzen 7 7840HS : Read more

 

[abufrejoval]

To my understanding, Strix Halo isn't really an APU, as those have been strictly monolithic.

Keeping with doing a nicely big range of products with a small number of constant parts (Lego), it's really just a new and vastly bigger IOD complemented by rather normal Zen 5 CCDs, perhaps even V-cache variants, eventually.

That hefty new IOD contains the console-grade iGPU, an improved LPDDR5 optimized RAM controller, as well as what might still be needed for PCIe, USB and other IOD stuff, but everything else should be pretty standard and somewhat constrained by the overall power limits of the entire package.

I'd hazard there won't be an AM5 socket variant, as attractive as that might be, because it could be too difficult to fit the expanded IOD. But I sure wouldn't mind it if they made that happen.

But back to the perhaps "disappointing" CPU numbers:

Strix Halo is all about doing the very biggest iGPU possible with what the very best but otherwise normal DRAM can deliver today. And the M1 has shown, that this can be rather a lot, if you play with speeds and the number of channels.

But even when going extra wide and fast on DRAM, that gets you at most into mid-range in terms of VRAM dGPU competitors. And at that point real-world gaming performance isn't limited by CPU power.

I'd think that Strix-point shouldn't really deliver leading edge CPU performance, because every extra Watt is better invested on the GPU side for its target market.

Now, with everything doing dynamic power management and Zen 5 CCDs in the package it might not do badly on CPU-only benchmarks as the final product, as long as the iGPU isn't competing, and if hot-spots and overall power limits aren't hitting any ceiling.

But these early numbers might indicate better how much CPU power will be left when most of it goes towards the GPU on the IOD.

And that might just be plenty enough.

 

[Notton]

It says right there in the sku, "engineering sample"
They underperform and do not reflect the final product.

 

[Amdlova]

For tdp reasons the cpu will be very limited... they will place all on the GPU. I Don't expect A cpu monster but a meh... Here the 35w cpu struggles with some titles need to increasingly the tdp/w target to 54w to keep with gpu. =]
Will be a muit purpose cpu+IA trainer

 

[usertests]

To my understanding, Strix Halo isn't really an APU, as those have been strictly monolithic.

No, it should be considered an APU, or even a "mega APU".

Chiplets were eventually going to come to AMD APUs. Intel has moved their mainstream and efficiency mobile parts (Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake, Arrow Lake) to chiplets. Although in Lunar Lake, CPU/GPU end up on the same "tile".

It was rumored that Strix Point could have used chiplets but was moved back to a monolithic design. But it's possible that we will see chiplet-based Zen 6 mainstream APUs.

AMD itself said it doesn't consider the Ryzen 7000/9000 desktop CPUs to be APUs despite the presence of iGPUs, simply because the graphics is so weak. The definition of APU is arbitrary. So I am calling Strix Halo a "mega APU". It has current-gen desktop-class graphics and a doubled memory bus, which would seem to qualify.

I'd think that Strix-point shouldn't really deliver leading edge CPU performance, because every extra Watt is better invested on the GPU side for its target market.

With 16-core Zen 5 over two chiplets and relatively high TDPs (>100W), it should be able to impress when needed, and should be at least comparable to "Fire Range" (Zen 5 upgrade of Dragon Range).

But this is an engineering sample benchmark. Nothing to see here.

 

[abufrejoval]

No, it should be considered an APU, or even a "mega APU".

Chiplets were eventually going to come to AMD APUs. Intel has moved their mainstream and efficiency mobile parts (Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake, Arrow Lake) to chiplets. Although in Lunar Lake, CPU/GPU end up on the same "tile".

Yeah, nomenclature needs to evolve and it's getting complicated...

I'd have said that a Lunar Lake approach, where chiplets are connected via "silicon class interconnects" vs. organic die carriers, leave an APU moniker intact, because power requirements, latencies etc. are not too different to staying on chip.

An organic die carrier is very much like a mini-mainboard so you need to put in amplifiers, extra synchronization gates and perhaps even protocols and transformations to make that work. To me that's no longer an APU.

But then APU as a term doesn't really add any value or useful discrimination to SoC and thus may disappear soon.

How we'll name and distinguish all those different interconnects and packaging will be a complete mess, I'm sure, but the technology amazing.

 

[Makaveli]

Ai benchmark only run on cpu cores....

 

[Xajel]

To my understanding, Strix Halo isn't really an APU, as those have been strictly monolithic.

It's an APU, maybe a Super APU also.

The reason AMD didn't consider Ryzen 7000 series an APU isn't because it's chiplet and not monolithic, instead because its iGPU is considered very basic and low-performer for the whole package to be considered an APU.

The iGPU was designed only for basic video output (and a low power video engine). In theory, Ryzen 7000 systems could disable the dGPU altogether for any desktop workload, including browsing, office work & video viewing, but the whole platform was not designed for such functionality (it needs MUX switch and internal video routing between the dGPU and the iGPU/integerated display output, just like how laptops works).

I would love for AMD, Intel & NVIDIA to work on this for one to two monitors as it will allow much better idle and standby power consumption.

 

[DS426]

I agree, Strix Point Halo is still an APU, just a mega, super, etc. APU as others have said. The main difference starts with what the CPU product is targeted and marketed for, not necessarily specific technical aspects. APU's target mobile and USFF/NUC while the CPU moniker remains intact for desktop-class products. Sure, in a sense, Ryzen 7000 and 9000 are APU's, but they aren't formally said to be such because they aren't intended to run without discrete GPU's. Then there's the 8700G and siblings which kind of straddle the middle, though still APU's.

Also echoing others, AMD APU's were to eventually adopt a chiplet architecture -- it just hasn't been necessary and appropriate until now as the latest in node efficiency is needed for these to operate within their TDP envelope, especially considering the strength of the iGPU.

 

[subspruce]

I agree, Strix Point Halo is still an APU, just a mega, super, etc. APU as others have said. The main difference starts with what the CPU product is targeted and marketed for, not necessarily specific technical aspects. APU's target mobile and USFF/NUC while the CPU moniker remains intact for desktop-class products. Sure, in a sense, Ryzen 7000 and 9000 are APU's, but they aren't formally said to be such because they aren't intended to run without discrete GPU's. Then there's the 8700G and siblings which kind of straddle the middle, though still APU's.

Also echoing others, AMD APU's were to eventually adopt a chiplet architecture -- it just hasn't been necessary and appropriate until now as the latest in node efficiency is needed for these to operate within their TDP envelope, especially considering the strength of the iGPU.

The MI300A is a chiplet APU for servers.