News AMD's Van Gogh APU Gets New Audio Tech

Gillerer

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Sep 23, 2013
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I curious as to why they chose Zen 2 with RDNA2. They already have Zen 3 out with Vega, it seems like a step forward in graphics but a step backward in CPU.

The article said it already: They're smaller than Zen 3 cores.

If this is a budget-oriented gaming APU, Zen 2 is plenty good enough but 8 CU Vega is lacking.

Some leaks suggest it's only going to have 4 cores. Making them with Zen 2 will use less than half the area compared to a 8-core Zen 3 - mostly down to Zen 2 needing less L3 cache. They also don't have to create a new design for a 4-core Zen 3 CCX.

The DDR5 memory controller thing could be that AMD is using this as a test vehicle for DDR5? Reuse everything else they know is working (Zen 2, Navi 2, Infinity Fabric) and slap on this as the new thing. This seems to be what AMD is doing for CPUs anyways; switching modules piecemeal so they don't have to redesign the whole thing every time.