No Ryzen AI: AMD launches Ryzen 5 439 and Ryzen 7 449 with binned NPUs

[Redaktion]

AMD has launched two new laptop chips, the Ryzen 5 439 and Ryzen 7 449, that quietly drop the NPU and the Ryzen AI branding found on their closest siblings.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/No-Ryzen-AI-AMD-launches-Ryzen-5-439-and-Ryzen-7-449-with-binned-NPUs.1364296.0.html

[PR NPU marketing]

This is fine, because a NPU is memory bandwidth and compute (compute performance is still based on memory bandwidth) in disguise:

The Ryzen 350:

Overall TOPS
    Up to 66 TOPS (I think it's 8-bit / INT8)
NPU TOPS
    Up to 50 TOPS (same)

GeForce RTX 5050 Laptop GPU: 440 AI TOPS (4-bit, scammy NGREEDIA, so it's half that -- 220 -- in 8-bit)

GeForce RTX 4050-Laptop-GPU: 194 AI TOPS (8-bit)

194/66 = ~3 times, so it's 3 times slower.

3dmark.com/search:
4050 (notebook): Average score: 8288
Ryzen AI 350' 860M iGPU: Average score: 2885

8288/2885 = ~3 times, which is the same 3 times.

-> Looks like Ryzen AI 350' NPU has to be mainly understood as its iGPU, really. An iGPU is still an ASIC, the most power efficient way. Maybe a NPU is just marketing, instead of just saying it the way NVIDIA says it ("AI TOPS", no mention of a NPU).

Which tells us that it has been all along about what I said in my previous comment ("it's all about memory size, memory bandwidth and the usually, out of it, resulting GPU performance") ;)

And for running various AI LLM models locally and privately (see article: notebookchat.com/index.php?topic=315954.0 ("Your own ChatGPT, offline: AI without the cloud on your laptop")), a NPU does not need to be used anyway.

PS: It's almost like the comment from January either predicted or gave AMD an idea to release non-AI Ryzen. Tho, binning chips is not new and why throw these perfectly fine chips away, just because of NPU PR reasons? Certainly not.

PPS: Let me predict another thing: "Ryzen AI" will remove its "AI" in its product name later. It will still be AI capable, but as proven in the quote, its -- and generally speaking as well -- AI capabilities come from its iGPU's compute and that, in turn, comes from it's memory bandwidth. Memory size is the other one.

[PR NPU marketing]

PPS: Let me predict another thing: "Ryzen AI" will remove its "AI" in its product name later.

And the NPU will be removed as well, not only from the marketing text, but also from the hardware.