Red Teaming: The wait for AMD’s “Phoenix” to rise is almost over. AMD first kicked off the new Phoenix series of Ryzen 7000 laptop processors at CES 2023 and now laptops with these chips are coming soon. AMD recently released an overview of their Ryzen 7040HS series. This will soon be in cutting-edge laptops, especially the latest Razer Blade 14.
The main difference between Phoenix chips and other Ryzen 7000 ‘Dragon Range’ series is the presence of hardware-based AI acceleration. Read on for CPU speeds and feeds, and a description of this onboard AI feature.
AMD Ryzen 7040HS: ‘Phoenix’ Coming To Flight Soon
Before we dive into advanced AI features, let’s review this announcement and get back to CPU basics. The 7040-series chips are built on AMD’s latest architecture, Zen 4, which delivers incredible performance in both desktops and laptops.
The few Ryzen 7000 systems we’ve seen so far have been impressive, as shown by the Dragon Range tests (linked above), but we haven’t tested a Phoenix class laptop yet. You can read more about the shared Ryzen 7000 architecture here. You can also find an overview of AMD’s recently revised chip naming conventions to better understand the CPU count salad.
AMD’s Ryzen 7040 HS series consists of three chips: Ryzen 5 7640HS, Ryzen 7 7840HS and Ryzen 9 7940HS.
In a media briefing, AMD detailed the benefits and expected performance of these processors. The chip maker claims Zen 4 offers an average 13% improvement in instructions per cycle (IPC) over Zen 3, thanks to larger caches, better branch prediction and more efficient queues. AMD also ran some benchmark samples. Some of them are shown in these images, but they do not carry out all of the specific claims. Of course, we plan to test these chips ourselves when they become available.
(Credit: AMD)
AMD also showed modest frame rate gains while gaming, including while playing on battery. These chips are built on the RDNA 3 graphics architecture. The Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 CPUs feature Radeon 780M Integrated Graphics (IGP) while the Ryzen 5 chip features a Radeon 760M IGP.
(Credit: AMD)
Of course, many of the laptops using these chips come with their own discrete graphics, but these IGPs do not allow the battery to drain when the discrete GPU is not in use, especially when unplugged. Savings are still relevant. Such laptops include game consoles and content creators from Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo and Razer.
Advantages of AMD’s “Ryzen AI”
AI is a hot topic today, but we recognize the difference between our favorite chatbots and support for AI capabilities built into chip hardware. The Phoenix chip features the world’s first dedicated AI engine on an x86 processor called Ryzen AI, which is no small achievement for a laptop chip and supports a wide variety of applications and even Windows features. .
AMD has outlined how its latest neural network solution differs from what was traditionally known as AI in the last few decades: hard-coded bots programmed by humans. Neural networks share data between artificial neurons to train AI through machine learning. Ryzen AI offloads AI tasks using high-bandwidth, low-capacity local distributed memory to improve efficiency.
(Credit: AMD)
The general benefits of local AI mean zero latency compared to online data transfers, lower cloud latency, and increased security (because the data doesn’t use the cloud). Even better, local content is not assimilated into the network model, reducing and eliminating long-term cloud and subscription costs.
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What many users probably don’t know is that Windows already advertises some built-in AI features, but they require a system with an AI engine to display them. Some of these are especially useful on laptops. For example, you’ll see AI-based camera improvements like background blur, auto-framing, and eye contact correction options. If you use your webcam for video calls a lot, these are highly appreciated and universally applicable rather than per application.
At launch, AMD is working with Microsoft and a small group of developers to support ONNX and TensorFlow model formats. The 2023 roadmap will add support for PyTorch by Q4 and extend its capabilities to his XDNA. So for now, the real application of AI features is the developer zone.
Ryzen Ready Razer Blade 14
I mentioned a list of partner systems that utilize these chips, and Razer was also present during the meeting. The laptop maker has released a full rundown of its latest Blade 14, which will be one of his flagship laptops to utilize this new silicon. The portable Blade 14 comes in several models, all of which run on the most powerful Ryzen 9 7940HS CPU despite their compact size.
(Credit: AMD, Razer)
With a starting price of $2,399, it’s definitely a premium product for enthusiasts. For higher configurations he goes up to $2,799. This base model features a Ryzen 9 chip, a GeForce RTX 4060 GPU configured at 140W, 16GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD. The top model comes with a 140W RTX 4070 and 32GB of memory and can be ordered in black for $2,699.99 and white for the top $2,799.99.
Razer’s tiny powerhouse also features a 16:10 QHD+ display with a 240Hz refresh rate, vapor chamber cooling, and expandable DDR5 memory up to 64GB. As always with Blade systems, this is packaged in a sleek all-metal build with an RGB keyboard. The new Blade 14 is just 0.71 inches thick and weighs 4.05 pounds. It is available for pre-order starting today and will be available on June 20th. We look forward to testing this unit and other Phoenix-based machines as they launch in the coming weeks.
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