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CES 2022: AMD confirms Ryzen 7000 CPUs, Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics card and moreIncluding possibly the first integrated graphics that aren’t hopeless
Including possibly the first integrated graphics that aren’t hopeless
It’s the first week of 2022 and that means – yes! – all the big PC hardware movers and shakers are hosting theirCES 2022events. On the same day. Within a couple of hours of each other. But my stress is your gain, as there are and will be some major announcements on new kit, starting with AMD. Their freshly-announced hardware includes an assortment of new CPUs, desktop and mobile graphics cards and even some laptop APUs – APUs that sound a lot more useful for gaming that what current integrated graphics can offer. There’s even anNvidia Image Scalingrival in the upcoming, driver-level Radeon Super Resolution feature.
AMD 2022 Product PremiereWatch on YouTube
AMD 2022 Product Premiere
Let’s start with how the show ended, namely with the AMD Ryzen 7000 series of desktop CPUs. No specs, pricing or benchmarks were shown, sadly, but CEO Dr Lisa Su did at least confirm that the Zen 4-powered chips are on track to launch in the second half of 2022. That’s hopefully reassuring news to anyone worried about pandemic-inflicted production problems causing delays, though note that you won’t be able to simplyadd these chips to your existing motherboard. Yup, Ryzen 7000 will also introduce a new socket, AM5. That’s the first replacement socket since Ryzen first launched, with the AM4 socket, back in 2017.
On the laptop side of GPUs, AMD also announced a trio of ultraportable-spec mobile graphics processors in the Radeon RX 6800S, RX 6700S and RX 6600S, while the existing RX 6000M series is getting a new flagship model in the RX 6850M. The latter could become a mainstay of high-end laptops, given it’s sort-of replacing the RX 6800M, though the 6000S series sounds interesting too. Both the RX 6800S and RX 6700S are supposedly capable of 100fps-plus frame rates when playing games at 1080p with max settings; which games exactly, however, weren’t listed.
AMD’s new APUs could be another alternative for those who prefer lightweight laptops to conventional gaming bricks. You won’t get performance on par with even the RX 6600S, but the Ryzen 7 6800U (a mid-to-high-ranger among the 20 new APUs) was shown to manage a 59fps average inFar Cry 6, using a combination of 1080p, Medium quality settings and an FSR boost. Even the relatively taxingDeathloopcan apparently average 75fps with FSR, albeit sticking to 1080p and Low quality.
Although you probably shouldn’t expect comparable quality to dedicated FSR upscaling (and definitely not to DLSS, which also includes its own AI-aided anti-aliasing)….who knows, it might be useful if you’re having serious trouble running an FSR-less game at an adequate performance level. And if you have an AMD GPU, the list of which just got longer.
