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Comment by kllrnohj | Hacker News Reader

It's so dumb that there's a few zen2 SKUs under the 5000 name. They skipped 4000 on the desktop so that mobile and desktop could have the same name for the same generation only to immediately screw it up.

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My thoughts exactly. Couldn't they have released those Zen2 parts as refreshed 4000 series, which they are?

This feels like they're trying to scam less knowledgeable consumers. WTF is going on at AMD?

Also, the Zen3 iGPU is still Vega not RDNA2. WTF AMD?! They could integrate RDNA2 in the console Zen2 APUs but the PC Zen3 chips are still running a GPU from 2017 which is based on an architecture from 2012! How is this possible, it just seems crazu to me.

Consoles have more space for proper cooling solutions? That's the only reason I can think.

This isn't a new practice, and it isn't specific to AMD:

Here is an LTT video from years ago talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEileqxmags

The reason is time to market.

Intel are releasing new laptop parts said to beat their 4000 series, so they need to continue being competitive out of the door.

Also their highest margin chips are going to be pared with discrete GPUs.

I don't know if "scam" is exactly the right word, though the sentiment is likely close enough. At those lower levels anyone buying those laptops is going to have much more power than they need. Someone buying a Ryzen 5 4500U to do regular spreadsheets, email, documents, video conferencing, etc. will have ample horsepower. And a Ryzen 5 5500U is not much different. The clocks (base, all-core turbo) might even be lower, though the GPU is slightly better. However, for that kind of user, they might get better battery life, and if they fire up games, a better experience.

This isn't ideal if you upgrade every generation - that wouldn't be worth it. But in those $500-600 laptops, it probably doesn't hurt. I suspect they have Zen 2 chiplet supply and buyers in that price range will be plenty happy. If they really need more CPU power from Zen 3, they could step up to Ryzen 5 5600U. So you need to be better educated on those little nuances, but only if you really need the CPU power.

Presumably anyone buying that doesn't dig into these details reads reviews and looks at the benchmarks on those reviews based on programs they run that are CPU intensive. Otherwise, they probably won't be affected greatly by the difference.

It's not ideal but given supply chain issues, it might be a necessary evil.

I remember the lowest sku's almost always being a last generation part. which seem to be more about economics than uninformed buyers. You can buy a last generation laptop with a 4500u however there is merit to buying a new laptop with all new features the laptop itself provides. Also, the design might be 'last generation' however that does not mean its exactly the same. which is important because architectural changes can and have caused problems that were adressed in later revisions of the same cpu. You'd be surprised how much effort most people put in to researching consumer electronics decisions. their knowledge might scratch the surface of what technical people know months in advance to a cpu launch but it is significant nonetheless.

The confusing part is Zen3 and Zen2 SKUs are intermeshed among U tier processors, 5800U/5600U are Zen3 and 5700U/5500U/5300U are Zen2.

Rebadging last-gen products into the current-gen lineup is a genuine value add for me as a customer.

If I'm buying a new product, I want to see a lineup of exactly the products a given company thinks are competitive, ordered by price or performance. I don't want to have to pore over review articles and youtube videos to figure out how many performance grades correspond to how many generational jumps and cross reference to older generations. I just don't.

"I don't want to have to pore over review articles and youtube videos to figure out how many performance grades correspond to how many generational jumps and cross reference to older generations. I just don't."

If they named things properly and wouldn't mix generations within a single generational series marketing campaign (5xxx series), you wouldn't have to - as a consumer, if you wanted to buy the best, you would buy the 5000 series. They would still carry 4xxx stock - if you wanted something at a different price point, you'd buy the 4xxx series.

AMD's choice to mix generations within the same series makes things more confusing, not less confusing.

That's only true if generations don't overlap in performance. If they do overlap, either the company "ports" the old products into the new lineup or you're in for considerable homework.

What is the point then in up-branding a chip with identical performance that spans two different process generations?

Do the two different generations have different TDP envelopes? I though the 5xxx and 4xxx series both use Vega - what is the appreciable product difference between Zen 2 and Zen 3 if the performance/TDP/graphics performance is the same?

I think you are kinda answering your own question here? the difference between Zen 2 and Zen 3 is that they are different architectures. there may not be an appreciable product difference between a mid/high bin Zen 2 part and a low/mid bin Zen 3 part. this is why we have SKUs; they take a spreadsheet worth of details and compress them into a rough total ordering of price/performance.

the point is that it's annoying to compare 4000 series parts against 5000 series parts to figure out what is the best budget AMD CPU. outside of enthusiast circles, no one cares about being on the latest architecture. they care about what is currently the best performing part within their budget.

I would bet it's more likely that the OEM who is using and asked for those chips demanded they be a 5000 series part so that customers weren't skipping it over because of "last gen".

I completely agree it's dishonest, I'm not sure you can blame AMD though. If Dell (I'm not saying this was Dell), came to you and said: either this chip is 5000 or I don't carry ANY of your chips, you give them what they want.

To me this shows AMD has learned its lesson: without the OEMs onboard you aren't going anywhere. Selling individual chips to gamers is profitable, but that only goes so far.

They probably also learned it from their time in the GPU arena, where such shenanigans have been in play for a long time (although usually moreso by the green team)

Equivalence between desktop and mobile chips is largely make-believe anyway given the different thermal and power envelopes.

It's about knowing when you buy a "new laptop" in the store that it has current gen chips.

The amount of times I find old gen Mac's sold at new gen Mac prices in stores is disturbing.

Didn't most new gen Mac's have old cpus in them anyway? I remember the Air going like 5 years or something without a refresh.

The difference in thermals and power really just impacts boost clocks. It's not a very significant difference otherwise, at least not in the CPU space and especially not in single-core performance.

A max-draw zen3 desktop core is only 20w. You'll see that in these laptops, or near enough to make no difference.

AMD hardware names look like a mess for me, but is it really different from Intel's i3-i9 cpus for both desktops and laptops?

If you really want to be confused, try to figure out which laptops have Coffee/Ice/Tiger Lake and whether it's 10nm or 14nm.

Take a look at 10th gen Intel mobile processors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_processors#Lates... (You'll have to scroll a page or two)

11th gen seems to be a mix of Tiger Lake and the upcoming Rocket Lake iterations.

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