As much as AMD's recent 2200G and 2400G Accelerated Processing Units (APU) were quite capable little gaming chips, they weren't quite as powerful as some hoped for -- especially the 2400G. The combination of a Vega core and Ryzen CPU worked well enough though, that AMD is working on a sequel. The plan for the new "Raven Ridge" refresh chips is to debut them in 2018 and continue on the goal AMD has to improve the overall efficiency of these combo-chips by 25 percent before 2020 rolls around.
Spotted in a slide by Toms Hardware during a recent AMD presentation, we get a look at the planned increase in efficiency for the APUs over the next few years. While we won't reach that 25 percent number until 2020, AMD does plan to continue edging towards it in 2019 and crucially, in 2018 too, with another Raven Ridge release.
Hexus highlights another instance of HP leaking some potential APU information. Its processor options for a new all in one system show AMD processors, two of which are unannounced Ryzen chips called the 2800H and 2600H. They operate at close to 4GHz at the top end and being Ryzen 5 and 7 parts, should have six cores and eight cores respectively. That would be plenty powerful for an APU.
Although we don't know for sure what performance for the new chips will be like, it's possible that we'll see a nice little bump if the efficiency gain has been achieved through a die shrink to 12nm. That should mean higher clock speeds and perhaps an increase in the power of the Vega core too.
If AMD can keep these chips to the mid $100 pricing tier that the current-Raven Ridge designs have, then it could be on to a winner, offering serious single-chip competition for some of the entry-level gaming systems out there.
