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AMD announces second generation Ryzen Mobile: now with driver support
Way back in 2006, AMD bought ATI. Not long after that, they announced a future of x86 CPUs with a good integrated GPU on the same die. They would later dub this Fusion, and it had a Fusion System Architecture Intermediate Language, or FSAIL. Dropping the "S" from that acronym was just too obvious, so something had to change, and they dropped the Fusion name. A pity.
It wouldn't be until 2011 that such products would finally launch. Intel was the first out of the gate with Sandy Bridge--which featured a very nice CPU paired with a terrible integrated GPU. Then came AMD's Bobcat cores, which were low power, low performance parts. And then came Llano, with a good integrated GPU paired with a CPU that was rather slow. That was not the future that we were hoping for. The desired future looked more like the CPU from Sandy Bridge paired with the GPU from Llano.
The basic problem was that Intel could make good CPUs and bad GPUs, while AMD could make good GPUs and bad CPUs. Meanwhile, Nvidia could make good GPUs and didn't have an x86 license at all. I'm not here to slam Tegra, but it's not a part for Windows laptops. The real question was when someone would be able to make a good CPU and a good GPU in the same part.
Ryzen finally launched in 2017. Now AMD finally had a good CPU to pair with their good GPU. You could argue that their GPUs were now behind Nvidia, and their CPUs were still behind Intel, but the CPU gap was massively smaller than the chasm that had been a year earlier, while their GPUs were still massively better than Intel's. Surely this would be the Fusion that we had been waiting for.
Raven Ridge would launch later that year, meaning that you could finally get a laptop with a good CPU and a good integrated GPU. Idle power consumption was kind of high, so it wasn't perfect, but still, this had the potential to be a major step forward.
And then AMD didn't release drivers for Ryzen Mobile. Or at least not publicly. They'd work with the laptop vendors to provide drivers, and you were supposed to get your driver from the laptop vendor. Laptop vendors didn't care to fuss with drivers, so updates were offered infrequently or not at all. Users would try installing drivers provided by one vendor on another vendor's laptops. They tried installing desktop drivers on their laptops. Surely AMD would support their customers now that they finally had the long-awaited product.
It's now 2019, and we're still waiting. AMD made excuses about how stuff had to be customized for particular laptops. Not that that stopped Nvidia from releasing drivers for their laptop cards. Or Realtek from releasing drivers for other components in exactly the same laptops that AMD couldn't release drivers for because it had to be customized for the particular laptop vendor. Or something. Nvidia fanboys are often fond of bashing AMD's GPU drivers. Most of the time, it's just fanboys being stupid, but on criticism of AMD's laptop GPU drivers (or lack thereof) was on point.
Today, AMD announced their lineup for second generation Ryzen Mobile. And more importantly, that they would offer driver support for it. More precisely, "Starting Q1 2019, all Radeon software updates will support all Ryzen Mobile laptops". This should finally be the fusion we've been waiting for, many years after that branding was abandoned. Let's see if they find another creative way to screw it up.
As for the parts themselves, it really just moves the 14 nm parts to 12 nm, which offers a little higher clock speeds. There are both 35 W and 15 W bins for the higher performance parts, which offer identical specs. The top bin will have turbo up to 4 GHz. The 35 W version will simply have higher turbo clock speeds under a lot of workloads than the 15 W version.
It wouldn't be until 2011 that such products would finally launch. Intel was the first out of the gate with Sandy Bridge--which featured a very nice CPU paired with a terrible integrated GPU. Then came AMD's Bobcat cores, which were low power, low performance parts. And then came Llano, with a good integrated GPU paired with a CPU that was rather slow. That was not the future that we were hoping for. The desired future looked more like the CPU from Sandy Bridge paired with the GPU from Llano.
The basic problem was that Intel could make good CPUs and bad GPUs, while AMD could make good GPUs and bad CPUs. Meanwhile, Nvidia could make good GPUs and didn't have an x86 license at all. I'm not here to slam Tegra, but it's not a part for Windows laptops. The real question was when someone would be able to make a good CPU and a good GPU in the same part.
Ryzen finally launched in 2017. Now AMD finally had a good CPU to pair with their good GPU. You could argue that their GPUs were now behind Nvidia, and their CPUs were still behind Intel, but the CPU gap was massively smaller than the chasm that had been a year earlier, while their GPUs were still massively better than Intel's. Surely this would be the Fusion that we had been waiting for.
Raven Ridge would launch later that year, meaning that you could finally get a laptop with a good CPU and a good integrated GPU. Idle power consumption was kind of high, so it wasn't perfect, but still, this had the potential to be a major step forward.
And then AMD didn't release drivers for Ryzen Mobile. Or at least not publicly. They'd work with the laptop vendors to provide drivers, and you were supposed to get your driver from the laptop vendor. Laptop vendors didn't care to fuss with drivers, so updates were offered infrequently or not at all. Users would try installing drivers provided by one vendor on another vendor's laptops. They tried installing desktop drivers on their laptops. Surely AMD would support their customers now that they finally had the long-awaited product.
It's now 2019, and we're still waiting. AMD made excuses about how stuff had to be customized for particular laptops. Not that that stopped Nvidia from releasing drivers for their laptop cards. Or Realtek from releasing drivers for other components in exactly the same laptops that AMD couldn't release drivers for because it had to be customized for the particular laptop vendor. Or something. Nvidia fanboys are often fond of bashing AMD's GPU drivers. Most of the time, it's just fanboys being stupid, but on criticism of AMD's laptop GPU drivers (or lack thereof) was on point.
Today, AMD announced their lineup for second generation Ryzen Mobile. And more importantly, that they would offer driver support for it. More precisely, "Starting Q1 2019, all Radeon software updates will support all Ryzen Mobile laptops". This should finally be the fusion we've been waiting for, many years after that branding was abandoned. Let's see if they find another creative way to screw it up.
As for the parts themselves, it really just moves the 14 nm parts to 12 nm, which offers a little higher clock speeds. There are both 35 W and 15 W bins for the higher performance parts, which offer identical specs. The top bin will have turbo up to 4 GHz. The 35 W version will simply have higher turbo clock speeds under a lot of workloads than the 15 W version.
