AMD Ryzen AI 400 chips will bring newer CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs to AM5 desktops

Like past G-series Ryzen chips, these are essentially laptop silicon repackaged for desktop systems. They share most of their specs in common with Ryzen AI 300 laptop processors, despite their Ryzen AI 400-series branding. The two chip generations are extremely similar overall, but the Ryzen AI 400-series laptop CPUs include slightly faster 55 TOPS NPUs.

Unlike past launches, AMD is not providing its top-end laptop silicon for desktop use, at least not yet. None of these chips include the full complement of 12 CPU cores that you can get in the Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 or 370; you also can’t get the Radeon 880M or Radeon 890M integrated GPUs. The three models AMD is announcing today top out at 8 CPU cores (likely split evenly between the faster Zen 5 cores and slower, smaller, and more power-efficient Zen 5c cores) and a Radeon 860M integrated GPU with 8 RDNA 3.5 graphics cores.

AMD could always decide to release higher-end processor options at a later date, but the fact is that it makes little financial sense to try to build mini gaming PCs around socket AM5 processors right now. These need pairs of fast DDR5 sticks to maximize their performance, and prices for fast DDR5 sticks have shot into the stratosphere over the past year. It’s hard to make any kind of gaming PC make financial sense right now, but the frames-per-second-per-dollar you get from a desktop iGPU make them particularly unappealing. This may explain why the CPUs are targeting business desktops first.

The Ryzen AI 400 desktop CPU announcement is in line with what AMD announced at CES earlier this year: low-key iterations on existing technology that do little to push the envelope. Maybe that’s the best that we can expect, given current RAM and storage shortages and the fact that most of the world’s chipmakers are all competing for manufacturing capacity at TSMC.