AMD announces Mendocino Mobile APUs

[BionicSeaSerpent]

 Mendocino is AMD's all powerful Mobile APU for Windows 11 And Chromebooks, its Zen 2 and is built on 6nm with the same RDNA 2 Integrated Graphics as the Ryzen 6000 Series. its not likely that the 680M iGPU could be included in these chips as this is a more Budget focused, Premium featured series, Mendocino might only come at a Maximum of a 4 core, 8 thread Processor it comes with support for LPDDR5 memory and will Release in Q4, AMD suggests a Minimum of a 10 hour battery life with Mendocino.

 

Quote

"Being a lower-tier APU, Mendocino will likely see a lower compute unit count, perhaps between six to eight compute units. It's plausible that we may get a Steam Deck-type level of performance in a laptop with Mendocino." -Zhiye Liu, Tom's Hardware 

"The only difference I can see for right now is that its manufactured on a TSMC 6nm node, as opposed to the 7nm node Valve's handheld operates with" -Dave James, PC Gamer

 

i think this is a very interesting announcement as AMD is now hopefully going to get truly competitive with Intel in the Mobile market, I'm Specifically really interested to see where the RDNA 2 iGPU can take Chromebooks specifically. could Gaming Chromebooks really come to be a Real thing you can buy? what would this mean for a Second Revision of the Steam Deck? its not something we can see Right now so we can't say if it will be great or not but i hope this finally brings fast Computing to the Chromebook Market.  

 

Sources

 AMD at Computex 2022- 

Tom's Hardware:  AMD Reveals Mendocino Zen 2 APUs With RDNA 2 Graphics https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-mendocino-zen-2-apus-rdna-2-graphics

PC Gamer.com:The Steam Deck's APU gets a 6NM Refresh to power AMD's Best in class Budget Laptops: https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-mendocino-program/

 

[AlTech]

I wonder why AMD wouldn't just sell Van Gogh to Chromebooks since it is already a Zen2 mobile APU with 4C/8T with a RDNA2 iGPU.

 

The only difference I can see is it's using TSMC N6 rather than TSMC N7(P).

 

It's difficult to ignore the parallels with Van Gogh and wonder if A) they're discontinuing Van Gogh and B) SteamDeck is getting a Hardware Refresh with better battery life.

[BionicSeaSerpent]

5 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

I wonder why AMD wouldn't just sell Van Gogh to Chromebooks since it is already a Zen2 mobile APU with 4C/8T with a RDNA2 iGPU.

 

The only difference I can see is it's using TSMC N6 rather than TSMC N7(P).

 

It's difficult to ignore the parallels with Van Gogh and wonder if A) they're discontinuing Van Gogh and B) SteamDeck is getting a Hardware Refresh with better battery life.

i could see these making their way into Steam Decks instead but i think it would be more likely because Van Gogh being the Steam Deck's thing. i could be wrong though

[AlTech]

7 minutes ago, BionicSeaSerpent said:

i could see these making their way into Steam Decks instead but i think it would be more likely because Van Gogh being the Steam Deck's thing. i could be wrong though

The chips seem identical besides the node and one of the articles says they think Mendocino is a replacement for Van Gogh.

 

It would fix one of the main issues of Steam Deck, battery life.

 

Tbh there doesn't seem to be a great reason for Mendocino to use Zen2 unless one of their customers (Read: Valve or another OEM) want compatibility with their existing products which are Zen2 based. Cost could be a reason but Zen3 based Ryzen 3 chips do exist. I don't recall if they exist with Zen3+ tho.

[BionicSeaSerpent]

3 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

The chips seem identical besides the node and one of the articles says they think Mendocino is a replacement for Van Gogh.

 

It would fix one of the main issues of Steam Deck, battery life.

 

Tbh there doesn't seem to be a great reason for Mendocino to use Zen2 unless one of their customers (Read: Valve or another OEM) want compatibility with their existing products which are Zen2 based. Cost could be a reason but Zen3 based Ryzen 3 chips do exist. I don't recall if they exist with Zen3+ tho.

but then if these same Chips are in laptops wouldn't that conflict with Purchases of the Steam Deck as you could just have a laptop with Similar performance in windows or even SteamOS 3.0?

[AlTech]

13 minutes ago, BionicSeaSerpent said:

but then if these same Chips are in laptops wouldn't that conflict with Purchases of the Steam Deck as you could just have a laptop with Similar performance in windows or even SteamOS 3.0?

The point of SteamDeck is being a handheld gaming experience. It's already possible for notebooks to exceed SteamDeck performance thanks to Ryzen 6000 Mobile.

 

In that context Valve still has a strong USP of having a handheld PC gaming device. Playing on a laptop vs a handheld are different and the use cases don't necessarily always  overlap.

 

If Mendocino will serve both SteamDeck and budget laptops, the laptops woukd focus on good perf with great battery life whilst the SteamDeck refresh would focus on providing the same experience as SteamDeck OG with better battery life.

 

To give an analogy, a truck and a sports car may use the same engine (e.g. a V8 or V10 engine) but they still have different purposes and different strengths and weaknesses.

[BionicSeaSerpent]

2 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

The point of SteamDeck is being a handheld gaming experience. It's already possible for notebooks to exceed SteamDeck performance thanks to Ryzen 6000 Mobile.

 

In that context Valve still has a strong USP of having a handheld PC gaming device. Playing on a laptop vs a handheld are different and the use cases don't necessarily always  overlap.

 

If Mendocino will serve both SteamDeck and budget laptops, the laptops woukd focus on good perf with great battery life whilst the SteamDeck refresh would focus on providing the same experience as SteamDeck OG with better battery life.

 

To give an analogy, a truck and a sports car may use the same engine (e.g. a V8 or V10 engine) but they still have different purposes and different strengths and weaknesses.

right. but i can't help but feel like Steam Deck sales could be impacted by this. Someone might have looked at the Steamdeck or preordered using it for their main gaming system. but they learn this and they buy the Budget laptop instead and use that instead. thus Linux shares can go down because the Windows / ChomeOS experience is Way better than the Steam Decks. 

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, BionicSeaSerpent said:

right. but i can't help but feel like Steam Deck sales could be impacted by this. Someone might have looked at the Steamdeck or preordered using it for their main gaming system. but they learn this and they buy the Budget laptop instead and use that instead. thus Linux shares can go down because the Windows / ChomeOS experience is Way better than the Steam Decks. 

A small percentage of people might have done that but SteamDeck isn't going to lose half of the people who reserved one cos of this.

 

SteamDeck isn't a laptop replacement and despite Valve's marketing, SteamDeck is as much of a PC as an Xbox would be if ran Windows 10/11 desktop edition.

[BionicSeaSerpent]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

A small percentage of people might have done that but SteamDeck isn't going to lose half of the people who reserved one cos of this.

 

SteamDeck isn't a laptop replacement and despite Valve's marketing, SteamDeck is as much of a PC as an Xbox would be if ran Windows 10/11 desktop edition.

Yeah. i don't imagine so many would be buying the Steamdeck if they are looking for a budget laptop despite it still being a PC. Someone should honestly start shipping these with linux preinstalled. its nearly about time Linux gains more Adoption. and most will use whatever it comes with.

[Doobeedoo]

So lower powered on a new node pretty much. Funny name though.

[BionicSeaSerpent]

1 hour ago, Doobeedoo said:

So lower powered on a new node pretty much. Funny name though.

yeah. i guess that Sums it up pretty well. low power on a new Node with a Funny Californian County name