AMD is rumoured to launch Ryzen 3000 series APUs at CES

AMD’s first-generation Ryzen APUs could be seen as a mid-way point between AMD’s Ryzen 1000 and Ryzen 2000 series processors architecturally, using the same 14nm process node as AMD’s initial Ryzen processors while offering some of the cache and memory latency improvements that came to define the 2000 series. 

Rumour has it that AMD plans to launch their Ryzen 3000 series APUs at CES 2019, the company’s long rumoured Picasso series processors, which are rumoured to be built using the Globalfoundries’ 12nm process and offer both power draw and performance benefits over its predecessors. 

With Ryzen mobile, AMD’s 3000 series parts will likely offer more performance within the platform’s low power requirement or offer similar performance while delivering increased battery life. On the desktop side, these new APUs are likely to offer higher CPU and GPU clock speeds and support higher speed DDR4 memory, which is great news for budget gamers. 

The only shortcoming of these APUs is the fact that they likely to be 12nm, which means that they cannot take advantage of TSMC’s impressive 7nm lithography. This will limit AMD’s performance improvements generation over generation, as AMD’s 12nm APUs are likely to use the same Zen+ design as AMD’s mainline Ryzen 2000 series CPUs.