AMD’s new chips are for work, not play

If you were hoping that the AMD Ryzen Pro 8000 and Ryzen Pro 8040 series would give you a great excuse to upgrade your CPU or get a new laptop, you might be disappointed. The Hawk Point-based Pro 8040 series is almost completely unchanged from the previous generation Phoenix chips, except for its performance in AI applications. The XDNA NPU in most of the Ryzen Pro 8040 series can reach 16 TOPS, up from 10 TOPS in the previous generation, which will be a huge boon for AI applications if you have them.

Ryzen Pro 8000 desktop processors see a bit more improvement, moving from the Pro 7000 series chiplets to the Phoenix architecture and also seeing a focus on the XDNA NPU. That likely means they won’t run general tasks as fast as the previous generation, but they’ll outperform them in AI tasks. The Pro 8000 series will also be more power efficient, a boon for businesses but less of an impact for gamers.

There will be eight Ryzen Pro 8000 desktop processors, of which only four will have the improved XDNA NPU built in, and of the eight Ryzen Pro 8040 chips, half will fully have improved AI performance. Overall, it’s not a great launch for enthusiasts, but it could help AMD’s performance if businesses are attracted to the improved AI performance offered by the 8000/8040 series. As ServeTheHome points outAMD has a lot of work to do when it comes to convincing laptop makers to expand their selection of Ryzen-based models, and this could very well help.