AMD Announces New Ryzen Processors, Here's 7 Things You Need to Know

At its tech day event in Las Vegas, AMD announced new Ryzen processors. Leading the charge are two SKUs: The Ryzen 5 2400G and the Ryzen 3 2200G. The G stands for graphics, and AMD classifies both as accelerated processing units (APUs) since they feature Vega-based integrated graphics. Specs, pricing, and release date are listed below:

Ryzen 5 2400G

• Frequency: 3.6GHz, 3.9GHz max boost

• Cores: four

• Threads: eight

• Compute Units: 11

• Price: $169

• Release Date: February 12

Ryzen 3 2200G

• Frequency: 3.5GHz, 3.7GHz max boost

• Cores: four

• Threads: four

• Compute Units: 8

• Price: $99

• Release Date: February 12

Both processors replace their predecessors, the Ryzen 5 1400 and the Ryzen 3 1200, respectively.

In terms of graphics performance, AMD claims that its Ryzen 5 2400G is twice as fast as Intel's i5-8400 CPU. The company asserts that its able to match Intel's CPU even when it's paired with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1030 discrete GPU, which makes the Intel/Nvidia configuration almost twice as expensive and considerably more power-hungry.

As for some real-world gameplay examples of what Ryzen 5 2400G is capable of, AMD says that it can run The Witcher 3 at 1080p with a 31 average FPS and can get 96FPS in Skyrim.

Outside of gaming, AMD announced that all of its Ryzen CPUs will soon support Enmotus FuzeDrive, which is software that works similar to Intel's Optane technology; for users that have both an SSD and HDD, the software will intelligently store user's most used behavior on their faster SSD and less-used actions on the slower HDD.

Both the Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G will feature precision boost 2.0 and XFR 2. AMD says these improve upon the standards set by with its original Ryzen processors and will allow for faster single-core clock speeds.

Both the 2400G and 2200G feature unlocked CPU, GPU, and DRAM integrations. AMD says that it has been able to improve overall performance by up to 39 percent by overclocking all three components under benchmarking tool 3DMark Fire Strike.

Using the default air cooler, AMD says it was able to overclock the Ryzen 5 2400G's CPU speed above 4GHz. The company also revealed that it was able to overclock the integrated GPU to reach over 2GHz using liquid nitrogen (LN2). While LN2 is not a sustainable cooling tool, AMD did this to show that the processor has a lot of overclocking headroom.

While AMD will start the new year off by releasing Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G, the company also plans to release second generation Ryzen CPUs in April 2018. These second generation Ryzen CPUs will feature a smaller, more efficient 12nm production process and higher clock speeds.

The company also revealed that it will release second generation versions of its heavily multithreaded Threadripper CPUs for prosumers in the second half of the year.

AMD also announced that several of its current Ryzen CPUs will receive price drops. For instance, the 1900X will soon retail for $449, which is a $100 price drop, and it's 1800X will retail for $349, which is a $150 price drop. Those prices should come into effect as early as next week.

All of AMD's new processors will still support the company's AM4 socket, which debuted with the company's Ryzen CPUs released last year, but AMD will also release a new X470 chipset that is optimized for its second generation Ryzen CPUs that will be more power-efficient. Motherboards with this new chipset will launch in April 2018 along with AMD's second generation Ryzen CPUs.

AMD announced that it is dropping the MSRP of its Wraith Max air cooler for $59 to $45. The company also announced that an RGB variant, the Wraith Prism, is in the works. In addition to featuring customizable RGB LED lights, it will have a physical on/off switch that allows you to turn off the LEDs and a second physical switch that allows you to switch between different fan speeds. The Wraith Prism is set to release within the first half of 2018.

Intel has been in the news a lot lately no thanks in part to its security vulnerabilities. Patches to these risks could post performance hits to gamers, but at its tech day event, AMD said that it believes "there is near zero risk to AMD users" due to the company's unique CPU architecture. AMD, however, asserted that it would keep a close eye on the issue.