AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 Gorgon Point APUs Seen Flexing 12 Cores At 5.25GHz
AMD's next CPU launch is going to be the Gorgon Point family. Don't wet yourself in excitement; they're primarily refreshed Strix Point silicon. At least, that's been the gist of all the leaks and rumors so far, but now we have yet another set of leaks that all but confirm the truth. New results found in the SiSoft Sandra database as well as in BapCo's CrossMark database highlight upcoming AMD laptop hardware, and it's more or less what we expected.
First up, the Sandra leak. Spotted by 188号 (@momomo_us on Xwitter), this leak concerns an HP EliteBook X G2a 14" laptop sporting an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 and its associated Radeon 890M integrated GPU. This appears to be the top configuration, just as the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is essentially the top configuration of that chip minus the rare HX 375 part that offers a tiny bump in NPU speed alone.
Every spec on the chip is exactly as leaked, but that doesn't mean there's nothing of interest. The new HX 470 has a slightly higher boost clock than the original HX 370 part, gaining 150 MHz of CPU speed. There may also be a clock bump for the GPU, or the NPU, but we can't see that in the Sandra result. While these small nudges to the clock rates aren't going to make the chip perform like a different piece of silicon, clock rate is the single simplest lever you can pull to accelerate everything a processor does, so they're certainly welcome.
The CrossMark results were spotted by Gray (formerly known as Everest, @Olrak29_ on Xwitter), who points out that these machines, which appear to be test platforms, are running lower-tier chips: the Ryzen AI 9 465 with Radeon 880M, and the Ryzen AI 7 450 with Radeon 860M. The 465 part drops two of the full die's twelve CPU cores; most likely it has the same configuration as the Ryzen AI 9 365, which retains all four Zen 5 cores, but loses two Zen 5c cores. That chip also drops four CUs off of its integrated GPU, giving it a total of twelve.
The "GPT2" identifier might be meaningful. Source: CrossMark
Likewise, the Ryzen AI 7 450 has eight physical cores, which again matches the Ryzen AI 7 350. That chip once again retains all four of its Zen 5 CPU cores, dropping half of its Zen 5c cores to bring it to a total of eight CPU cores. The GPU takes another hit, losing an additional 4 compute units to bring it down to eight, or four RDNA 3.5 Workgroup Processors. Due to the cut in CPUs, it also loses a third of its L3 cache, dropping it down to just 16MB. Interestingly, this machine lists its motherboard as "AMD KoratPlus-GPT2", suggesting that this chip may be "Gorgon Point 2", a smaller processor similar to the extant Kraken Point.
Cleaned-up version of this image via TechPowerUp.
AMD's own internal projections suggest that Gorgon Point could offer considerable upgrades in multi-core performance over Strix Point; it's not completely clear why that would be the case, as the core counts do seem the same. If these performance gains are real, It may be due to process refinements or power management improvements. Alternatively, Gorgon Point may have some secret sauce that isn't clear from the specifications. We expect AMD will be releasing these chips at CES, so look forward to hearing about them then.
