ASRock Spills the Beans on AMD Ryzen Pro and Athlon Picasso APU

[TheDarkKnight]

Motherboard manufacturer ASRock has listed the specifications for eight unnanounced AMD desktop APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) in the company's processor support list database. The next-generation APUs, codenamed Picasso, are set to replace the current Raven Ridge family.

Raven Ridge chips are based of the Zen CPU and Vega GPU microarchitectures. GlobalFoundries produces these parts with the 14nm manufacturing process. Picasso, on the other hand, is rumored to feature the updated Zen+ CPU microarchitecture while retaining the Vega GPU microarchitecture. GlobalFoundries will reportedly produce the Picasso chips on the 12nm node.

AMD has the habit of offering different variants of the same APU. The PRO variants reportedly comes with better chip quality and brings improved security and enterprise features and a longer warranty. Their performance should be near identical to their non-PRO counterparts.

The GE variants, on the other hand, perform slightly slower than the base models. The reason is because the GE variants focus heavily on being energy-efficient and adhere to the 35W TDP (thermal design power) envelope.

Ryzen 3 3200GE & Ryzen 5 3400GE

While AMD recently announced the Ryzen 3 3200G and Ryzen 5 3400G at E3, the chipmaker has yet to reveal the GE models. According to ASRock's data, the Ryzen 3 3400GE and Ryzen 5 3400GE brings minimum improvements over their predecessors. Basically, we're looking at a 100 MHz higher base clock.

Ryzen 3 PRO 3200G & Ryzen 5 PRO 3400G

Athlon 320GE & Athlon 300GE

Up to this point, the Athlon 300GE is the only Picasso chip to break the mold. The Athlon 300GE features a 200 MHz higher base clock than the existing Athlon 200GE. The Athlon PRO 300GE will also operate at the same 3.4 GHz base clock as the Athlon 300GE. Lastly, the Athlon 320GE shows a 100 MHz upgrade to the base clock in comparison to the Athlon 220GE.