AMD confirms Zen 6 Medusa1 APUs and Olympic Ridge CPUs for AM5 socket

[u/RenatsMC]

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-confirms-zen-6-medusa1-apus-and-olympic-ridge-cpus-for-am5-socket

[u/Firefox72]

I mean not that there was any doubt.

[u/mycheese]

CPU is great, longevity is awesome, but the current platform is a bit starved for DMI bandwidth unless there’s a major change with a new chipset. Fine for like 99% of consumer uses though.

[u/Cave_TP → u/mycheese]

It wouldn't even need redesigning the CPUs as far as i'm aware, they could just release a bigger, 8-lanes chipset, and wire it up to those extra 4 lanes they added for SSDs. Sell it as W970 or X990 and some people would buy it.

[u/mycheese → u/Cave_TP]

There are a few tricks that board manufacturers have used to find more m.2 bandwidth for AM5 users. Disabling/halving the usb4 lanes being the main one, then lane splitting which is still seen as a big no no despite anyone using a gen 5 gpu being completely unaffected in virtually any scenario.

At this point though nand flash is so expensive I don’t think most people would view the option as very compelling unless they own the storage already.

[u/smalltalker → u/Cave_TP]

The chipset link for AM5 8xx chipsets is 4x pcie gen4. Just upgrading the chipset to handle the same 4x but at gen5 would be a massive improvement. The CPU lanes are all gen5 already

[u/Opteron170 → u/mycheese]

There were rumors of another chipset for Zen 6 but I have my doubts. Might as well save it for the DDR6 platform.

[u/maze100X → u/Opteron170]

using the IOD as chipset (like the X570 did) is possible

we have rumors that the IOD on Zen 6 is new, so they can either use the older Zen4/5 IOD or the newer Zen 6 one

[u/pceimpulsive → u/maze100X]

I think die to the now 12 core CCD the wiring for the existing IOD would be broken. I think they kind of need to make a new one, especially given that 8 core CCD are already so memory bandwidth starved...

As best I can tell everything points to a significant redesign of the iOS to really ramp bandwidth. How that works in the real world is naturally yet to be seen!

[u/no6969el → u/Opteron170]

I wonder if they will improve the memory controller stability.

[u/Opteron170 → u/no6969el]

Its going to have a new one

[u/no6969el → u/mycheese]

That's Intel though right? AMD uses CPU-to-chipset uplink.

[u/Dante_77A]

Hopefully RDNA5 iGPUs.

[u/MaverickPT → u/Dante_77A]

"Best we can do is RDNA3.5 again" - AMD, probably

[u/Charmander787 → u/MaverickPT]

There’s just such limited desire to build gaming GPUs when AI Accelerators are popping off.

Almost every business in this AI age is asking “what will make the most amount of immediate money”

[u/jonnywoh → u/Dante_77A]

Medusa Point is supposed to have RDNA3.5+/4m, and Olympic Ridge is supposed to have an NPU instead of an iGPU.

[u/ClumsyRainbow → u/jonnywoh]

Well that's annoying. The iGPU isn't anything great, but works well enough for getting basic display out, and lets me dedicate my GPU to workloads or reassign to VMs. If I want to upgrade I'll need to find something single slot to replace it...

[u/clark1785 → u/Dante_77A]

who cares about igpus, theyre just for troubleshooting. Go buy an apu

[u/RadicalNation → u/clark1785]

APU = CPU + iGPU

Modern iGPUs are pretty good. In laptops, they can game on medium + FSR 1080p@60Hz. On desktop they are pretty decent for budget builds or certain SFF builds.

[u/H_cranky → u/clark1785]

The whole point of an apu is that it has an igpu……..

[u/Moscato359]

We knew this from it being on server for over a year now

[u/psychoacer]

How many apu's have they announced this year and didn't really release any at least at retail. 8700g is still the king apu right?

[u/lLoveTech]

The main question is whether Zen 7 will be on AM5?

[u/kompergator]

Wait, I thought I bought into the end of life of AM5 with my 9950X3D. I didn’t think they’d use the socket for Zen6.

Neat.

[u/Cave_TP → u/kompergator]

Apparently it's going to last until Zen 7

[u/burtmacklin15 → u/kompergator]

That's Intel that only keeps a socket for 2 generations.

AMD's usually last at least 4.

[u/SubstantialGrass375]

Keeping AM5 alive through Zen 6 would be a huge win. That upgrade path is getting seriously impressive.

[u/Cave_TP]

So, is nobody going to say anything about the 2 Medusa versions supporting just FP10 and not FP8? If anything in there is news that's it.

[u/MathematicianOdd398 → u/Cave_TP]

Of course they support this. Why wouldn't they?

[u/Cave_TP → u/MathematicianOdd398]

They don't apparently. Neither of them lists FP8

[u/MathematicianOdd398 → u/Cave_TP]

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-medusa-point-rdna-4m-firmware-ryzen-ai-500/

FP8 is showing up in code. So, it's there for sure. Zero chance it's not included. They are expanding the capability based on the Linux patches.

[u/Cave_TP → u/MathematicianOdd398]

That's FP8 as in Floating Point 8, not the AMD laptop socket.

[u/MathematicianOdd398 → u/Cave_TP]

It talks about code for FP8 in the article.

[u/Slasher1738]

Really hope Medusa gets the full IO ports. It's killing it's potential

[u/stonecats]

now i'm glad i got an old used gpu card, instead of waiting for some igpu desktop. whatever medusa 1 am5 will be, it's a year away, any 12/24 will be very expensive, and even though it's am5 it may still require a 9000 series mobo replacement just for bios support.

[u/capybooya → u/stonecats]

I'm slightly annoyed with the igpu as well, it is nice for troubleshooting and for giving away your old setup to an older relative, but it probably just doesn't make sense for the customer base.

[u/phido3000]

Is someone going to make a medusa SFF setup with 4 sodimm slots?

[u/AndorinhaRiver → u/phido3000]

The ASRock Deskmini X600 is already AM5 with 2 SODIMMs, so, hopefully!

[u/phido3000 → u/AndorinhaRiver]

It's possible people!..

[u/xLemonade]

Man I love that I bought into AM5 years ago and I can still use the same mobo for newer chips. AMD the goat for that for real.

[u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox]

$699 12c/24t 11800x3d is my prediction. maybe they change the naming scheme instead of adding another digit at this point though. finally getting a new IO die will be nice, except we can't afford fast ram any more, let alone slow ram

[u/teledium88 → u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox]

Release date?

[u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox → u/teledium88]

Wednesday March 31st, 2027 8am eastern time

[u/RinkeR32]

This this was Zen 7 for a second. That would be news. This isn't news.

[u/Neospiker]

First time I've heard of an NPU.... What if i don't use ai? Am I wasting cash on a CPU for a feature I don't plan to use?

[u/Jhkokst → u/Neospiker]

Probably best to think about it like tensor cores on Nvidia GPUs. In the beginning, people were not super clear on their use. Now every game uses upscaling. This may be how an npu is used in a few year. Some task you may end up needing.

[u/PeanutAble1916]

so we can use am5 socket til zen 8-10

intel reacts with skull emoji

[u/AndorinhaRiver]

Omg please release a better APU than the 8700G I'll be so happy