1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,400 Do you remember that one time when Intel launched the world's first quad-core consumer CPU? 2 00:00:05,400 --> 00:00:09,680 And then 10 years later, was still doing the same thing? 3 00:00:09,680 --> 00:00:13,920 Okay, yes, yes. I know there were plenty of other innovations along the way. 4 00:00:13,920 --> 00:00:19,200 But that doesn't change the fact that Intel's long-term stagnation did create an opening 5 00:00:19,200 --> 00:00:25,720 for AMD to not only continue existing, but against all odds to close the technology gap, 6 00:00:25,720 --> 00:00:28,000 taking serious market share from a company 7 00:00:28,760 --> 00:00:34,320 up until then was functionally a monopoly in both the server and the mobile space. 8 00:00:34,320 --> 00:00:38,440 Now, that level of stagnation, that's not where AMD is today. 9 00:00:38,440 --> 00:00:41,760 But if there are new product announcements today 10 00:00:41,760 --> 00:00:45,720 or anything to go by, the warning signs are starting to show. 11 00:00:45,720 --> 00:00:49,480 In no particular order we've got, a darn near one-to-one rebrand 12 00:00:49,480 --> 00:00:53,800 of their last-generation laptop chips, a couple new entries in the incredible, 13 00:00:53,800 --> 00:00:57,200 but obscenely expensive Strix Halo chip family, 14 00:00:57,200 --> 00:01:00,200 a better-binned refresh of the 9800X3D 15 00:01:00,200 --> 00:01:06,400 called the 9850X3D, and some AI performance and usability improvements. 16 00:01:06,400 --> 00:01:12,040 I mean, none of these are bad things, but the complete lack of any pricing information 17 00:01:12,040 --> 00:01:15,800 is a little ominous and raises another uncomfortable bit of news 18 00:01:15,800 --> 00:01:18,800 that AMD didn't mention, 19 00:01:18,800 --> 00:01:22,360 the rumored price hikes that are coming on consumer GPUs. 20 00:01:22,360 --> 00:01:29,360 Let's talk through all of that. After an uncomfortable segue to our sponsor. 21 00:01:30,280 --> 00:01:34,240 As a wise man once said, when you can't innovate in engineering, 22 00:01:34,240 --> 00:01:37,960 innovate in marketing, the unwashed masses who buy our shit 23 00:01:37,960 --> 00:01:42,200 won't know the difference anyway. Okay, that's not entirely fair. 24 00:01:42,200 --> 00:01:47,960 To AMD's credit, there are some improvements in the new Ryzen AI 400 series. 25 00:01:47,960 --> 00:01:54,960 Everything highlighted in gold here is new, but the part that they leave off is how much new they are. 26 00:01:54,960 --> 00:01:59,160 Maximum boost clocks of 5.2 gigahertz on a mobile CPU. 27 00:01:59,160 --> 00:02:04,320 I mean, that's incredible. It's just that that's only 0.1 gigahertz more 28 00:02:04,320 --> 00:02:08,560 than the Ryzen AI 300 series, which wouldn't be an issue. 29 00:02:08,560 --> 00:02:13,480 I mean, clock speeds, not everything, except that they're also reusing the same mix 30 00:02:13,480 --> 00:02:16,600 of Zen 5 and Zen 5c cores. 31 00:02:16,600 --> 00:02:21,440 So when you're talking about mobile processors that are often limited by their cooling solutions 32 00:02:21,440 --> 00:02:26,840 and power delivery anyway, no amount of gold text is gonna make a 2% difference 33 00:02:26,840 --> 00:02:32,440 in boost clock noticeable day to day. The bump in LPDDR5 speed is welcome though, 34 00:02:32,440 --> 00:02:39,440 especially for applications that rely on the GPU core that is also faster, albeit just 7%, 35 00:02:39,440 --> 00:02:44,080 and it's not gonna hurt to be able to run local AI slightly faster. 36 00:02:44,080 --> 00:02:50,040 With all that said, the devil's in the details and while AMD's slide is technically true, 37 00:02:50,040 --> 00:02:54,560 it's only true for the top skew. And as we make our way down the lineup, 38 00:02:54,560 --> 00:02:57,720 the generational upgrades slowly fall away 39 00:02:57,720 --> 00:03:03,120 to make room for what appear in some cases to be generational downgrades. 40 00:03:03,120 --> 00:03:06,240 The Ryzen AI 7 445, for instance, 41 00:03:06,240 --> 00:03:13,400 gets lower clocks, less cash, and the same RAM speed compared to the Ryzen AI 5 340. 42 00:03:13,400 --> 00:03:16,760 And this comes at the same time that Intel's Panther Lake 43 00:03:16,760 --> 00:03:20,760 is rumored to deliver GPU performance gains of like 50%. 44 00:03:21,840 --> 00:03:25,600 That's the yikes. Next up is the 9850X3D, 45 00:03:25,600 --> 00:03:30,360 a truly impressive looking 5.6 gigahertz desktop chip 46 00:03:30,360 --> 00:03:37,080 that promises to once again steal AMD's gaming performance crown and give it to AMD. 47 00:03:37,080 --> 00:03:41,120 But again, probably not by as much as we'd hope 48 00:03:41,160 --> 00:03:45,800 or as much as was rumored. See, the internet's been ablaze with rumors 49 00:03:45,800 --> 00:03:50,800 of a 9950X3D2, a dual 3DV cache 16 core 200 watt monster 50 00:03:53,760 --> 00:03:58,160 with an alleged 192 megabytes of level three cache. 51 00:03:58,160 --> 00:04:04,520 But instead, all we got was a speedbind eight core. Once again, this looks like a really nice piece of kit. 52 00:04:04,520 --> 00:04:10,040 We get the same rated power as last gen along with up to 400 megahertz faster clock speeds 53 00:04:10,040 --> 00:04:16,840 than the old King, which is nice. But how does that translate to real world gaming performance? 54 00:04:16,840 --> 00:04:21,880 Well, it's kind of hard to say. See, rather than comparing their own chips directly, 55 00:04:21,880 --> 00:04:26,280 AMD instead compared their new hotness to Intel's Core Ultra 9 285K, 56 00:04:26,280 --> 00:04:31,280 which is kind of like a real boxer fighting Jake Paul. 57 00:04:31,360 --> 00:04:35,520 Fair enough AMD, it isn't really my place to tell you how to bully your competitors. 58 00:04:35,520 --> 00:04:39,480 And come think of it, it's probably just as well that gamers will need to come to me 59 00:04:39,480 --> 00:04:44,320 for their benchmarks anyway. Thanks. The Ryzen AI Max Plus announcement. 60 00:04:44,320 --> 00:04:48,760 Ooh, this one was shaping up to be a real rebranding snooze fest. 61 00:04:48,760 --> 00:04:53,760 I was sitting there thinking like, really, you guys are gonna remind me that Strix Halo can go on a desktop? 62 00:04:53,760 --> 00:04:58,240 I literally invested in a company that is doing that, framework investment disclosure. 63 00:04:58,240 --> 00:05:03,680 But then AMD was like, boom. We heard that you love astonishingly fast 64 00:05:03,680 --> 00:05:06,680 PlayStation five level graphics in a mobile chip, 65 00:05:06,680 --> 00:05:11,520 but don't wanna pay an extra $500 for the 16 core model. 66 00:05:11,520 --> 00:05:14,880 So we put the best graphics on an eight core 67 00:05:14,880 --> 00:05:18,720 and a 12 core. Man, I've been using the GPD Win 5 68 00:05:18,720 --> 00:05:23,480 for the last little while for gaming. This thing absolutely shreds Clare Obscure. 69 00:05:23,480 --> 00:05:26,840 And like epic details, no upscaling Tom Foolery. 70 00:05:26,840 --> 00:05:29,960 Like if I could save hundreds of dollars on CPU cores 71 00:05:29,960 --> 00:05:33,680 that I don't need, absolutely killer. 72 00:05:33,680 --> 00:05:36,760 Unfortunately, Strix Halo is killer for your wallet too, 73 00:05:36,760 --> 00:05:42,440 since even the entry level is crazy expensive. But hey, cool new product is a cool new product. 74 00:05:42,440 --> 00:05:46,960 AMD then talked for a while about running near cloud quality local AI models 75 00:05:46,960 --> 00:05:52,480 that save you from either the limitations of free AI chatbots or the cost of a subscription. 76 00:05:52,480 --> 00:05:57,840 The partner they showcased was Liquid AI who has scary call to talk about pricing buttons 77 00:05:57,840 --> 00:06:01,800 on their corporate licenses. But at this time does provide end user access 78 00:06:01,800 --> 00:06:05,640 to their models for free. So that's actually pretty neat. 79 00:06:05,640 --> 00:06:10,720 But then things got totally off the rails. I'm writing this based on my pre-briefing. 80 00:06:10,720 --> 00:06:14,720 So it is possible that the public presentation is a little bit different in the details. 81 00:06:14,720 --> 00:06:19,040 But after the local models, AMD shifted to talking about the idea 82 00:06:19,040 --> 00:06:22,560 of using iterate.ai to feed an AI agent, 83 00:06:22,560 --> 00:06:25,880 your pay stubs, bank information, tax returns, 84 00:06:25,880 --> 00:06:31,040 and all that kind of stuff. And then have it generate powerful financial advice, 85 00:06:31,080 --> 00:06:34,160 saving you the cost of hiring a financial planner, 86 00:06:34,160 --> 00:06:38,080 direct quote incoming, you can do it yourself. 87 00:06:38,080 --> 00:06:42,080 Now look, I'm not saying you should spend a bunch of money on a financial planner, 88 00:06:42,080 --> 00:06:47,440 and there are clear privacy benefits to running workloads like this locally. 89 00:06:47,440 --> 00:06:52,040 But, and to be clear, this is financial advice. 90 00:06:52,040 --> 00:06:57,840 Do not trust an AI to give you financial advice without also having it thoroughly vetted, 91 00:06:57,840 --> 00:07:01,840 at least not for now. AMD then talked for a while 92 00:07:01,840 --> 00:07:06,360 about the strides that they've made recently on Rock'em with respect to performance improvements 93 00:07:06,360 --> 00:07:11,040 and Windows compatibility, and they announced a handful of new features, including, 94 00:07:11,040 --> 00:07:14,320 oh, okay, so it's just integration with Comfy UI 95 00:07:14,320 --> 00:07:17,480 and a simplified install method? To be clear, I'm not mad. 96 00:07:17,480 --> 00:07:21,480 Those are both good things. It's just, don't make me read through four enhancements 97 00:07:21,480 --> 00:07:25,840 when two of them are just, we changed the software version number by 0.1, 98 00:07:25,840 --> 00:07:29,520 and we have support for the freshly rebranded version 99 00:07:29,520 --> 00:07:32,640 of last year's AI processor. 100 00:07:32,640 --> 00:07:36,880 Why is everything called AI? I know I'm just a lowly tech YouTuber, 101 00:07:36,880 --> 00:07:40,160 but like, is this stuff really working? 102 00:07:40,160 --> 00:07:45,200 I mean, AMD says it must be working. They've seen two and a half X growth year over year 103 00:07:45,200 --> 00:07:50,440 for their Ryzen AI family, except that, guys, I'm just not convinced 104 00:07:50,440 --> 00:07:53,680 that that's why anyone is flocking to AMD mobile chips right now. 105 00:07:53,680 --> 00:07:57,480 To be clear, I love my Strix Halo Elite Book 8. 106 00:07:57,480 --> 00:08:04,680 This thing is freaking awesome, but the co-pilot button has nothing to do with why I like it. 107 00:08:04,680 --> 00:08:07,680 I like the performance and I like the battery life. 108 00:08:07,680 --> 00:08:13,360 The AI branding thing has gotten so over the top that at this point, it's hard for me to even tell 109 00:08:13,360 --> 00:08:17,600 what of it is a begrudging, well, we've got to shoehorn this into everything 110 00:08:17,600 --> 00:08:22,040 or our shareholders will abandon us. And what is a genuine misunderstanding 111 00:08:22,040 --> 00:08:25,840 of what is driving customers to purchase your products? 112 00:08:25,840 --> 00:08:30,920 To be clear, I don't think anyone's gonna be upset in the coming years about having a decent NPU 113 00:08:30,920 --> 00:08:34,080 so they can generate weird hybrid animals 114 00:08:34,080 --> 00:08:38,000 or 13-fingered French mimes or whatever it is they're into. 115 00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:41,080 But I promise you that the other parents in my kids' classes, 116 00:08:41,080 --> 00:08:45,600 they don't care if their PC is AI or not, and they don't even know what it means. 117 00:08:45,600 --> 00:08:50,440 Then again, they don't use LTT to keep up with the latest tech, so they wouldn't even know 118 00:08:50,480 --> 00:08:53,480 about our sponsor. If you guys enjoyed this video, 119 00:08:53,480 --> 00:08:57,240 why not check out the ShortCircuit I did on the GPD Win 5. 120 00:08:57,240 --> 00:09:02,760 This may not be Strix Halo at its best. It is a little bit thermally constrained in this form factor, 121 00:09:02,760 --> 00:09:05,840 but it might be Strix Halo at its coolest. 122 00:09:05,840 --> 00:09:09,840 This is a real house holding it upside down. This is a really awesome gaming handheld.