A “new” series of mobile Ryzen processors may arrive on the scene imminently, but these chips will be older than their branding suggests. In fact, it appears that AMD is planning to repurpose its existing Zen 4 stock under a new banner.
According to leaker Golden Pig Upgrade, the upcoming Ryzen 200 series will consist of two processors. More specifically, these chips will arrive as Ryzen 7 255 and Ryzen 7 260, skipping the ‘AI’ branding on account of their lack of an neural processing unit (NPU).
However, these CPUs are in fact largely the same as existing Ryzen 7 8745HS and Ryzen 7 8845HS. To make matters more chaotic, these same components already underwent a rebrand from their original 7040 launch, albeit with a slightly improved NPU. Needless to say, this naming scheme undoubtedly runs the risk of confusing some customers since Intel also uses a similar naming scheme with its Core Ultra 200H Series.
With all this in mind, these processors should sport the same eight Zen 4 CPU cores and RDNA 3 compute units they’ve been rocking since 2023. There’s naturally room for AMD to improve clock speeds, but don’t expect any major differences.
Rebadging existing stock is nothing new (pun intended), but such practices run the risk of muddying the market with series specs sheets filled with convoluted caveats. To AMD’s credit, at least placing these processors in their own series should make it easier for casual buyers to differentiate them. Nonetheless, I’d only expect enthusiasts to parse and understand that one is Zen 4 and the other Zen 5.
In any case, all of this remains a rumour until AMD says otherwise. However, with CES 2025 round the corner, the wait to find out shouldn’t be a long one. Until then, I can only hope that AMD doesn’t deem it necessary to debut another decoder ring in the wake of these new chips.
