The other day news (rumor) broke out that AMD will be launching a refresh of its Renoir APUs (with the iGPU disabled) for the entry-level and budget CPU markets. Codenamed “Renoir-X“, these processors will go up against Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake-S quad-core offerings, namely the Core i3-12100 and 12300. It’s unclear how the Renoir refresh will differ from its vanilla Zen 2 counterparts, but they’ll likely come under the Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500 nomenclature.
According to existing information, there will be a total of three SKUs under the Renoir-X family: Athlon Gold 4100GE, Ryzen 5 4500, and the Ryzen 3 4100. Rumors from Chiphell indicate that these processors will arrive in the first quarter of 2022, meaning that we’ll likely see an announcement at CES 2022. AMD will also be launching the Ryzen 5000 XT/Ryzen 6000 CPUs featuring the Zen 3D architecture at the event.
In terms of the specifications, we’re likely looking at a simple rebrand with higher boost clocks and lower price tags. Considering that Intel is still limiting its Core i3 family to quad-core parts, it won’t be hard for AMD to offer a competitive budget lineup that’s easy to integrate into existing systems.
