At its core, the Ryzen 8040 that AMD just introduced is not very different from the earlier Ryzen 7040. You could even call it old wine in a new bottle, a classic renaming play.
If you look into it, you'll see that Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" and Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" differ in launch year, 2023 and 2024, while what's inside is still the Zen 4 architecture. Of course, most users find that hard to accept or simply don't like the idea, and they'll assume Ryzen 8040 is a better product than Ryzen 7040.
Renaming, rebranding, or "changing the name and surname" is no new trick in sales & marketing, and you could say nearly every company that makes physical goods does it. Naturally, there is nothing wrong with the practice if the product doesn't fundamentally need new technology or better quality to satisfy customers. But tech products, and semiconductors in particular, are a little different, and we are less forgiving when we find out the truth.
Even so, saying Ryzen 8040 is "exactly the same" as Ryzen 7040 isn't entirely accurate. According to the company's announcement at the Advancing AI event, the Hawk Point chip has 1.4 times the AI compute capability of Phoenix. But from the average user's perspective... most of us have no clear idea how AI is actually used on these chips. On top of that, benchmarking AI performance and presenting those numbers in a way readers can understand is still a headache for many tech sites.
As for the cause, the reason behind this "old wine in a new bottle" move is that the 4 nm chip supply from TSMC is limited. So even though Phoenix launched in early 2023 (nearly a year ago), Phoenix chips have still trickled out in small numbers. Only now has AMD "gathered enough" Hawk Point chips for another launch. That's why this announcement brings as many as 9 different Ryzen 8040 models, compared with only 3 Ryzen 7040 models from earlier in the year.
Of course, none of this means Ryzen 8040 chips are "bad" or "poor quality." They're still fine if you're happy with a laptop built on AMD's latest Zen 4 architecture. But if you were hoping for something new and the "best" in every way, well, you're probably better off waiting for the next generation, Strix Point.
Source: Tinhte.vn
