That leaves AMD with four different brand tiers for laptop processors: the Ryzen AI 300 series, which already uses the company's latest silicon and supports Windows 11's Copilot+ features; the Ryzen 200 series for processors, originally launched in mid-to-late 2023 as Ryzen 7040 and Ryzen 8040; Ryzen 100 for Rembrandt-R chips first launched in 2022; and then some two-digit Ryzen and Athlon branding for Mendocino chips.
These chips are still capable of delivering a decent Windows (or Linux) experience to low-end PC buyers. We were big fans of the Ryzen 6000 especially in the fall of 2022. But the practice of giving old chips an updated label continues to feel somewhat unfair, and it means that users who want AMD's latest CPU and GPU architectures (or neural processing units, for Copilot+ PC features) will continue to pay a premium. for them.
If you want to squint hard and see a benefit to this for PC buyers, it's that if you can get a good deal on a refurbished or clearance PC with Ryzen 6000, Ryzen 7035, or Ryzen 7020 chips, you're still technically getting the latest and greatest processors that AMD wants to sell you. The problem, as always, is that piling more brand names on top of old processors makes it much harder to make an informed purchasing decision.
