- AMD unveils its Ryzen AI 400 series at MWC 2026 as the successor to the Ryzen 8000G series
- These chips have been refocused on AI, with an NPU hitting 50 TOPS
- This means that a desktop PC will qualify for Windows 11’s Copilot+ features
Over at MWC 2026, AMD has unveiled new Ryzen AI processors designed to bring a powerful NPU – and Copilot+ (AI) capabilities – to desktop PCs.
As TechSpot reported, the Ryzen AI 400 series (which comes with enterprise Pro variants) is built with Zen 5 CPU cores (as with the Ryzen 9000), along with an RDNA 3.5 integrated GPU and an XDNA 2-powered NPU to accelerate AI tasks on the device.
The idea is to provide a relatively wallet-friendly all-in-one processor for more budget-oriented PCs that don’t have a discrete graphics card, allowing for AI capabilities with an NPU rated at 50 TOPS. It’s fast enough to qualify as a Copilot+ PC and access Windows 11’s AI features therein, such as Windows Studio Effects to enhance video chat.
The flagship model is the Ryzen AI 7 450G, which offers eight cores (16 threads), 24 MB cache and boosts up to 5.1 GHz, packing Radeon 860M graphics. The latter is RDNA 3.5 and has eight Compute Units (CUs).
There are also Ryzen AI 5 chips, the 440G and 435G, which have six cores (12 threads) and boost up to 4.8GHz and 4.5GHz respectively (with 22MB and 14MB cache). They go down to a Radeon 840M integrated GPU with four CUs, but all chips have the full-fat NPU with (up to) 50 TOPS.
The TDP of these processors is 65W, but they also come in low-power versions (GE models) that use only 35W.
According to TechSpot, AMD (and other sources) have said that these Ryzen AI 400 desktop models won’t be sold as stand-alone boxed products, at least not initially – they’ll be to PC manufacturers (OEMs) instead.
In other words, you’ll probably only be able to buy pre-built machines with these CPUs, with the PCs expected to debut in Q2 2026. But later, these chips should be available directly on retailers’ shelves.
Analysis: It’s all about that AI
As mentioned, these processors are targeted at non-GPU budget builds, or mini PCs, or indeed office computers (there are Ryzen AI Pro 400 versions as mentioned). If you’re wondering where they fit into AMD’s lineup of silicon, they’re replacements for the old Ryzen 8000G offerings.
So they could theoretically be Ryzen 9000G chips, but due to the new AI slant – and the much more powerful desktop NPU – AMD has changed the naming to reflect this.
These chips are mainly designed for efficiency (especially the power-sipping GE variants) and the ability to run AI tasks quickly, or indeed run (modest) LLMs (Large Language Models) locally.
It’s not an exciting prospect for many people, though, and some of the early online feedback largely reflects this. The Ryzen AI 7 450G flagship will put in a decent enough effort at casual gaming, but there has been some disappointment with the chip’s performance in that regard as well. Mainly because the integrated GPU has fewer CUs than its flagship Ryzen 8000G predecessor, and is therefore not a huge step forward. (It’s architecturally more advanced, of course, building on RDNA 3.5, meaning an updated RDNA 3).
Would you rather have put the extra chip space into a powerful NPU so you can have Copilot+ offerings in Windows, or would you rather have put the effort into a juicier integrated GPU for a machine that could handle a bit more gaming as well as office work?
We’ll have to see how the prices shake out with the pre-built PCs that pop up with Ryzen AI 400 processors inside, but obviously the likes of Lenovo, HP and Dell are going to struggle to keep a lid on price tags while the RAM crisis still makes life very difficult for anyone looking to buy (or upgrade) a computer.
TechRadar is on the show floor for this year’s MWC (Mobile World Congress) in Barcelona, Spain, and we’ll be covering the latest news from some of the biggest names in mobile, computing, fitness and more.
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