Mysterious AMD Ryzen 5 3550U APU with Vega 9 iGPU mentioned online

The frequently reliable leaker Tum Apisak has posted a mysterious tweet on Twitter that has led to some speculation. The post simply says “AMD Ryzen 5 3550U + Vega 9” along with a thinking face emoji. Of course, there’s always the chance the tipster has tweeted out a typo, but if he hasn’t then we are left to wonder about the Ryzen 5 3550U and Radeon RX Vega 9.

One comment Apisak’s tweet received suggested that Vega 9 could be AMD’s response to Intel’s Gen11 GT2 iGPU. We reported back in February that leaked benchmarks showed Intel’s upcoming effort for Ice Lake SoCs could outperform both the RX Vega 10 and RX Vega 11. However, it doesn’t really make logical sense for AMD to name a Gen11 GT2 rival as “Vega 9” – so it’s likely that particular speculation is off the mark.

It's more likely that AMD is planning on simply bridging the gap between Vega 8 and Vega 10 but perhaps with some up-to-date fine-tuning, considering the ages of the two mentioned graphics solutions. As for the Ryzen 5 3550U, the simplest explanation for this is that it is an energy-efficient variant of the Ryzen 5 3550H. Mobile chips in the Picasso U-series have low TDPs of 15 W while the H-series members have TDPs of 35 W.

It’s possible that AMD feels a tweaked and modernized version of Vega 8 deserves to be called Vega 9, and there is space for it to slot neatly between existing iGPUs used for the Zen+ Picasso mobile APU series. So we arguably either have a new mid-range second-generation AMD APU with an updated iGPU or a typo or rumor worth hypothesizing over.