AMD's SmartShift to boost Sony's gaming consoles. Will there be any other devices with this tech? Is AMD the best?

AMD's SmartShift to boost Sony's gaming consoles. Will there be any other devices with this tech? Is AMD the best?

As PC World reports, according to Frank Azor, Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions at AMD, we won’t notice any more SmartShift portables till 2021, when there should be more options for purchasing these machines than just the one model from Dell.

SmartShift tech was first announced by AMD at CES back at the start of the year, alongside Ryzen 4000 mobile chips. SmartShift essentially lets the system to shift power dynamically between the CPU and GPU, although both must be AMD models for it to operate.

This happens coherently, in the background, and it means that when a particular game is running and needs more oomph from the GPU, SmartShift can deliver just that, and better frame-rates (up to a 14% boost in certain games, AMD claims). Similarly, with CPU intensive tasks, the power can be shifted to the processor.

AMD’s SmartShift tech, which increases performance in laptops with AMD processors and GPUs, might be in the freshly released Dell G5 15 SE gaming portable, but it won’t be in any other notebooks this year. AMD’s SmartShift tech for faster frame-rates won’t be in any more laptops until 2021 (but will boost PS5).

It's a brand new technology and to @dell credit they jumped on it first. I explained reasons why during my interview with @pcworld @Gordonung @BradChacos No more SmartShift laptops are coming this year but the team is working hard on having more options ASAP for 2021.

— Frank Azor (@AzorFrank) June 4, 2020

It seems like a very sound idea, then, and the Dell G5 15 SE has got some positive enough reviews thus far – but sadly we won’t get a very clear picture of how SmartShift could pan out from just one machine.

Azor moreover noted that a lot of notebook producers were amazed at the heavy performance boost delivered by Ryzen 4000 mobile chips, so didn’t commit early on – but are now doing so with much more interest. There will be more machines running with an all AMD setup – CPU and GPU – next year, hence being able to benefit from SmartShift.

One fascinating factor, however, is that both of the next-gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony pair AMD CPUs and GPUs, and Sony has already established that the PS5 will use SmartShift to help get the most from its components. So we will see another SmartShift-toting machine this year, but it won’t be a laptop, it’ll be the PS5 – and probably also the Xbox Series X.