When Tesla announced its refreshed Model S and Model X in January, it wasn’t shy about saying that its new infotainment systems will offer up to 10 teraflops of power. At the time, rumors speculated that AMD would be providing Tesla’s new graphics hardware. That makes sense, since the company’s RDNA 2 GPUs are also behind the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Today during its Computex keynote, AMD CEO Lisa Su confirmed those rumors while also noting that the new Teslas will feature AMD APUs (Ryzen chips with built-in Radeon graphics) in their infotainment systems.
Su noted that the RDNA 2 graphics will kick in when you’re playing something that demands a ton of power. That’s similar to the way some laptops juggle integrated and discrete graphics cards. It also makes sense for Teslas, since you wouldn’t want to wear down your battery life by keeping a high-powered GPU active all the time.
So why would you need console-quality graphics in your car? For one, you may want to cram in a bit of playtime during lunch or an extended charging session. The refreshed Teslas also feature two screens: a 17-inch display up front, and a smaller one in the rear for passengers. So even if the driver doesn’t get much time to play, there’s a good chance the folks in the backseat will. (At the very least, it’s a nice way to keep the kids quiet.)
To be honest, though, decent graphics power seems like a given in cars that start upwards of $74,000.
