AMD pushes Ryzen to the Max — Ryzen AI Max 300 Strix Halo reportedly has up to 16 Zen 5 cores and 40 RDNA 3+ CUs

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AMD's much-awaited Strix Halo Zen 5 APU

Ryzen AI 300
Ryzen AI 300 (Image credit: AMD)

Golden Pig Upgrade Pack, a well-known leaker, has published preliminary details about the potential configurations of AMD's Ryzen AI Max 300 (codenamed Strix Halo) processors, which are expected to be released in early 2025. In addition, the leaker revealed the official name of these CPUs with an ultra-high-end integrated Radeon GPU.

AMD's Ryzen AI Max 'Strix Halo' processors are aimed at high-performance laptops for gamers and creators. These CPUs will feature a multi-chiplet design comprising of one or two Zen 5 CCDs (for up to 16 Zen 5 cores) and a massive companion chiplet containing a high-end GPU (with up to 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units), a memory controller with a 256-bit LPDDR5X-8533 physical interface (up to 273 GB/s of peak bandwidth), and I/O capabilities.

256-bit LPDDR5X interface will ensure that the performance of their high-end GPU is not limited by memory bandwidth. In addition, the CPU will allocate up to 96 GB of memory for the GPU, which will be handy for AI applications if someone decides to run memory-demanding AI workloads in an integrated GPU.

Right now, AMD is reportedly considering three Ryzen AI Max SKUs:

  • Ryzen AI Max+ 395: 16 Zen 5 cores and an RDNA 3.5-based GPU with 2560 stream processors.
  • Ryzen AI Max 390: 12 Zen 5 cores and an RDNA 3.5-based GPU with 2560 stream processors.
  • Ryzen AI Max 385: 8 Zen 5 cores and an RDNA 3.5-based GPU with 2048 stream processors.

It is unclear whether AMD will settle for three SKUs for its Ryzen AI Max. On the one hand, Strix Halo is an enthusiast-grade product, so severely cutting GPU performance will destroy the purpose of an APU with a massive built-in GPU designed for gamers. Also, keeping in mind that there are not so many desktop replacement laptops, it is unlikely that there will be too many Ryzen AI Max models.

On the other hand, if AMD has enough companion chiplets with GPUs that have, say, 24 functional compute units (1536 stream processors), it will still offer a massive performance advantage over 'regular' Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, which has 12 general-purpose cores (four Zen 5 cores, eight Zen 5c cores), the Radeon 890M GPU with 16 compute units (1024 stream processors), and a 128-bit memory interface.

While AMD's Ryzen AI Max processors will offer desktop-class performance in notebook form factors in terms of general-purpose computing and graphics, they will come at the cost of monstrous power consumption of 120W—133W.

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Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

36 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Gururu
    Beats all laptops for shortest battery life.
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    Price? 2500+
    Reply
  • usertests
    Gururu said:
    Beats all laptops for shortest battery life.
    It will be in mini PCs and soldered onto motherboards too. It has the potential to be unbeatable in its price class (still expensive) for AI workloads that need more than 24 GB of VRAM.

    For a gaming laptop, even though it can pull >100W, it should do well with much less. Games certainly don't need 16x Zen 5 cores, so it will be mostly about the power the iGPU is consuming. The only thing missing at this point is X3D, which could lower power usage a little in gaming.

    We already have gaming handhelds that can use 35-53 Watts. 8-core Strix Halo would outperform them at those power levels, owing to more CUs and 256-bit memory.
    Reply
  • Jame5
    So up to 96GB of ram for GPU allocation means that we can expect 96GB and 128GB memory configurations for any systems using these new SoCs?
    Reply
  • usertests
    Jame5 said:
    So up to 96GB of ram for GPU allocation means that we can expect 96GB and 128GB memory configurations for any systems using these new SoCs?
    128 GB, 75% allocated (maximum, for now).

    I was wondering about 192-256 GB but I guess it's not feasible with current LPDDR5X packages. Not sure if it supports DDR5 DIMMs either.
    Reply
  • baboma
    Some takeaways:

    . On SoC naming: Assuming the rumored new label is correct, AMD is leaning toward discrete words and away from the Intel-convention 5/7/9 for its tier designation.

    The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370/365 started this trend, but the '9' is unneeded since there's no 7 or 5 tier. The 395/390 dropped the '9' and gained 'Max' to differentiate from 370/365. This makes sense since Halo would be "above 9" per 5/7/9 convention, and would need an '11' label which would sow confusion.

    It's a logical step, but the unfortunate consequence is that the names are growing ever more unwieldy. Ditto for Intel, where ARL/LNL's official name is Core Ultra Series 2. The need for shorthand is why sites & reviewers are increasingly adopting use of codenames for their frequent mentions. We'll see "Strix Halo" or just "Halo" in use more often.

    >It will be in mini PCs
    >For a gaming laptop

    While Halo may well show up in above segments, both of them are too niche to merit a dedicated "super-chip" by themselves. I agree with other assessments--Videocardz and WccfTech which posted this leak yesterday--that Halo is destined for workstation-class laptops sans discrete graphics. MiniPCs & gaming laptops may be beneficiaries, but they're secondary.

    >up to 96GB of ram for GPU allocation

    This factoid further affirms the workstation category as the target.

    >gaming handhelds

    Note that 370/365 haven't been adopted in any handheld, either because of high price or high power consumption. The talk is that the lower-tier Krackan will fill that niche. So the chance of 395/385 going into handheld is probably zero.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    If the performance is high enough I could see this ending up in gaming laptops. It would certainly use less power than an equivalent with a dedicated GPU, but it's dependent on price due to how large the die undoubtedly is. The die size is likely why it's being aimed squarely at workstations from all initial indicators. AMD also has a tendency to have limited availability so it would make sense to target the largest profit center first.
    baboma said:
    >gaming handhelds

    Note that 370/365 haven't been adopted in any handheld, either because of high price or high power consumption. The talk is that the lower-tier Krackan will fill that niche. So the chance of 395/385 going into handheld is probably zero.
    It's price one of the GPD folks said their cost for the 370 was double that of the 8840.
    Reply
  • m3city
    Gururu said:
    Beats all laptops for shortest battery life.
    If you keep it on benchmark/render/encoding mode and keep killing in cyberpunk 2077, then yes, you may actually hear energy leaking from the battery. If you use it as intended on battery, then you will probably have a day without plugging in. If you really have to have 100% CPU use on battery mode for 8h a day, then you should not do it on laptop. Desktop is the answer in such case.
    Reply
  • mac_angel
    the 390 looks like it would be the sweet spot to put together a SSF gaming PC that should be able to do better than a console. Make your own X-Box
    Reply
  • Notton
    AMD totally missing out on an opportunity to claim theirs goes up to 11.
    Instead, they copy Apple now.
    Reply