AMD to release the Krackan at CES — CPU rivals Intel Lunar Lake in new benchmarks, Ryzen AI 7 350 takes on the Core Ultra 7 258V
It should make for a great budget laptop chip.
AMD (per VideoCardz) is expected to reveal its budget Krackan Point and flagship Strix Halo offerings next month at CES 2025. In addition to a previous leak, at least in the CPU department, another Krackan Point APU has surfaced at Geekbench, competing against Intel's Lunar Lake Core Ultra 7 258V.
The leaked benchmark features a Krackan Point Engineering Sample with the OPN Code "100-000000713-40_Y" - likely the Ryzen AI 7 350. The APU was spotted on Acer's upcoming Swift Go 16 laptop variant, which is set to arrive next year. The CPU packs eight cores, split across two clusters of four Zen 5 and four Zen 5c cores alongside a base and max frequency of 2 GHz and 5.05 GHz. Like all octa-core APUs from AMD, the Ryzen AI 7 350 features 16MB of L3 cache and eight MB of L2 cache.
The Ryzen AI 7 350's single-core and multi-core scores of 2677 and 11742 place it in Lunar Lake territory, edging out the Core Ultra 7 258V. It does lose to Strix Point by some margin, but the latter has 50% more cores and threads and a larger power envelope. Compared to Hawk Point, the Ryzen AI 7 350 is 5% faster in single-core performance but surprisingly loses in multi-core, possibly due to early silicon/software.
CPU | Codename | Single-Core | Multi-Core |
---|---|---|---|
Ryzen AI 7 350 | Krackan Point | 2677 | 11742 |
Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Strix Point | 2887 | 15244 |
Ryzen 7 8840H | Hawk Point | 2540 | 12532 |
Core Ultra 7 258V | Lunar Lake | 2669 | 11075 |
Krackan Point (shorthand: KRK) is a cost-effective alternative to AMD's Strix Point APUs under the Ryzen AI 300 moniker. These APUs are rumored to employ up to eight cores in a hybrid configuration (four Zen 5 + four Zen 5c) with up to 16MB of L3 cache. The iGPU (Integrated GPU) solution drops to just eight RDNA 3.5 Compute Units (Radeon 880M) - down from the 16 CUs on Strix Point. There has been some discussion regarding a possible dual-CCX layout with separate ring buses and L3 caches for each core type, but that has yet to be seen.
Competition against Lunar Lake will be stiff, but Krackan Point will generally target the mainstream segment, with rumors that Copilot+ laptops will start at $799. Per our exhaustive testing, the Arc 140V (Lunar Lake) lands faster than the Radeon 890M (Strix Point); expect this delta to widen with Krackan Point.
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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.
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Mama Changa So Zen 5c is weaker than Zen 4, 8840 with 8 Zen 4 cores beats Krackan with 4 Zen 5 and 4 Zen 5c cores in mulithreading. Unless it's doing so using a lot less power I'd say poor result and not what I'd call ptogress. Save you money on run out Hawk Point models.Reply -
DocRedbeard Not a Lunar Lake competitor unless it's more power efficient. Lunar Lake is a giant leap in power efficiency while also maintaining very good performance, but it's not trying to be a high end chip, it's for thin and lights, and battery is key.Reply -
ryanshultz
Intel's chip is not battery efficient, they just throttle down performance when unplugged to save battery life.DocRedbeard said:Not a Lunar Lake competitor unless it's more power efficient. Lunar Lake is a giant leap in power efficiency while also maintaining very good performance, but it's not trying to be a high end chip, it's for thin and lights, and battery is key.