Intel Arrow Lake-H and AMD Krackan Point laptops emerge at retailers — preliminary listings indicate that manufacturers are gearing up for launch next month

Asus Zenbook
(Image credit: Asus)

Preliminary listings at Australian and Greek retailers (credit: Huang514613 at X) reveal that Asus's next wave of laptop offerings—powered by AMD's Krackan Point and Intel's Arrow Lake-H processors—is on the horizon.

Many rumors suggest that AMD and Intel plan to unveil their next-generation mobile offerings next month at CES 2025. AMD is expected to showcase its flagship Strix Halo (Ryzen AI Max Pro 300) and budget Krackan Point (Ryzen AI 300) APUs. At the same time, Intel will introduce Arrow Lake in HX, H, and U configurations, each geared toward different power envelopes and price points.

Arrow Lake uses a modified form of Xe-LP, termed Xe-LP+ or Alchemist+, and features XMX cores. This will allow these processors to use Intel's upcoming XeSS Frame Generation technology, which is not supported on Meteor Lake due to the lack of XMX cores. It is no Battlemage, but most Arrow Lake-H/HX laptops will be paired with a discrete GPU—likely from Nvidia's upcoming RTX 50 family.

On the other hand, Hawk Point (Ryzen 8040) will be refreshed next year as Ryzen AI 200 to better align with AMD's new naming scheme. It is still based on Zen 4 and RDNA 3. Krackan Point is a budget alternative to Strix Point, maintaining all the bells and whistles of Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5. However, the GPU features eight CUs (Compute Units)—half that of Strix Point.

Krackan is said to compete directly with Intel's Lunar Lake chips but could fall behind in efficiency and graphics performance. At the same time, AMD is also readying its Fire Range chips —using desktop silicon —to rival Intel's Arrow Lake-HX processors.

As we inch closer to CES, laptop manufacturers are firing all cylinders to get their offerings ready beforehand - as indicated by this leak. Expect these laptops to retail a few weeks after the announcement, possibly in late January or early February.

Hassam Nasir
Contributing Writer

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.

  • Mama Changa
    I call BS on AMD. I just walked into our largest tech shop and out of hundreds of laptops on display there was not one Lunar Lake based laptop and only 3 AMD based laptops. Everything was Raptor Lake or Mediocre Lake. AMD should call their SoC unicorn <Mod Edit>, because it's probably harder to find.
    Reply