Leakers suggest AMD Strix Halo reviews dropping tomorrow — Asus ROG Flow Z13 launches February 25

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So far, only Asus and HP have announced their Strix Halo offerings.

Flow Z13 Hero
(Image credit: Weibo)

AMD's beastly Strix Halo APUs might be closer than you expect, with reviews reportedly going live tomorrow per hardware leaker HXL at X (formerly Twitter). This rumor follows teasers from various content creators. Even Asus has announced a release date for its high-end ROG Flow Z13 laptops; slated for a February 25 launch. We're yet to hear more from HP regarding its Strix Halo-equipped laptops and mini-PCs, but they should follow shortly afterward.

AMD pulled the veil off the Ryzen AI Max+ series, codenamed Strix Halo, at CES last month. Claimed to rival Nvidia's RTX 4070 mobile, AMD has equipped the top-end config with a beefy 40 Compute Unit integrated GPU based on RDNA 3.5, hosted by the massive I/O die in the center. To the north are two Zen 5 CCDs with up to 16 cores / 32 threads and 80MB of total L2 and L3 cache, capable of pushing 5.1 GHz. The entire package is fed by 128GB of unified memory, where 96GB can be dedicated to the iGPU alone. AMD allows OEMs to configure these APUs between 45W and 120W, depending on the device.

Strix Halo reviews are reportedly embargoed until tomorrow. On-shelf inventory will be limited to two laptops and a mini-PC from HP and Asus, but wider adoption is expected as demand grows. In addition, Asus confirmed its "Illusion X 2025" laptops (the Chinese variant of the ROG Flow Z13) featuring AMD's Ryzen AI Max + chips, will launch on February 25 in a post on Weibo.

The 2-in-1 Flow Z13, functioning both as a laptop and a tablet, is configurable with the Ryzen AI MAX 395+, 128GB of LPDDR5X memory, a 13.4-inch 2.5K IPS display at 180 Hz with HDR support, and a 70Wh battery. All this power comes at a steep price of $2,699 which is comparable to high-end gaming laptops. Still, you get the advantage of a better battery life and more memory for inference. We'd love to see Strix Halo-powered mini-PCs but only HP's Z2 Mini G1a has been announced thus far, with no set release date.

Strix Halo might easily stand as one of AMD's most innovative and radical designs in recent memory. These APUs are designed to compete against Apple's M-series SoCs and mobile workstations outfitted with dedicated Nvidia graphics. Given that AMD's discrete GPUs never really took off in the laptop space, Strix Halo could signal a more APU-focused future, though it could be a while until we see a potential Strix Halo successor based on RDNA 4.

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Hassam Nasir
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.

14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • usertests
    I expected $3k for anything with the full 128 GB of memory, so $2,700 is under that at least. That's the amount for AI.

    I think the 64 GB models could suffer in the market because it's not enough memory for the LLMs people want to run.

    Then when you get down to 32 GB, 8-core, 32 CUs, pricing will be everything for determining whether it matters compared to Nvidia dGPU gaming laptops, or other mini PC options, wherever it ends up. That is enough for gaming. You could split it 20 GB RAM / 12 GB "VRAM".

    I remember there is at least one tablet with Strix Halo in it, that should be interesting.
    Reply
  • cknobman
    Crazy it has taken AMD this long to make a purchasable consumer grade APU like this when they have been doing it for the last several console generations.

    Hoping to scoop up a mini PC for something that isnt stupid expensive.
    Barebones mini PC for under $1k would be great.
    Reply
  • redgarl
    I hope Framework make one of those.
    Reply
  • kealii123
    usertests said:
    I expected $3k for anything with the full 128 GB of memory, so $2,700 is under that at least. That's the amount for AI.

    I think the 64 GB models could suffer in the market because it's not enough memory for the LLMs people want to run.

    Then when you get down to 32 GB, 8-core, 32 CUs, pricing will be everything for determining whether it matters compared to Nvidia dGPU gaming laptops, or other mini PC options, wherever it ends up. That is enough for gaming. You could split it 20 GB RAM / 12 GB "VRAM".

    I remember there is at least one tablet with Strix Halo in it, that should be interesting.
    Nah, 64 gigs is the sweet spot. Heck, if the pooled memory works the same way as Apple Silicon, where the CPU and GPU not only dynamically allocate memory but also share direct access to the same memory addresses, then even 32 is going to be enough. This avoids the inefficiency of copying model data between separate memory pools, allowing LLM inference to run way faster since transfer speed is often a bottleneck.

    If you want to run a larger model than that, you're going to get unusably low tok/sec anyways, making it kinda pointless. Scaling memory without scaling compute power is unbalanced.
    Reply
  • kealii123
    cknobman said:
    Crazy it has taken AMD this long to make a purchasable consumer grade APU like this when they have been doing it for the last several console generations.

    Hoping to scoop up a mini PC for something that isnt stupid expensive.
    Barebones mini PC for under $1k would be great.
    In an interview, the product lead for this chip said that he's been pushing this type of product for a while, but senior management thought it wouldn't be viable (AMD has enough trouble selling any GPUs, let alone laptop GPUs) until Apple came along and showed it was possible for consumer markets.
    Reply
  • Mr Majestyk
    Probably $6-7K in Australia for any high end 395 Max systems. Prices like it's 2000 again. All for a non-upgradeable laptop that'll seem like slow junk in 3 years.
    Reply
  • usertests
    cknobman said:
    Hoping to scoop up a mini PC for something that isnt stupid expensive.
    Barebones mini PC for under $1k would be great.
    Weren't some of the first Strix Point 370 mini PCs $1k? It will take a long while for Strix Halo to get that cheap.

    Also, it seems impossible to get it truly "barebones" if it always comes with soldered memory (no LPCAMM options seen).
    Reply
  • Notton
    The previous models from 2023 (GZ301) were an i9-13900H with RTX 2050/4050/4060/4070
    Pricing was more or less the same.

    The $2700 395+ 128GB version seems overkill, unless you absolutely need it.
    The $2200 395+ 32GB version is the sweet spot. Set it to 12GB GPU / 24GB CPU split and it should handle 1080p (or 1440p upscaled) stuff just fine I think.

    As for other 395+ products, Sixunited is showing off their AXB35-02 mini-PC equipped with a 395+. (It seems to be a little larger than an ATX PSU)
    Reply
  • ottonis
    Sounds good for anything inference-related. That being said, if training of LLMs (or even finetuning) is a goal, then 128 GB would probably not exactly be the most feasible amount of DRAM for that kind of task. Then again, one can run inference tasks even on much less than 128 GB of RAM.
    So, I wonder what type of usecase these new APU-based designs are exactely aiming at.
    If someone wants to game, there are probably specific gaming notebooks with higher GPU performance. AI training is probably also outside the ballpark.
    In my opinion, such a machine would probably most closely resemble the strengths of an Apple Silicon based Apple M1-4 APU which is extremely energy-efficient at video-/graphics/multimedia/content creation tasks.
    Reply
  • KyaraM
    cknobman said:
    Crazy it has taken AMD this long to make a purchasable consumer grade APU like this when they have been doing it for the last several console generations.

    Hoping to scoop up a mini PC for something that isnt stupid expensive.
    Barebones mini PC for under $1k would be great.
    What are you dreaming of at night? xD
    Seriously, there is no way these things would start under 2k. If you wanna be real charitable, make that 1.5k, but under that? Lol, nope. 4070 laptops cost over 1k already, and very often 4060 laptops do, too. Even as a barebones, this won't happen any time soon.
    Reply