Mini PC specialist GMKtec recently launched the EVO-X3, heralding it as a “next-gen AI workstation,” with early access registration beginning tomorrow (Monday, June 22). The firm also took to social media this weekend to show that the successor to the GMKtec EVO-X2, which we reviewed in February, had earned AMD CEO Lisa Su’s signature of approval. This is not entirely surprising, as so did the X2. So, let’s take a closer look at the new GMKtec EVO-X3.

Actually, the tech specs of the EVO-X3 aren’t very different from its predecessor. We can say with certainty that its design has been thoroughly revamped, though. Look at the difference between the generations. This is a good thing, as most of our reviewers ‘Cons’ regarding the EVO-X2 were drawn from its design and build. Specifically we grumbled about the cheap-feeling case, tricky internal access, and fan noise. A smart redesign would have addressed all these points, but we’d have to get some hands-on time with the new revision to be sure it delivers more than a cosmetic change.

The new GMKtec EVO-X3 is again built around the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 'Strix Halo' processor. Interestingly, a switch to the Ryzen AI Max+ 495 'Gorgon Halo' must have been deemed counterproductive. Many tech enthusiasts were underwhelmed by the AMD Ryzen AI 400 series refresh, too. We also know there are two launch configurations, both with 128GB of LPDDR5X-8000 RAM, but one having a 2TB SSD, the other 4TB. The machine is advertised as featuring two M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4x4 slots for up to 8TB of SSD storage.

As hinted above, the big change between generations appears to be in the build. GMKtec now boasts of the “silent triple fan thermal system” which makes the whole unit somewhat like a triple fan graphics card in a steel wrapper. GMKtec says that “The system is engineered to balance performance, efficiency, and thermal stability, making it suitable for continuous professional workloads across AI and creative scenarios.”

For ports, we note the EVO-X3 packs in an OCuLink connector, USB4 for data, power delivery and video out, and HDMI 2.1 video out. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 are also on board. There are also a few USB-A ports, an Ethernet jack, and a headset jack.

Prices up, a lot

The GMKtec EVO-X2 launched at $1,499 as tested with 64GB RAM and 1TB SSD. Today, EVO-X2 machines with this configuration are currently being sold for $1,999 on Amazon.com. However, the GMKtec EVO-X3 entry price is far steeper, admittedly with more RAM and storage. It is advertising the 128GB RAM and 2TB SSD version at $3,600, and the 128GB RAM plus 4TB storage version at $3,849. Both of those are said to be pre-launch discounted prices. Signing up for the early access registration can get you an additional $20 off those marked-down prices.

GMKtec told us that the pre-launch is live tomorrow, with purchased units being sent out from July 6.

AMD is refreshing its stack of large SoCs, dubbed Ryzen AI Max, with new Gorgon Point chips. Codenamed Gorgon Halo, the Ryzen AI Max 400 range is a minor refresh to the Ryzen AI Max 300 ‘Strix Halo’ chips already available, similar to what we saw with Gorgon Point in laptops earlier this year. Gorgon Halo comes with one significant difference, however, which is space for up to 192GB of unified memory.

With Strix Halo, you could pack up to 128GB of unified memory, but AMD is pushing that boundary higher with Gorgon Halo; perhaps at the worst possible time, as global DRAM shortages continue to push prices up across all business categories. It’ll be a minor miracle if AMD is able to actually ship Gorgon Point with 192GB of unified memory consistently — we’ve seen Apple remove the 512GB option and even the 128GB option from the Mac Studio due to memory shortages.

Regardless, AMD has a lineup of three chips that should look very familiar if you’ve looked over the Strix Halo stack. All three chips use Zen 5 CPU cores and RDNA 3.5 GPU cores, alongside an XDNA 2 NPU. The flagship Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 comes with a minor clock speed bump of 100 MHz over the Ryzen AI Max+ 395, allowing it to boost to 5.2 GHz. Otherwise, you could scratch off the “4” and replace it with a “3,” at least based on the specs AMD has shared so far.

These chips currently have a “Pro” tag, which means they’re targeting the commercial market. However, the slides below refer to the Ryzen AI Max 400 range more broadly. I asked AMD about this discrepancy, and a spokesperson sent the following: “AMD will be announcing the Ryzen AI Max PRO 400 Series, featuring AMD PRO technologies which deliver enterprise-grade security, manageability, and reliability.”

So, I guess consumer Gorgon Halo is still up in the air. Maybe.

Interestingly, AMD opted to stick with a GPU with 32 CUs (the Radeon 8050S) for the Ryzen AI Max Pro 490 and 485. Earlier this year, AMD refreshed the Ryzen AI Max 385 and 390 with 40 CUs, the same as the flagship, in the form of the Ryzen AI Max+ 388 and 392. Maybe we’ll see a refresh of the refreshed Gorgon Halo chips with 40 CUs down the line.

Memory is the big upgrade here. Regardless of the GPU configuration, up to 160GB of unified memory can function as VRAM (32GB is reserved for the system). AMD says that much memory makes Ryzen AI Max 400 chips the first x86 client processors able to run a 300B+ parameter LLM. It wins in a category of one, however: Intel doesn’t make a large SoC like Gorgon Halo, and Apple uses the ARM ISA.

AMD says Ryzen AI Max 400 chips are “coming soon,” but didn’t share any timeline beyond that, nor any partners for Gorgon Halo systems. Strix Halo, as a niche product, was only available in a handful of machines, such as the Framework Desktop, ROG Flow Z13, and GMKtec EVO-X2. There’s a good chance we’ll see a similarly conservative rollout of Gorgon Halo, as well.

Despite not sharing any partners, AMD tells me that “several OEM partners have expressed excitement for the Ryzen AI Halo platform and the Ryzen AI Max Pro 400 series family of processors,” and that “systems will be announced from our partners starting in Q3 2026.”

AMD Ryzen AI Halo starts at $3,999 — pre-orders in June

The only confirmed machine with Ryzen AI Max 400 so far is the Ryzen AI Halo, which is “coming soon” configured with the Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495. Coming sooner is the Ryzen AI Halo box AMD revealed earlier this year with the Ryzen AI Max+ 395. AMD is opening up pre-orders in June, and it says the machine starts at $3,999.

The starting configuration includes a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with 128GB of unified memory and 2TB of storage. It says “details and pricing of the other configurations will be released closer to on-shelf,” so it sounds like we’ll see additional models in the future. The Ryzen AI Halo’s main competitor, Nvidia’s DGX Spark, is currently selling for $4,700 with 128GB of unified memory, Nvidia’s GB10 chip, and 4TB of storage.

The Ryzen AI Halo supports Linux and Windows, while the DGX Spark is limited to Linux. Still, the penguin seems like the primary platform for this box. With Linux, AMD says the Ryzen AI Halo offers up to 14% higher tokens per second than the DGX Spark with the GLM 4.7 Flash 30B model, as well as up to 4% higher tokens per second with Qwen 3.6 35B. AMD also compared the Ryzen AI Halo to the Mac Mini M4 Pro, showing around 4X scaling in AI workloads. That’s not really a fair comparison, however; a Mac Studio is more akin to the level of compute inside the Ryzen AI Halo or DGX Spark.

Outside of the core components, the Ryzen AI Halo comes with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and 10Gbps Ethernet, along with an HDMI 2.1b display output. The device includes three USB-C ports (no word on speeds yet), along with a fourth USB-C used for power delivery. The rated TDP is up to 120W for the box. It’s a lot of hardware crammed into a tiny space, with the Ryzen AI Halo coming in at 5.9 x 5.9 x 1.7 inches.

Although these boxes are expensive, AMD is framing the Ryzen AI Halo around the “token economy,” similar to how Nvidia has messaged against its data center hardware. AMD says one Ryzen AI Halo box can save up to $750 each month over using cloud compute, claiming the Ryzen AI Halo will break even on cost after six months (assuming six million tokens per day). With AI agents, that token usage is certainly possible. Just this month, we saw OpenClaw developer Peter Steinberger rack up $1.3 million in OpenAI API usage in just 30 days across a three-person team working on the agentic AI framework.

Pre-orders open in June for the Ryzen AI Halo., although AMD hasn’t shared the exact date. For the updated Ryzen AI Halo box with Gorgon Halo chips, AMD hasn’t announced any release date yet. Assuming we see more systems in Q3 as AMD has suggested, we should have a better idea about the Gorgon Halo rollout at that point.

Full presentation

Update, 11/9/2025 7:20am PT: According to a Reddit post by u/A_Canadian_boi, the listing for the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X3D on the PassMark benchmark database was submitted by accident. The user explains that after discussing AMD’s Zen 5 architecture and the CPUID instruction with friends, they discovered that AMD’s MSRs (Model-Specific Registers) can be edited.

To test this theory, they modified a heavily PBO’d Ryzen 7 9700X to appear as a “9700X3D” by editing the /proc/cpuinfo file. After running a quick PassMark test, they found that the benchmarking software failed to detect the mismatch between /proc/cpuinfo and the actual CPUID, and even submitted the results to the live PassMark database. In short, according to this new information, there is no Ryzen 7 9700X3D out in the wild; the listing was simply a result of a sneaky experiment.

The original story, including our original sprinklings of salt, continues below:

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is currently the best CPU you can buy for gaming, offering outstanding performance that easily surpasses Intel’s best. A new leak suggests that a more affordable alternative could be on the way: the Ryzen 7 9700X3D. According to the PassMark benchmark database, the unreleased 3D V-cache-equipped processor has 8 cores and 16 threads and leverages the AM5 platform.

The boost clock speed of the Ryzen 7 9700X3D is listed at 5.8 GHz, a substantial jump over the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which tops out at 5.2 GHz. That's a substantial increase that could indicate a number of possibilities, such as a higher clock to attain faster speeds, a data entry error, or that the benchmark testing was done on an overclocked chip. As for the benchmark itself, the CPU scored 40,438 points in multi-threaded and 4,687 points in single-threaded benchmarks. The result is pretty much in line with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in the same tests, where the existing chip scored 39,982 in multi-threaded and 4,427 in single-threaded.

The benchmark database additionally lists a brand new Strix Halo part, namely the Ryzen AI MAX+ 388. This chip scored 31,702 points in multi-threaded and 4,145 points in single-threaded benchmarks on PassMark. By the looks of it, this particular chip should sit between the Ryzen AI MAX+ 390 and AI MAX+ 385 and could potentially be a China-exclusive SKU.

Additional information from the listing suggests that it features a total of 8 cores and 16 threads, 32 MB of L3 cache, and 8 MB of L2 cache. Interestingly, it also comes with the Radeon 8060S iGPU, featuring 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units, similar to the flagship Ryzen AI MAX+ 395. In case you missed our coverage, the Radeon 8060S is currently the most powerful integrated GPU solution offering performance that is very similar to an RTX 4060.

The introduction of a new X3D chip is definitely exciting, especially since the Ryzen 7 9800X3D currently goes for around $450. A potentially cheaper option would give users more choice when upgrading or building a brand-new gaming rig. Having said that, leaked benchmark results are not proof of existence; however, we expect AMD to make some sort of announcement at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2026. Till then, take all of the information above with a pinch of salt.

Portable and handheld PC stalwart GPD today teased the first AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395-powered handheld. Moreover, in a short video clip shared on X, we get to see the device in action, with someone playing Black Myth: Wukong. We don’t get a summary chart accompanying the video, but this handheld appears to run this popular game at between 170 and 212 fps for the duration of the gameplay clip.

AMD’s ‘Strix Halo’ Ryzen AI Max+ chips debuted at CES 2025, at the start of the year, with the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 being the halo product of the family. Its blend of RDNA 3.5 graphics and Zen 5 CPU cores – plus radical new memory tech, offering up to 256 GB/s bandwidth. It’s a natural for a premium handheld, but we’ve only seen rumors and suggestions of such handhelds in the making until now.

GPD’s “breaking news” post doesn’t reveal a lot about the GPD WIN 5 it is teasing. However, we can see a few interesting things straight away. The pocketable PCs specialist has chosen to show a few key stats overlaid on the gaming video: processor temperature, iGPU clock speed, CPU power consumption, and frames per second performance.

Watching these stats, we note that, during the brief 20s or so we get to see, the processor hovers around the 65 degrees C region, which looks good for a handheld. At the same time, the ‘CPU Power’ varies between 55W and 58W. The iGPU, the Radeon 8060S, also maintains a clock speed of around 2.5 GHz. As per our intro, Black Myth: Wukong runs from between around 170 and 212fps for the duration of the clip. Admittedly, there are a lot of stats and settings missing from our view, like the graphics quality settings used.

GPD WIN 5 controls were hidden in the shadows

After grabbing the best quality video we could from the source and fiddling with levels in Photoshop, the joyvpad and buttons layout of the GPD WIN5 comes into view.

There are no big surprises in the buttons, pads, and sticks plucked from the darkness of the promo video. On the left, it looks like there is a thumb stick at the top, with a D-pad below, then three buttons and what looks like a speaker grille.

We're seeing traces of AMD's more affordable Strix Halo options, with the octa-core Ryzen AI Max 385 marking its debut on Geekbench. Powering the HP ZBook Ultra G1a, Strix Halo appears poised to expand into the mainstream segment with eight and six-core variations. Performance indicators in Geekbench aren't as impressive as we expected, though we shouldn't consider them as definitive due to this being a leak, typical run-to-run variations, and laptop power settings.

CES marked the debut of AMD's flagship APU family this generation, Strix Halo, under the Ryzen AI 300 Max line, for AI/ML developers and gamers. AMD launched four different variants, ranging from 6-16 CPU cores and 16-40 GPU cores, catering to a wide range of consumers. Most of the first and second quarters have been occupied by the premier Ryzen AI Max+ 395 and 390, with mini-PCs costing up to $2,000. Meanwhile, laptops, limited to the HP Zbook Ultra G1a and Asus ROG Flow Z13, exceed the $5,000 price point, fully decked out with 128GB of LPDDR5x RAM.

The Ryzen AI Max 385 sports eight cores and sixteen threads based on the Zen 5 architecture, alongside a 32 Compute Unit equipped integrated GPU (Radeon 8050S) based on RDNA 3.5 and a 50 TOPS capable NPU. The CPU is advertised to reach 5 GHz, only 100 MHz below the flagship model. This suggests similar single-core performance, but the actual results indicate otherwise.

Zotac is preparing to launch new mini-PC offerings at Computex next week, featuring AMD's beastly Strix Halo APUs and desktop Blackwell GPUs from Nvidia. So far, the company has showcased two designs with Nvidia hardware, featuring the desktop RTX 5060 Ti and the RTX 5070, and one AMD-based design with a Ryzen AI MAX CPU. Details on exact specifications and pricing have not been shared, but we'll hear more from the team at Taipei in just a few days.

Under its ZBOX Mini PC offerings, Zotac's Magnus-E lineup features compact yet powerful mini-PCs targeted at enthusiasts and content creators. The latest Strix Halo addition should extend their appeal to AI/ML developers as well. The upcoming Magnus One is equipped with an 8.48-liter chassis, housing a desktop RTX 5070 Ti 16GB along with a Core Ultra 7 processor from Intel, potentially from the Core Ultra 200S series.

The Magnus EN follows with a compact 2.65-liter design, home to the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB (desktop). This is accompanied by a mobile Core Ultra 7 processor, which can either be the Core Ultra 7 265H or its HX counterpart. With Arrow Lake, the distinction between Intel's H and HX grade processors goes beyond TDP and core counts. Arrow Lake-H features rebadged SoC Tiles from Meteor Lake, which can potentially offset performance gains, as shown in a previous review.

MSI has confirmed it will take the covers off a host of exciting new products at Computex 2025 later this month, including a brand new desktop AI supercomputer powered by Nvidia's DGX Spark platform.

The company confirmed in a press release that it will unveil its EdgeXpert MS-C931, a new desktop AI supercomputer built on the Nvidia DG Spark platform. The MS-C931 is powered by Nvidia's GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip and is capable of 1,000 AI TOPS FP4 performance. The GB10 SoC features Nvidia Blackwell GPU architecture and fifth-generation Tensor Cores, as well as NVLink-C2C connection to Nvidia's Grace CPU, an Arm architecture core featuring 20 power-efficient chips.

It will also feature ConnectX 7 networking, 128GB unified memory, and LLM support, which Nvidia has previously promised can support up to 4TB of NVMe storage, and can run up to 200-billion-parameter LLMs, or 405-billion parameter models when running two linked chips.

Nvidia's DGX Spark platform promises compact and efficient performance, and comes pre-installed with Nvidia's AI software stack so that developers can run AI models from all the major players, including DeepSeek, Meta, and Google.

Alongside the MS-C931, MSI also says it will unveil a new lineup of Industrial Motherboards, as well as systems powered by Intel Twin Lake, Raptor Lake Refresh, Bartlett Lake, and Arrow Lake processor families.

Specifically, the company highlighted three new products. The MS-C926 is an ultra-slim fanless box PC with applications in smart retail and digital signage.

The Ms-927 is an ultra-compact box PC featuring Intel Core Ultra processors for high-performance edge computing.

Finally, the MS-CF20 is a new next-generation ATX motherboard featuring 16th Gen Intel Arrow Lake-S processors.

MSI says it will also have live demonstrations for solutions for smart retail and digital signage. There will also be a new fanless palm box for "space-constrained industrial environments, remote control management solutions utilizing SysLink, and edge AI innovations, including LLM and chatbot applications enabled by AI smartLink software.

Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion, has released ONNX-optimized models that run up to 3.3x faster on compatible AMD hardware, including select Radeon GPUs and Ryzen AI APUs on mobile.

Amuse is a platform developed by AMD and TensorStack AI that allows users to generate images and short videos locally, on AMD hardware. The latest Amuse 3.0 release not only supports these updated models but also introduces a range of new features, including video diffusion, AI photo filters, and local text-to-image generation. Amuse 3.0 and AMD optimized models require the Adrenalin 24.30.31.05 preview drivers or the upcoming Adrenalin 25.4.1 mainline release.

Over the past year, AMD has partnered with several OSVs, OEMs, and ISVs to optimize AI applications from the ground up, incorporating hardware optimizations, efficient drivers, compilers, and optimized ML models, among other enhancements. Building on this partnership, Stability AI has launched Radeon-optimized versions of its Stable Diffusion family, which include Stable Diffusion 3.5 (SD3.5) and Stable Diffusion XL Turbo (SDXL Turbo). First-party metrics report a 3.3x speedup with SD3.5 Large, dropping to 2.1x for SD3.5 Large Turbo and 1.5x for SDXL Turbo compared to the base PyTorch implementations.

Running large language models (LLMs) on PCs locally is becoming increasingly popular worldwide. In response, AMD is introducing its own LLM application, Gaia, an open-source project for running local LLMs on any Windows machine.

Gaia is designed to run various LLM models on Windows PCs and features further performance optimizations for machines equipped with its Ryzen AI processors (including the Ryzen AI Max 395+). Gaia uses the open-source Lemonade SDK from ONNX TurnkeyML for LLM inference. Models can allegedly adapt for different purposes with Gaia, including summarization and complex reasoning tasks.

Gaia allegedly works through a Retrieval-Augmented Generation agent or RAG. RAG combines an LLM with a knowledge base, allowing the LLM to provide an interactive AI experience for the end-user along with more accurate and contextually aware responses. RAG currently incorporates four Gaia agents: Simple Prompt Completion, an agent designed for direct model interactions intended for testing and evaluation; Chaty, the chatbot portion of an LLM that interacts with the user; Clip, an agent with YouTube search and Q&A functionality; and Joker, a joke generator that adds a humoristic personality to the chatbot.

AMD's new open-source project works by providing LLM-specific tasks through the Lemonade SDK and serving them across multiple runtimes. Lemonade allegedly "exposes an LLM web service that communicates with the GAIA application...via an OpenAI compatible Rest API." Gaia itself acts as an AI-powered agent that retrieves and processes data. It also "vectorizes external content (e.g., GitHub, YouTube, text files) and stores it in a local vector index."

In other words, Gaia can enhance user queries before the LLM processes them, allegedly improving response accuracy and relevance.

The new AI chatbot has two installers: a mainstream installer that works on any Windows PC (whether that PC has AMD hardware or not) and a "Hybrid" installer optimized for Ryzen AI PCs. The latter specifically enables Gaia to run computations on a Ryzen AI CPU's neural processing unit (NPU) and integrated graphics for better performance.

Gaia is the latest competitor in the new sea of localized LLM applications, including LM Studio and ChatRTX. Running an LLM locally has significant advantages over cloud-based solutions, including greater security, lower latency, and, in some cases, better performance, depending on the system hardware. Best of all, local LLMs work offline and don't require an internet connection.

China's GMKTec has announced the EVO-X2, which it claims is "the world's first AI mini PC equipped with the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor." The device was shown off at the AMD Greater China Channel Summit today, with top red-team execs like CEO Lisa Su and SVP & GM Jack Huynh in attendance. GMKTec was lucky enough to get Dr. Su to sign one or more of the new EVO-X2 mini PCs, and the source blog hints there is a batch of Signature Editions.

Detailed hardware specs of the EVO-X2 are not readily available, and the product page has yet to be published by GMKTec, so you'll have to settle for a brief outline for now. As far as the internals go, all we are sure about is that this compact desktop will pack an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor. However, its performance in DeepSeek R1 tests is more than 3X that of an RTX 5080 desktop GPU, according to purported GMKTec hardware demonstrations.

To recap the AMD Strix Halo APU's specs, it features a Zen 5 architecture CPU configured with 16 cores and 32 threads (two CCDs), operating at a maximum frequency of 5.1 GHz. As an APU, this is joined by a beefy iGPU, namely the RDNA 3.5 architecture Radeon 8060S with 40 compute units. Rounding off the processing package, there is an XDNA2 NPU which is capable of 50 TOPS. AMD has also shoved 80MB cache onboard, but buyers will have a choice of the RAM quota (up to 128GB of 256-bit LPDDR5X-8533 RAM) at time of purchase.

Back to pixel peeping to unearth more details about the GMKTec EVO-X2, and one of the first comments we can make is that it is pretty sizable for a mini PC. In the image featuring Jack Huynh, you can see the AMD SVP & GM holding a Geekom machine, which appears to be a traditional '4 x 4' NUC-a-like. With the EVO-X2 in close proximity, we Photoshop-estimate that the EVO-X2 is a '5 x 4.5' and larger in the remaining dimension.

Images shared by GMKTec on social media provide further ideas about the shape and form of the EVO-X2. Also, we can clearly see a power button to the front, alongside an SD card reader, a Thunderbolt (Type C) port, twin USB (Type A ports), and a headset jack. Around the back are three more USB (Type-A) ports, another Thunderbolt, HDMI, DP, an RJ45 network port, another headset jack, and a barrel power jack.

Enthusiasts are excited about the new generation Strix Halo APUs from AMD. So if GMKTec can get its product on shelves ahead of the likes of the HP Z2 Mini G1a and Framework Desktop - at an attractive price - it will have won a minor coup. We don't know how many 'Lisa Su' signed models there are, but the source blog hints there is a batch.

As for who will be first with an AMD Strix Halo, Asus originally slated its ROG Flow Z13 for release in February, but it still seems to be in pre-order purgatory, and it's not a mini PC. The Framework Desktop machines with Ryzen AI Max chips aren't expected until Q3 this year. The other machine we have heard about, the HP Z2 Mini G1a, is set to be released in 'spring.'

AMD's fire-breathing Ryzen AI Max+ 395 allegedly crushes Intel's latest efficiency-focused Lunar Lake CPUs in AI benchmarks. An AMD blog post claims the new Zen 5 + RDNA 3.5 chip is up to 12.2x faster than the Core Ultra 7 258V.

AMD benchmarked the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 and Core Ultra 7 258V (with Arc 140V graphics) in a variety of large language models and LLM configurations, including DeepSeek R1 and Llama. Model sizes were restricted to 16GB to offer a fairer comparison against Lunar Lake-powered laptops with 32GB of memory (the highest memory configuration available for these devices). An Asus ROG Flow Z13 64GB was used for the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 test system, and an Asus Zenbook S14 32GB was used for the Core Ultra 7 258V test system.

In DeepSeek R1, the Ryzen chip was up to 2.1x faster (measured in tokens per second) than the Intel counterpart using Distill Qwen 1.5b, up to 2.2x faster using Distill Qwen 7b; up to 2.1x faster using Distill Llama 8b; and up to 2.2x faster using Distill Qwen 14b. In Phi 4 Mini Instruct 3.8b, the Ryzen chip was up to 2.1x faster than the Intel Lunar Lake chip; up to 2.2x faster in Phi 4 14b; and up to 2.1x faster in Llama 3.2 3b Instruct.

In the same LLM configurations but benchmarking the "time to the first token," the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 was up to 12.2x faster in DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14b. The Zen 5 chip's least-performant dominance was in Phi 4 Mini Instruct 3.8b and Llama 3.2 3b Instruct, where the AMD chip was "only" 4x faster than the Core Ultra 7 258V.

AMD showed similar dominance in AI vision models using the same "time to the first token" benchmarking technique. In IBM Granite Vision 3.2 2B, the 395 was up to 7x faster than the 258V, up to 4.6x faster in Google Gemma 3.4b, and up to 6x faster in Google Gemma 3 12b.

AMD's benchmarks show complete dominance of its Ryzen AI Max+ 395 against the Core Ultra 7 258V in AI benchmarks. This is all thanks to the Ryzen AI Max CPU's significantly more powerful integrated graphics chip (which rivals discrete graphics with its 40 RDNA 3.5 CUs), eight more CPU cores, and its significantly higher configurable TDP (rated up to 120W). Even though it consumes significantly more power than the Core Ultra 7 258V (which has a max turbo power of 37W), both chips operate in the same market, and are compatible in the same thin-and-light category of laptop PCs.

It will be interesting to see how the new AMD mobile APUs shape up against Nvidia's RTX 50-series mobile GPUs, which are reportedly facing supply chain issues, delaying their launch in upcoming RTX 50 series gaming laptops. On a pure performance level (not considering form factor), these new Nvidia-powered systems will be AMD's primary competition.

AMD is allegedly well on its way to handling discrete GPU competition, as it already advertised superior AI performance on the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 against Nvidia's RTX 4090 laptop GPU.

Tom’s Hardware has tested dozens of processors from AMD and Intel to find the best CPU for gaming. Our list of 2026 CPU gaming benchmarks currently comprises 17 of the most demanding titles available on the market, which we run each gaming processor through to see the chips that come out on top. We select our picks based on the data in our CPU benchmark hierarchy, so all of the CPUs below are backed by hundreds of hours of real-world, hands-on testing where we gather extensive data on how a CPU performs and behaves while gaming. If you want a broader look at the CPU market, our AMD vs. Intel article shows you where the current CPU duopoly stands, while our CPU buying guide can help you narrow down the best processor for you.

Now in the back half of the year, we don’t expect major new releases from AMD or Intel. AMD has been on a tear with refreshes, particularly among X3D CPUs. We recently reviewed the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, AMD’s first CPU with 3D V-Cache on both CCDs, and it’s the most powerful chip from Team Red currently available. It’s earned a spot on this list, though the (much cheaper) Ryzen 9 9950X3D isn’t far behind in overall performance.

We’ve also seen the Ryzen 7 9850X3D, which is technically the fastest gaming processor on the market, as you can see in our Ryzen 7 9850X3D review. However, we’ve kept the base Ryzen 7 9800X3D as our top recommendation for the best CPU for gaming due to its price. It’s only marginally behind the refreshed model (about 3% on average), and much cheaper. For most gamers, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D makes more sense.

Intel has seen a recent boost in gaming performance with Arrow Lake Refresh, and both the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus have earned spots on our list. AMD dominates in gaming at the moment, however. Our sights are set on Intel’s next-gen Nova Lake chips for a big gaming boost from Team Blue, as well as the rumored ‘Raptor Lake Next’ lineup that’s supposedly arriving early next year.

For the rest of the year, we have the Ryzen 7 7700X3D and Ryzen 7 5800X3D 10th Anniversary Edition to look forward to, which are arriving in July and June, respectively. We don’t anticipate they’ll make a major impact on our rankings here, but we plan on reviewing both CPUs as soon as they’re available.

In addition to the fastest CPUs from AMD and Intel, we’ve included a few DDR4 options on this list. The price of DRAM and NAND flash has made building even a budget PC prohibitively expensive, so DDR4 platforms are a great way to save money. Vendors are signaling a shift back toward DDR4 platforms at the moment, so we may reconsider some older CPUs for our rankings as pricing and availability allows.

Here are the gaming CPUs we recommend buying. We have a shortlist of the top options and some alternatives below, but you can click the ‘More’ links to read our thoughts about a particular CPU and where it stands in the current market.

Best CPU for Gaming in 2026 at a glance (more info below):

The list below is for the best CPUs for gaming, while the best budget CPUs can help you find a cheap chip. Processors benefit from the best thermal paste, so check out our guide if you're shopping for a new processor. But if you're after the best CPU for gaming, you're in the right place.

Best CPU for Gaming Benchmarks

We rank all the Intel and AMD processors based on our in-depth CPU benchmarks hierarchy. You can see some of those numbers in the charts above, including CPU overclock performance results (marked as PBO for AMD processors). We're currently retesting all of these processors with the Nvidia RTX 5090, but only the first four slides have that testing. The remainder are historical testing results with the RTX 4090, which we'll remove once we have fully retested all of the gaming CPUs with the RTX 5090 for our benchmarks. This group of results comprises only the chips that have passed through our newest test suite. Additionally, the tables in our CPU benchmark hierarchy include rankings based on past CPU benchmarks and breakdowns of single- and multi-threaded performance in productivity applications across a broad spate of processors. Finally, be aware that the pricing in the charts above can fluctuate.

Quick Shopping Tips

When choosing the best CPU for gaming in 2026, consider the following:

• You can't lose with AMD or Intel: As noted in our AMD vs. Intel feature, AMD tends to make the best all-around CPU for gaming for mainstream PCs lately, but both offer compelling performance options at any given price point.
• Eight cores is sufficient for gaming: If you’re looking at a pricey flagship, you’re likely wasting some money if gaming is your primary focus. You can game on as little as a quad-core CPU, but performance scaling really falls off past eight cores.
• Budget platform costs: You never want to pair a strong CPU with a weak GPU, RAM, and storage. Right now, it’s especially important to consider platform costs, however. DDR5 prices are peaking, and you’ll need to factor in the cost of DDR5 and a new motherboard if you’re coming from an older socket like AM4.
• Overclocking isn’t for everyone, but if you follow our How to Overclock a CPU guide, you can scrape out extra performance gains.

Best CPU for Gaming 2026 - $300 to $400

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D technically isn’t the fastest gaming chip on the market any more. That title goes to the new Ryzen 7 9850X3D, though the victory is marginal. As you can read in our Ryzen 7 9850X3D review, AMD’s latest X3D offering pushes ahead by 3.3% on average. Despite a minor uplift, we’re still recommending the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. With prices as they currently are, the Ryzen 7 9850X3D is only 3.3% faster despite costing around 6% more than the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

This chip really has no peer in the market outside of the Ryzen 7 9850X3D — the Ryzen 7 9800X3D delivers outstanding gaming performance, beating Intel's fastest gaming chip, the $469 Core i9-14900K, by 30% in our test suite. The 9800X3D is also almost unbelievably 35% faster than the current-gen Intel flagship, the $560 Core Ultra 9 285K. The stock Ryzen 7 9800X3D's 1% low frame rates (a good smoothness indicator) also deliver an exceptionally smooth gaming experience, benefiting gamers even in GPU-limited scenarios.

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D has eight cores and 16 threads that operate at a 4.7 GHz base and 5.2 GHz boost clock rate. The chip employs AMD's 3D V-Cache tech with a new spin, which places a 3D-stacked SRAM chiplet underneath the die to deliver an incredible 96MB of L3 cache to great effect. AMD moved the L3 cache chiplet from the top to the bottom of the compute die this generation. That gives the integrated heat spreader (IHS) direct access to the compute die, allowing for more thermal headroom, and in turn, higher clock speeds. The end result is a comparatively low-power chip that delivers incredible gaming performance and comparable productivity performance to other eight-core models on the market.

3D V-Cache previously came with trade-offs in the productivity department, but that’s not the case with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Still, 3D V-Cache doesn’t provide a performance benefit in every game, and the performance benefit is less pronounced as your display resolution climbs.

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D has much lower power consumption than the Intel competition, making it a far cooler processor that won't require as expensive accommodations, like a beefy cooler, motherboard, and power supply. It also takes particularly well to undervolting, which is easy to accomplish with AMD’s Curve Optimizer. That means the 9800X3D delivers top-notch gaming performance and a cooler, quieter, and less expensive system than you'll get with an Ultra 9 or Core i9.

Read: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Review

The $305 Ryzen 7 9700X had a rough initial product launch, but AMD's targeted firmware and operating system improvements have changed the picture tremendously, allowing the chip to place much higher on our CPU benchmark hierarchy (head there for the most up-to-date gaming benchmarks). Combined with lower-than-launch pricing, the Ryzen 7 9700X is a strong contender, tying Intel's Core i9-14900K in gaming and beating the Core i7-14700K. That's not to mention that it beats Intel's entire lineup of Arrow Lake processors as well. Now, all of those processors offer faster performance in heavily-threaded productivity applications than the 9700X, but when it comes to a pure gaming experience, the 9700X either ties or beats all current Intel competitors.

The Ryzen 7 9700X has eight Zen 5 cores with 16 threads that operate at a 3.8 GHz base and 5.5 GHz boost clock. The chip has a 65W TDP, though AMD retroactively added a 105W TDP option you can select in the BIOS that helps boost performance in productivity applications. It's covered by the warranty, as well. With either setting, the 9700X has comparatively tame power consumption, so it is an easy chip to cool. You'll have to buy your own cooler for the processor, though.

The Ryzen 7 9700X drops into socket AM5 motherboards, and B-series motherboards make the most sense for this class of chip. B850 and B840 motherboards get AMD's latest chipset with features like mandatory PCIe 5.0 support on the top M.2 slot and better availability for features like Wi-Fi 7. However, the Ryzen 7 9700X will still work with the older B650 chipset if you can find a board on sale.

Read: Ryzen 5 9700X Review

The $350 Core Ultra 7 270K Plus performs like a flagship CPU, but it costs about half as much. In games, it narrowly outclasses the Core i7-14700K and offers a 2.4% boost over the competing Ryzen 7 9700X. AMD’s last-gen Ryzen 7 7800X3D still offers around a 10% boost over the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, but it’s also around $50 to $80 more expensive depending on sales.

It’s a solid gaming CPU, and certainly a better recommendation than the Core i7-14700K given prices right now. Compared to the Ryzen 7 9700X, things are tighter. The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus gains an edge with productivity performance. Short of the 9950X, it’s at the top of our multithreaded performance rankings, more than doubling the performance of the Ryzen 7 9700X.

On the gaming front, it supports Intel’s new Binary Optimization Tool, which offers an average of an 8% improvement in gaming performance based on our testing. It’s only available in a limited number of games at the moment, but Intel says it plans to support the feature with updates in the future.

For specs, the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is close to the 285K. It comes with 24 cores and threads, split across eight Lion Cove P-cores and 16 Darkmont E-cores. The P-cores boost up to 5.4 GHz and the E-cores can climb to 4.7 GHz. Across the CPU, you get a total of 76 MB of combined L2 and L3 cache. It comes with a 125W TDP and 250W MTP. Critically, the Core Ultra 270K Plus also comes with a 900 MHz boost in die-to-die frequency and 400 MHz boost in fabric frequency compared to stock Arrow Lake chips.

The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus slots into existing 800-series motherboards with the LGA 1851 socket. This is an unlocked chip, so if you want to get the full benefits of overclocking, you’ll need a Z890 board. However, it’ll still work with H- and B-series motherboards, just without CPU overclocking support.

Read: Core Ultra 7 270K Plus Review

Mid-Range Best CPU for Gaming - $200 to $300

Intel has returned to gaming prominence with its Arrow Lake Refresh CPUs, and nowhere is that clearer than with the $220 Core Ultra 5 250K Plus. It’s priced like a budget CPU at $220, but it can perform as well (and sometimes even better) than chips that cost twice as much. It doesn’t dominate the gaming charts in the same way as AMD’s X3D offerings, but at this price, it doesn’t need to. It offers marginally better performance than AMD’s competing six-core Ryzen 5 9600X in games while running the tables with application performance.

On average, the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is 1% faster than the Ryzen 5 9600X at 1080p, and 9% faster than the 245K. It’s functionally identical, but Intel’s new iBOT feature allows the chip to hold some solid leads in certain titles. For instance, it’s 10% ahead of the 9600X in Cyberpunk 2077. Even in a non-iBOT title like Doom: The Dark Ages, the 250K Plus leads by 12%. There are still some games that struggle with the unique Arrow Lake architecture like F1 2024, but the losses are less pronounced with the souped-up Arrow Lake Refresh chips compared to the stock offerings.

The application performance is what really stands out with the 250K Plus, however. With 18 cores, it outpaces the Core i7-13700K, nearly matches the Core i7-14700K, and more than doubles the performance of the Ryzen 5 9600X in multithreaded applications. In single-threaded applications, it beats the Ryzen 5 9600X by 6%.

Although you get 18 cores, they’re split between six Lion Cove performance cores and 12 Darkmont efficient cores. The P-cores climb up to 5.3 GHz, while the E-cores top out at 4.6 GHz. The CPU comes with a combined 60 MB of L2 and L3 cache, along with a TDP of 125W and a MTP of 159W. Like all Arrow Lake chips, it doesn’t support Hyper-Threading, so you get 18 total threads.

The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus slots into existing motherboards with the LGA 1851 socket. It’s unlocked for overclocking, so a Z-series motherboard is an ideal pairing. However, Intel increased the die-to-die frequency and the fabric frequency out of the box, and you’ll see those improvements in action on B- and H-series motherboards, as well. It’s locked to DDR5 memory, unlike Raptor Lake and Alder Lake platforms, and it officially supports speeds up to 7200MT/s.

Read: Core Ultra 5 250K Plus Review

The $230 Ryzen 5 7600X3D is currently the best value gaming CPU you can get right now, though it trades performance in other areas to reach that status. It's just 4.5% slower than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D based on our testing, giving you most of the performance of AMD's coveted 3D V-Cache in games without the extra cost.

In games, it outclasses more expensive CPUs with ease, including the Ryzen 7 9700X, and averaged just 65W of power draw during our gaming tests. Outside of games, however, the Ryzen 5 7600 X3D struggles. The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is more than twice as fast in multithreaded performance, and in single-threaded performance, even the base Ryzen 5 7600X is around 13% faster.

The lagging productivity performance makes sense. The Ryzen 5 7600X3D is a six-core / 12-thread chip, so it has limited multithreaded potential, and it only clocks up to 4.7 GHz. The limited specs give AMD room to cram 102 MB of combined L2/L3 cache on the die, however, which comes with a sizeable boost in gaming performance. Compared to the base Ryzen 5 7600X, the X3D version is 22% faster despite coming in at lower peak clocks and power draw.

You can slot the Ryzen 5 7600X3D into socket AM5, which is available on 600- and 800-series motherboards, though the latter may require a BIOS update. Memory and CPU overclocking is available on both B- and X-series chipsets; however, the Ryzen 5 7600X3D has a locked multiplier, so the only overclocking you can access is through AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive, or PBO.

Read: Ryzen 5 7600X3D review

Highest Performance Best CPU for Gaming - $400+

How do you improve upon a CPU that already claims a dominating position in gaming and productivity workloads? You add more cache, of course. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 is powerful, expensive, and hungry for wattage, but it’s the best of the best if you want top-shelf gaming and application performance. It throws value out the window, and it’s only marginally better than the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, but it is still better.

Based on our testing, it’s about 3.9% ahead of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D in multithreaded applications, and in lockstep in gaming at 1080p. Compared to Intel’s Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 is 9% ahead in multithreaded performance and 23% ahead in average gaming performance. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D delivers a better value on the gaming front, and the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is a monster productivity chip at a third of the price of the 9950X3D2. But the magic trick of this chip is that it can do both without breaking a sweat.

Under the hood, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 is similar to the Ryzen 9 9950X3D. It’s a 16-core / 32-thread chip packing AMD’s Zen 5 architecture, and it tops out with a 5.6 GHz boost clock; just 100MHz behind the 9950X3D. As the name suggests, this processor is unique because it uses AMD’s 3D V-Cache on both CCDs. Both eight-core CCDs have 32 MB of onboard cache, plus an additional 64 MB chunk placed under the cores, giving you a total of 192 MB of L3 cache.

The extra cache slightly accelerates multithreaded performance overall, though only by around 4%. There are specific workloads where the advantage is more present, with some data science workloads showing performance gains in the realm of 26% over the Ryzen 9 9950X3D. Those specific workstation-class workloads are where the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 earns its stripes.

Otherwise, it’s the chip to buy because you simply want the best, no matter what the cost or how marginal the improvements are. It slots into existing AM5 motherboards, and it’s best suited for newer 800-series chipsets. AMD officially supports memory speeds up to DDR5-5600, though we find that DDR5-6000 is the sweet spot for Zen 5 CPUs.

Prices have dropped since release, though the 9950X3D2 is still expensive. It launched at $1,000, but you can find the chip for around $900 now.

Read: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Review

The prior-gen $469 Core i9-14900K is now selling for all-time low pricing, primarily because the newer $560 Core Ultra 9 285K has arrived to take its place. However, the Core Ultra 9 285K is actually slower than the 14900K in gaming, so it isn't a suitable replacement. The new Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is marginally slower based on our testing, as well. Even in the face of Intel’s 200S Boost update, which was meant improve gaming performance, the competitive landscape remains unchanged. In our testing, the Core Ultra 9 285K gained an average of 7% from the update, which means it’s still slower than the Core i9-14900K.

You should be aware that the much more economically-priced 14700K (listed above) is only 2% slower than the 14900K in gaming but costs over $100 less. The Ryzen 7 9700X, also listed above, is also less expensive and effectively ties the 14900K in gaming.

However, there are Intel fans willing to pay extra for the absolute most gaming performance they can get from an Intel platform. Also, the 14900K does offer more multi-threaded horsepower than the 14700K and 9700X, which could be useful if you game, stream, and record simultaneously or do other heavy multi-tasking while gaming. Just make sure that your use case justifies the extra cost.

The 14900K sports leading-edge connectivity, supporting DDR4-3200 or up to DDR5-5600 memory, along with 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 and an additional four lanes of PCIe 4.0 from the chip for M.2 SSDs.

The chip comes with eight P-cores that support Hyper-Threading and 16 single-threaded E-cores for a total of 32 threads. The P-cores have a 3.2 GHz base, and peak frequencies reach an amazing 6.0 GHz with Turbo Boost Max 3.0 (this feature is only active on P-cores). Meanwhile, the E-cores have a 2.4 GHz base and stretch up to 4.4 GHz via the standard Turbo Boost 2.0 algorithms. The chip also has 36MB of L3 cache and 32MB of L2.

This 14900K has a 125W PBP (base) and 253W MTP (peak) power rating, but we recorded considerably lower power consumption than its prior-gen counterpart. You'll need to buy a capable cooler for the chip, and you'll also need either a 700-series or 600-series motherboard. Like other Raptor Lake Refresh chips, you can find DDR4 and DDR5 motherboards, though you’ll need to go with a DDR5 board for the highest performance.

The lower price of DDR4 might entice some gamers, but you'll lose anywhere from 5-8% of gaming performance with higher-end Intel chips. You can step up to the much more expensive DDR5 if you need access to more memory throughput and, thus, every bit of performance possible.

Beyond specs, the Core i9-14900K was at the center of a years-long controversy concerning instability. An error in the microcode (CPU firmware) meant the Core i9-14900K would degrade faster than expected, starting with instability in games. Intel has rectified the issue with microcode 0x12F, so make sure you update your BIOS immediately if you pick up Intel’s last-gen flagship

Read: Intel Core i9-14900K Review

Best Budget CPU Pick - $100 to $150

The $164 Ryzen 5 7600X is an attractive budget CPU at its new price, forced down by Intel's new Arrow Lake Refresh chips. It’s marginally slower than the Ryzen 5 9600X, but also marginally cheaper – the Ryzen 5 7600X offers about 90% of the performance of the Ryzen 5 9600X for 94% of the price. It’s a slightly worse value, but it’s still a good option to keep in mind, especially if you find it on sale. The Ryzen 5 7600, sans X, is available at around the same price. We’ve yet to see it drop below the Ryzen 5 7600X, however.

With the 7600X, you get six cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 4 architecture, clocked at 4.7GHz with boost speeds up to 5.3GHz. Unlike the Ryzen 5 9600X, the Zen 4-based version comes with a TDP of 105W. Cooling it shouldn’t be an issue, and you’re free to run in AMD’s 65W Eco mode through the Ryzen Master software.

The Ryzen 5 7600X slots into AM5 motherboards, including 600- and 800-series chipsets, and it supports PCIe 5.0. DDR5 is required, which is a tough pill to swallow at this bang-for-your-buck price point, but it’s hard to avoid soaring RAM prices.

Read: Ryzen 5 7600X review

The $135 AMD Ryzen 5 5600 delivers a solid blend of performance in both gaming and productivity applications, bringing a new level of value to the Zen 3 lineup. If you're fine sticking with a previous-gen AM4 motherboard, the Ryzen 5 5600 makes a great base for a budget build. The primary trade-off for the AM4 platform is that you're limited to DDR4, and you don't have access to PCIe 5.0. You also have a limited runway for upgrades, as the fastest gaming CPUs on AM4 – the Ryzen 7 5700X3D and Ryzen 7 5800X3D – have reached end of life.

The Ryzen 5 5600 also makes an absolutely unbeatable budget chip if you're updating a first-gen Ryzen system. The 5600 unseats the Ryzen 5 5600X, a long-time favorite. The 5600X is only a mostly imperceptible ~1% faster in gaming and multi-threaded PC work than the non-X model, but provides a 4% advantage in single-threaded work.

Our testing shows that the Ryzen 5 5600 generally matches the gaming performance of its more expensive sibling, the ~$230 Ryzen 7 5800X. That makes the 5600 an incredibly well-rounded chip that can handle gaming well, from competitive-class performance with high refresh rate monitors to multi-tasking gaming workloads like streaming, while also serving up more than enough performance for day-to-day productivity apps. As with all AMD CPUs for gaming, you can fully overclock the chip.

The Ryzen 5 5600 has a 3.7 GHz base and 4.6 GHz boost clock. The chip also has a 65W TDP rating, so it runs cool and quiet. Existing AMD owners with a 500-series motherboard will be happy, as the 5600X drops right into existing 500-, 400-, and 300-series motherboards. If you need a new motherboard to support the chip, AMD's AM4 motherboards are plentiful and relatively affordable, with the B-series lineup offering the best overall value for this class of chip.

Prices for the Ryzen 5 5600 have drifted upward as stock depletes, but that’s offset by platform costs. In addition to low prices on AM4 motherboards, the Ryzen 5 5600 is limited to DDR4. High DDR5 prices are a significant roadblock to opting for a newer chip, as prices continue to surge. So it’s hard to recommend a newer budget CPU, even if it’ll net you higher performance. In the event you already have a kit of DDR5, the $189 Ryzen 5 7600 is a compelling option, and it includes AMD’s Wraith Stealth cooler.

Read: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 Review

Entry-Level Best CPU for Gaming - For gaming on integrated GPUs

The $268 Ryzen 7 8700G, AMD's flagship desktop APU, delivers the fastest socketed performance on the market from integrated graphics, bringing passable 1080p gaming to the desktop PC without a discrete graphics card, but its high price point relegates it to a niche audience.

In contrast, the $191 Ryzen 5 8600G delivers 90% of the 8700G's performance but for ~$80 less, making it a solid alternative for gaming systems that don't use a discrete GPU.

Naturally, you'll have to accept lower fidelity settings and be realistic about which titles can play at 1080p resolution. Still, AMD's Hyper-RX suite of features, which includes in-driver Radeon Super Resolution upscaling tech, frame generation with AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF), Anti-Lag+, and Radeon Boost, helps boost performance at a slight cost to image quality. This new feature set, a first for AMD's iGPUs, is a boon for budget gamers.

The Ryzen 5 8600G has six Zen 4 CPU cores and the RDNA 3 GPU engine with eight CUs. The Ryzen 5 8600G drops into the AM5 platform, with value-focused B650 and A620 motherboards being the obvious best combination. These systems offer a new level of connectivity for AMD's APU processors, which were previously on the aging AM4 platform but require DDR5 memory. That adds some cost, so do a value analysis before selecting this processor. If you're looking for the lowest entry price possible with an APU, the Ryzen 5 5600G listed below slots in as the value alternative.

The Ryzen 7 8600G only supports 16 usable lanes of PCIe 4.0 connectivity, while other processors on the AM5 platform support PCIe 5.0. However, we don't feel this will impact this class of system.

More: AMD Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G Review

The Ryzen 5 5600G steps into the arena as the value champ for APUs, which are chips with strong enough integrated graphics that they don't require a discrete GPU for light gaming—just be sure you're willing to accept lowered quality settings.

The Ryzen 5 5600G gives you 96% of the gaming performance on integrated graphics than its more expensive sibling, the Ryzen 7 5700G, but for 25% less cash. Our testing shows that its level of performance makes it the best value APU on the market. As long as you're willing to sacrifice fidelity and resolution and keep your expectations in check, the Ryzen 5 5600G's Vega graphics have surprisingly good performance in gaming.

The 5600G's Vega graphics served up comparatively great 1280x720 gaming across numerous titles in our tests, but options become more restricted at 1080p. Of course, you can get away with 1080p gaming, but you'll need to severely limit the fidelity settings with most titles.

With eight cores and 16 threads that operate at a 3.9 GHz base and boost up to 4.4 GHz, the Ryzen 5 5600G also offers solid performance for its price point in standard desktop PC applications. The chip also comes with a bundled Wraith Stealth cooler, sweetening the value prop, and drops into existing 500-series and some 400-series motherboards, though support on the latter will vary by vendor.

The Ryzen 5 5600G is nearly five years old, and as a result, it’s hard to find it in stock at a reasonable price. AMD updated this model with the Ryzen 5 5600GT in early 2024, which features identical silicon and a slight boost to clock speed, and you’ll generally find it for less at around $150.

If your budget is tight and you're looking to build a system for modest gaming, you should check out our Best Cheap CPU feature. Some of those chips can deliver passable gaming performance without a graphics card, and their prices start at just $55 (£40).

Read: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G Review

• MORE: CPU Benchmark Hierarchy
• MORE: AMD vs Intel
• MORE: Best Cheap CPUs
• MORE: Best CPUs for Workstations

Framework is expanding its laptop lineup and getting into desktops. In an event announcing what the company is calling its "second-gen" products, it detailed three new computers: an updated Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 300, a 4.5-liter Mini-ITX desktop powered by Ryzen AI Max, and a colorful, convertible Framework Laptop 12 designed with students in mind. Framework refers to the latter as a "defining product for us."

It's a large expansion of Framework's existing lineup, which until today consisted of two clamshell notebooks: the Framework Laptop 13 and 16.

Framework Desktop

Perhaps the biggest swing for Framework is its entry into the desktop market, which is already known for its customization options.

"We want to make this space as accessible as we possibly can by building a desktop that is simultaneously small and simple and incredibly powerful and customizable," Framework wrote in a blog post. "Everyone should have the opportunity to experience the culture around PCs and PC gaming first-hand."

The Framework Desktop is a 4.5L Mini-ITX machine using AMD's Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" chips with Radeon 8060S graphics. While this is a mobile chip, Framework says putting it in a desktop chassis gets it to 120W sustained power and 140W boost "while staying quiet and cool." Framework says this should allow 1440p gaming on intense titles, as well as workstation-class projects and local AI.

Much of Framework's desktop uses existing PC standards, including a mini-ITX motherboard, "with ATX headers, a PCIe x4 slot, and a broad set of rear I/O (including 2x USB4, 2x DisplayPort, HDMI, and 5Gbit Ethernet)," as well as a "semi-custom" 400W power supply in a Flex ATX form factor. The 120 mm CPU fans are part of a cooling system "co-developed" with Noctua and Cooler Master. You could swap out the fans for whatever you want, or even take the mainboard out and stick it in your own case. There are two PCIe NVMe M.2 2280 slots (for up to 16TB of storage) and Wi-Fi 7 via an RZ717 Wi-Fi module (which you can also find in plenty of AMD laptops).

One area where you won't be able to make changes is memory, as the LPDDR5x RAM is soldered to the board. Framework wrote in a blog post that "we spent months working with AMD to explore ways" to enable the 256GB/s memory bandwidth with modular memory, but ultimately decided this wasn't possible with the 256-bit bus. The company says that it is "being deliberate in making memory pricing more reasonable" because you can't upgrade it down the line.

There's a bunch of options for aesthetics, too, including black and translucent side panels, an RGB fan, and an optional carrying handle. Framework's front panel consists of 21 "color-customizable" tiles, and you can 3D print your own to make your own design. There are two ports up front for Framework's Expansion Cards (as seen on the Framework Laptops) to pick your own ports, which are on the bottom of the case.

AMD's Frank Azor took to the stage alongside Framework CEO Nirav Patel to detail performance claims with FSR and HyperRX to improve frame rates and rivalling "60-70 class discrete graphics" on an integrated GPU. Patel also pushed the Desktop as way to run AI locally, should you use the version with 128GB of RAM.

The base model, with a Ryzen AI Max 385 and 32GB of RAM, starts at $1,099, while the top-end machine with a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with 128GB of RAM begins at $1,999. Framework is only doing "DIY" editions here, so you'll have to get your own storage drive and bring your own operating system (the company is calling it "the easiest PC you'll ever build"). The mainboard on its own will be available from $799. Pre-orders are open now, and Framework expects to ship sometime in Q3.

For the price, this is likely to be niche. It could make a good console competitor, but even a PS5 Pro starts at $699, even if it is far less customizable and repairable. We're looking forward to seeing just how much of Framework's DIY DNA has made its way into this desktop to differentiate itself from other desktop PCs.

Framework Laptop 12

Framework's other new project is the Laptop 12, a 12.2-inch convertible 2-in-1 aimed primarily at competing in the entry-level market popular among young students. A company blog post says that entry-level machines "tend to be janky, locked-down, disposable, underpowered, and frankly, boring machines."

The Laptop 12 is designed to bring the flexibility from the Laptop 12 but make it smaller, cheaper, and in more colors (with an optional stylus to match). These machines are made of ABS plastic molded in thermoplastic polyurethane, all around a metal frame. Framework says that it's "our easiest product ever to repair," but that more information on that will come closer to its launch in mid-2025. I'm really looking forward to this repair guide. It comes in five colorways: lavender, sage, gray, black, and bubblegum.

The laptop will come with 13th Gen Intel Core i3 and i5 processors, which aren't the latest, but better than entry-level junk. You'll get up to 48GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and Wi-Fi 6E. It has a 1920 x 1200 touch screen that the company claims will surpass 400 nits of brightness.

There's no pricing information yet, and Framework says there's more to share on pricing and specs later in the year. Pre-orders will open in April ahead of the mid-year launch. I haven't seen a cheap, education-ready laptop with repairable options since the Asus Chromebook C202, so I'm excited to see those details when Framework is closer to launch.

Framework Laptop 13

The Framework Laptop 13 is getting a significant refresh with AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series. It doesn't look all that different on the outside, with a 13.5-inch design that largely resembles the one from way back in 2021.

But there are new features. Beyond the processors, the Framework Laptop 3 is getting bumped up to Wi-Fi 7 and is getting a new thermal system, a "next-generation" keyboard, and new colorways for the Expansion Cards and bezels (though I still don't know why you would want a bezel in anything other than black). The new keyboard has a Copilot key (on Windows 11 pre-built models - there is alternate artwork for DIY models where you might want to use Linux), and Framework says that new structures under wide keys like Shift and Spacebar should keep them from buzzing when your speakers have the volume up.

The new mainboards will have Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 options, but for the first time will also have a Ryzen 9 (the HX 370) with 12 CPU cores and 16 GPU cores that also support Copilot+, with 50 NPU TOPS.

That may be why Framework moved onto a redesigned thermal system, with a 10mm heatpipe and a Honeywell's PTM7958 TIM. The mainboard has two slots for DDR5-5600 RAM (up to 96GB) and a PCIe 4 M.2 2280 SSD for up to 8TB of storage.

Because the laptop is so similar to the original, this new mainboard can be placed into any of the older Framework Laptops dating back to the original. Any updates since, including a 61Whr battery, better speakers, and an optional high-res matte display are still available.

The new mainboard still has four expansion card slots. The back two work with USB 4 while the front two can use USB 3.2 plus DisplayPort, and Framework says you can have up to four display outputs simultaneously if you choose the right Expansion Cards.

The Expansion Cards are going to get some nostalgic color options, with a new set of translucent colors (though the laptop still only comes in silver).

The new Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 300 starts at $899 for a DIY Edition without storage or an OS, and $1,099 for a pre-built model. If you're buying the mainboard to put in an old system, that's $449. (Framework is keeping the Ryzen 7040 systems around starting at $749). No word for now on any new Intel models.

Outlook

Framework's Second Gen event has shown us a version of the company that is emboldened by its mission. When the first Framework laptops launched, I questioned whether you could trust that it would keep delivering. It's done that, and now their laptops are the best ultrabook if repairability is your number one concern.

Now we're seeing the company expand like never before, into new categories in computing. I suspect some, like the desktop, will be niche hobbyist devices. I'm excited to see the company take on lower-tier devices that could be used in schools and with budget-conscious customers, but we need to see pricing.

AMD's Strix Halo reviews are no longer guarded by an embargo. So we're seeing a wave of new die shots that underline the impressive engineering that went into the design of these chips. Thanks to Kurnal, Asus' Tony Yu (at Bilibili), and Decap at X (formerly Twitter), we're getting our first look at the internals of Strix Halo, formally known as Ryzen AI Max.

Let's get one thing straight: Strix Halo isn't your average run-of-the-mill APU. It wields 16 cores and 32 threads based on the latest Zen 5 architecture, alongside a massive 40 CU (Compute Unit) iGPU (integrated GPU). The package itself is composed of two Zen 5 CCDs, which are a tad different from the ones you see on Granite Ridge (Ryzen 9000 CPUs). Surrounding the chip are up to eight memory ICs, enabling support for 128GB of unified memory.

Thanks to high-res images from Tony Yu, we see that AMD has trimmed the D2D (Die to Die) interfaces between the CCD and I/O die by roughly 2mm. Although the CCDs have been tweaked slightly at 67.07mm², they still support 3D V-Cache, evidenced by the TSV connections in the die shots. The rest is similar to what you'd typically find on a desktop Zen 5 processor. Each of the eight cores carries 8MB of dedicated L2 cache, with a shared 32MB L3 pool in between.

Beneath the two CCDs lies a large I/O die that hosts the uncore part of the chip. The bulk of the 307.58mm² die size is occupied by the 40 Compute Unit integrated GPU (20 WGPs) developed using RDNA 3.5.

Slapping on more cores is only beneficial if they can be fed with data. We've seen firsthand how the performance of Strix Point (with 16 CUs) was hampered due to memory bottlenecks. AMD has taken a two-pronged solution to counteract this issue, with fast LPDDR5X memory across a wide 256-bit interface (eight 32-bit controllers) to the sides of the chip, and 32MB of MALL (Memory Access at Last Level) or LLC (Last Level Cache) split evenly across both sides of the iGPU.

To the left of the iGPU lies the XDNA 2 NPU (Neural Processing Unit), enabling 50 TOPS of AI performance, claimed to outclass even the RTX 4090. Some locations have been left unmarked. Either way, the bottom of the I/O die features a single PCIe 4.0 x16 interface, alongside USB 4 (40 Gbps), USB 3.2 Gen 2, and USB 2.0 controllers, followed by a Display Engine and two Media Engines with support for H.264, H.265, and AV1 codecs. Based on the provided statistics, the full chip equals roughly 441.72mm² or allegedly 475mm². That's including what appears to be structural silicon.

The first laptops powered by Strix Halo should hit shelves later this month, with Asus' ROG Flow Z13 tipped for a February 25 launch. While OEMs have initially been hesitant to jump on board with these chips, adoption is likely to improve, despite a slow initial uptake.

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.

A leaked benchmark of the Radeon 8060S, powering the graphics engine of AMD's Ryzen AI 300 "Strix Halo" flagship is shown to match Nvidia's dedicated RTX 4060 mobile GPU in a leaked 3DMark Time Spy result. A Chinese user at Baidu (via HXL), shared a couple of screenshots with what appears to be the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 flexing its muscles, beating AMD's latest Radeon 890M iGPU by almost 3x. Since the tested sample is based on early engineering silicon, there is surely still some room for improvement. However, this leak should be viewed cautiously as the CPU OPN code and the integrated GPU don't align.

AMD extended its Ryzen AI 300 lineup with mainstream Krackan Point and flagship Strix Halo APUs last month at CES. Strix Halo, or Ryzen AI Max+ is a one-of-a-kind processor delivering (up to) 16 Zen 5 CPU cores bundled with 40 RDNA 3.5 Compute Units for workstation-grade laptops and high-end mini-PCs. Bear in mind, all this power is packaged on a single chip, featuring two CCDs and a massive I/O die beneath, bordered by (up to) 128GB of fast unified memory. For context, AMD's marketing material positions the Radeon 8060S (the subject of this article) as an equivalent to Nvidia's RTX 4070 laptop dGPU.

It's kind of pointless to compare laptops with different TGPs and thermal designs so it's best not to read too much into these results. For the sake of comparison, we'll look over the average Time Spy score of several relevant GPUs, obtained via 3DMark's score explorer feature. Another screenshot shows that the laptop or mini-PC in question features 128GB (16GBx8) of LPDDR5-8532 memory, with 96GB allocated to the iGPU. Both screenshots inaccurately label the iGPU as the Radeon 8050S, however, the OPN code reveals it's actually the Radeon 8060S with a 40 CU configuration. That's probably due to the silicon's premature nature.

In 3DMark's Time Spy benchmark, the Radeon 8060S scores 10,106 points, almost matching Nvidia's RTX 4060 laptop and AMD's own RX 7700S. Against the Radeon 890M seen on Strix Point, the 8060S lands ahead by a gigantic 2.7x but that was kind of expected given the large difference in shader counts. Still, it loses to the RTX 4070 by almost 20% which is disappointing but you should wait for independent reviews to see how these Strix Halo APUs perform in real-world scenarios.

You should see laptops and workstations equipped with these processors from partners across Q1 and Q2 this year, which is a rather vague timeframe. HP is readying the ZBook Ultra G1a workstation laptop and the HP Z2 Mini G1a mini-PC, while Asus has announced the ROG Flow Z13, with no definite release date provided for any system.

AMD has provided instructions on how to run DeepSeek’s R1 AI model on AI-accelerated Ryzen AI and Radeon products, making it easy for users to run the new chain-of-thought model on their PCs locally. Several LLMs using R1 are compatible with RX 7000 series desktop GPUs and select Ryzen CPUs with XDNA NPUs. However, they require the optional driver Adrenalin 25.1.1 to run.

The guide has everything AMD users need to get DeepSeek R1 running on their local (supported) machine. LM Studio has a one-click installer tailor-made for Ryzen AI, which is the method AMD users will use to install R1. AMD shows how the application needs to be tuned for its hardware, including a list of the maximum supported LLM parameters.

DeepSeek R1 allegedly has only recently been distilled into "highly capable" smaller models, small enough to run on consumer-based hardware. The DeepSeek-V3 model was initially trained on a cluster of 2,048 Nvidia H800 GPUs for context.

The maximum supported LLM parameters are based on memory capacity. The RX 7600 XT, 7700 XT, 7800 XT, 7900 GRE, and 7900 XT all support up to “DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B”. The flagship RX 7900 XTX supports up to “DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B”. The RX 7600, with its 8GB of VRAM, supports up to “DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B”.

Similarly, Ryzen 8040 and 7040 series mobile APUs are equipped with 32GB of RAM, and the Ryzen AI HX 370 and 365 with 24GB and 32GB of RAM can support up to “DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-14B”. The Ryzen AI Max+ 395 can support up to “DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B”, but only in 128GB and 64GB memory capacities. The 32GB supports up to “DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B”.

DeepSeek’s new AI model has taken the world by storm, with its 11 times lower computing cost than leading-edge models. Two days ago, it was solely responsible for Nvidia’s record-breaking $589 billion market cap loss. The DeepSeek R1 model relies on extreme optimization levels to provide its 11X efficiency uplift, relying on Nvidia’s assembly-like Parallel Thread Execution (PTX) programming for most of the performance uplift.

Nvidia and AMD GPUs aren’t the only GPUs that can run R1; Huawei has already implemented DeepSeek support into its Ascend AI GPUs, enabling performant AI execution on homegrown Chinese hardware.

Intel processors have always powered NUCs. However, things changed when Asus took over the NUC line from the chipmaker in 2023. The manufacturer is seemingly experimenting with AMD chips after customs filing discovered by ComputerBase (machine translated) showed an entry for a “Personal Computer mini-PC (NUC14LNS) Asus AMD Ryzen AI Max-395/W 8060S, 64 BIT”.

If this is true, this will be the first NUC to feature an AMD chip, and it will come soon after Asus launches a family of five NUCs powered by an Intel processor. It won’t be its first device to use a Ryzen AI Max+ (Strix Halo) CPU, though, as it’s rumored to power the upcoming ROG Flow Z13 laptop (also listed in the customs document).

AMD also claims that the Ryzen AI Max 395+’s integrated graphics, the Radeon 8060S, can beat the RTX 4070 laptop GPU by up to 68%—a massive claim by the company but is helped by the fact that it has 40 RDNA 3.5 graphics cores. If true, this will disadvantage Asus NUCs if it only sticks with Intel processors, especially as some smaller manufacturers like GMK have already hinted at releasing a mini-PC powered by this processor.

The mini-PC customs description says it’s “for BIS testing,” which likely means the Bureau of Indian Standards. If that’s the case, then Asus likely already built and tested the AMD-powered NUC within the company. Indian authorities are now testing it to ensure it conforms to local standards. This might also mean that this device is destined for launch in India, although there is no official word from Asus yet about whether this is the case or if it will have a global launch.

Given that Asus is investing in product certification, there’s a good chance this is a genuine product. The company is just holding off on its announcement until the authorities give it the green light. We also hope that it will make its way to our shores. That way, mini-PC fans will have more options, and we could enjoy the massive performance that its integrated GPU delivers.

At CES, AMD unveiled its Ryzen AI 300 flagship lineup codenamed Strix Halo with a beastly configuration of 16 cores, 40 Compute Units, and 128GB of unified memory. New first-party benchmarks assert that the top-end Ryzen AI Max+ 395 - that's a mouthful - is up to 68% faster than Nvidia's RTX 4070 mobile graphics in gaming. The slides also showcase how Strix Halo holds up versus Apple's M4-series chips in productivity and even dare to mention the desktop RTX 4090.

Strix Halo is split into three dies with two CCDs offering eight cores each and a large I/O die housing the iGPU (Integrated GPU) and the NPU. The highest-end Ryzen AI Max+ 395 packs 16 cores and 32 central processor threads based on the Zen 5 architecture, accompanied by the Radeon 8060S iGPU with 40 RDNA 3.5 Compute Units. All the AI Max chips have a base TDP of 55W, and can be configured from 45W to 120W. Surrounding the chip is up to 128GB of unified memory, which can be allocated in varying pools (up to 96GB) to the iGPU alone.

With the specs out of the way, let's talk performance. The Nvidia comparison system is the Asus ROG Flow Z13 with the i9-13900H and the RTX 4070 mobile (65W TGP). Across a suite of 17 games at 1080p high settings, Strix Halo handily bests its Nvidia equivalent, with an up to 68% lead in Borderlands 3, per AMD. Being first-party benchmarks, we shouldn't take them at face value. It is also prudent to mention that the RTX 4070 mobile can be configured up to 115W, but a 65W variant features in this comparison, due to the Asus ROG Flow Z13 design.

In productivity tests, Blender sees the 395+ blaze past the Core Ultra 9 288V (Lunar Lake) by 302% but that isn't an apples-to-apples comparison since the latter is a 17/30W chip. Versus Apple's M4 Pro, AMD touts an 86% lead in V-Ray, dropping to 12% in Cinebench R24. Moving over to AI performance, the XDNA 2 NPU enables the Ryzen AI MAX series to dish out 50 TOPS of AI performance, exceeding the Lunar Lake and Snapdragon X Elite series by two TOPS. AMD also claims its Strix Halo APUs can deliver 2.2x more tokens per second than the RTX 4090 when running the Llama 70B LLM (Large Language Model) at 1/6th the TDP (75W).

We highly suggest you wait for independent testing before jumping the gun, like perhaps pre-ordering a Strix Halo device. These laptops are likely to target enthusiasts as suitable alternatives to dedicated GPU options. With Strix Point laptops still costing over $1,000, pricing will play a key role in determining if Strix Halo can displace dedicated mid-ranged laptop GPUs like the RTX 4070 can be found in.

Mini PC maker GMK has been showing off its new EVO-X1 mini PC. It looks like a great little device with one of the latest 'Strix Point' processors from AMD, and plenty of fast ports. However, it also hints that this machine is earmarked for a powerful Ryzen AI Max+ 395 'Strix Halo' processor upgrade in the not-too-distant future.

GMK introduced the EVO-X1 last year — a mini-PC equipped with a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chip and Radeon 890M integrated graphics. This is one of the most powerful chips in the current AMD Strix Point lineup, with the CPU boasting 12 cores and 24 threads and the integrated GPU having 16 compute units. The company also gave the EVO-X1 a standard 32GB of memory and a choice between 1TB or 2TB of storage.

What also makes this small computer stand out from the crowd is that it’s the first Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 mini-PC that has an OCuLink port, allowing it to attach to a suitable external GPU without crippling its bandwidth too much. GMK doesn’t have an external GPU enclosure listed on its US website, though, so you’ll have to purchase them separately from other manufacturers, like the Aoostar AG01 or the Minisforum MGA1. But whatever the case, this OCuLink port would allow you to pair the excellent performance of the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 with a more powerful GPU, up to an RTX 4090 (we wouldn’t recommend that, though, as OCuLink could show an up to 23% drop in performance for high-end GPUs). Connecting with OCuLink should provide much better bandwidth than the Thunderbolt 3 or 4, or USB4 alternatives.

Aside from the OCuLink port (which, unfortunately, isn’t hot-swappable), the EVO-X1 also has two USB-A ports, a USB-C port, and a 3.5 mm combo jack up front, plus the power button right beside the jack. It’s unclear what other USB ports are available at the back, but we also have one HDMI 2.1 and one DisplayPort 2.1 for connecting your display to the onboard graphics. All these features are available for $1,299 for the 1 TB version (although it’s currently on sale at $919.99), while the 2 TB version is priced at $1,599 (with a sale price of $969.99).

Although these specifications are already impressive, GMK is going even further, saying in a press release on Chinese social media site BiliBili (machine translated) that the company “took the lead in launching the Ryzen AI Max+ 395.”

Although details are scant at the moment, the company shared a Geekbench result for the Vulkan test, which showed the processor, presumably on an EVO-X1 mini-PC evaluation platform, achieving 67,004 points. This score beats the RTX 3050 and RX 5700 desktop graphics cards, showing how far integrated GPUs have come along and the potential of AMD’s top-end Strix Halo chip for its mini-PC.

Still, you should note that reviewers rarely use Geekbench 6 to measure GPU performance and that we should wait for independent reviews to see what this mini-PC could do. Whatever the case, we want to see how the EVO-X1 mini-PC with a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 would stack up as a gaming and productivity machine, and if its built-in GPU could really lead to the end of entry-level graphics cards.

Here at CES 2025, Mini PC manufacturer Geekom is showcasing its next-generation solutions and has one new desktop Mini PC with top-end mobile chips from AMD, Intel, and even Qualcomm. While Geekom claims its Snapdragon Mini PC will be the first to market, we've also spotted some Lenovo-made Qualcomm-powered Mini PCs on the CES 2024 show floor.

Narrowing in on Geekom's show floor presence, the focus is on the trio of upcoming Mini PCs: IT15, QS1, and A9 Max. We previously covered the tower-style Mega Mini G1 in a dedicated hands-on ahead of CES, but Geekom is also highlighting its already-released A6, which flaunts a last-gen AMD Ryzen 6700H with Radeon 680M iGPU.

On the Intel side, we have the Geekom IT15, which flaunts up to a Core Ultra 9 285H CPU or a Core Ultra 5 225H. Either CPU can be configured with Intel Arc XE-LPG A130T graphics and up to 64 GB DDR5-5800 RAM.W

The Geekom IT15's total size is 135.5 x 115.5 x 34.5 millimeters, so it seems Geekom isn't afraid to dedicate thermal mass to these new Intel CPUs. There's also room to mount one 2.5-inch SSD alongside two M.2 SSDs, though only one M.2 slot actually runs with NVMe Gen 4 bandwidth, with the other being SATA M.2.

In terms of I/O, the Geekom IT15 also seems fully featured, with 2 USB4 Type-C ports and 3 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports onboard. Combined with 2 HDMI 2.0 ports, a 2.5G Ethernet port, a standard headphone jack, and even an SD card slot, the Geekom IT15 seems like a good choice for those wanting an Intel-powered Mini PC. Built-in Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support ensure it shouldn't be lacking in connectivity options.

Unfortunately, further information on pricing or availability for this mini PC is not yet available.

More unique among Geekom's new contenders would be the Geekom QS1 Mini PC, which is the most compact of the new offerings at just 135.5 x 115.5 x 34.5 millimeters, built on top of a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chipset. Specifically, the X Elite X1E-80-100 with 12 CPU cores and an Adreno GPU is what's in use here, with an NPU advertised to reach up to 45 AI TOPS. RAM support goes as high as 64 GB of DDR4-8400 MT/s RAM, and storage support for up to 2 NVMe Gen 4 SSDs (one M.2-2280, one M.2-2230) is also included.

For the most part, the specifications we're seeing here are about in line with what we've come to expect in the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite PCs we've seen elsewhere, especially in the laptop space. However, a change in form factor can't really address the overall issues with Snapdragon X Elite (particularly relating to software compatibility, etc.).

For those intrigued by a Snapdragon X Elite mini PC, though, Geekom does seem to be giving this one a fair shot. By targeting a sub-$500 price point, including Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, and having a healthy I/O, Geekom may still land some sales with this unit. It includes 1 USB4 Type-C port, 3 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, 1 USB 2 Type-A port, 1 HDMI 2.0 port, 1 DisplayPort 1.4 port, a standard headphone jack, a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port, and even an SD card slot. Add some small hardware features like fingerprint unlock and an array of 4 digital built-in mics, and you may have a winner here...or at least, a piece of curiosity.

Last but certainly not least is the Geekom A9 Max, which is the biggest overall contender at 135 x 132 x 46.9 mm and likely the best overall performer thanks to AMD's onboard Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, complete with 12 cores, 24 threads, and an industry-leading Radeon 890M iGPU. There's also a slightly weaker AI 9 365 (10C,20T) configuration, which uses a weaker Radeon 880M but is otherwise the same. The onboard Ryzen NPU is rated for up to 55 AI TOPS.

As the larger footprint indicates, it would seem that the Geekom A9 Max is considered the new high-end of Geekom's Mini PCs, with AMD's sheer dominance in iGPU performance likely being why that choice was made. Giving this chipset the most cooling headroom makes sense, and like the other mini PCs in the lineup, the A9 Max supports up to 64 GB of DDR5 RAM, albeit limited to just 5600 MT/s. There's also support for dual NVMe Gen 4 drives but with mixed M.2-2280 (standard) and M.2-2230 (mini) slot support. Like all the other Geekom Mini PCs, the A9 Max also comes fully equipped with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support.

Of the offerings, the Geekom A9 Max has the more comprehensive I/O. I/O includes dual USB4 Type-C ports (one with power delivery support), a whopping 5 USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports, 1 USB2 Type-A port, 2 HDMI 2.0 ports, a standard headphone jack, an SD card slot, and dual 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports.

AMD has launched its Ryzen AI 300 and Ryzen 200 series of mobile processors at CES 2025 at Las Vegas, debuting a total of 15 new models, across the PRO and non-PRO stack for mainstream and commercial laptops. The company also shared new benchmarks results, showcasing the performance of its Ryzen AI 7 350 against Intel’s Core Ultra 7 258V and Qualcomm’s X Plus X1P-42-100.

The Ryzen AI 300 series codenamed “Krackan Point” serves as AMD’s go-to current-gen offering, featuring a hybrid of Zen 5 and Zen 5c cores coupled with the slightly dialed-down RDNA 3.5 based Radeon 860M and Radeon 840M iGPU (Integrated GPU) for graphics. Compliant with Microsoft’s requirements for a CoPilot+ PC, Krackan ships with an XDNA2-powered NPU (Neural Processing Unit) capable of dishing out 50 TOPS of AI performance.

Similar to Strix Point, AMD offers a wide cTDP Range for Krackan, from 15W to 54W allowing these chips to fit in all sorts of chassis, from lightweight notebooks to mid-ranged gaming laptops. Ultimately, the laptop manufacturer sets the TDP after taking into account the available cooling solution and performance goals. The Ryzen AI 300 series or Krackan Point is set to launch this quarter, with PRO models planned for Q2 2025, and we should see laptops equipped with these processors shortly.

The Ryzen 200 series, codenamed “Hawk Point Refresh,” as you guessed leverages Hawk Point (Ryzen 8040/45) silicon under the hood. Hawk Point, in turn, is a refresh of Phoenix (Ryzen 7040) with an improved XDNA-based NPU. The Ryzen 200 series, conveniently lacking the “AI” tag, is not certified for Microsoft’s CoPilot+ due to its 16 TOPS NPU. These processors employ cores designed using the Zen 4 architecture, with some hybrid models incorporating a mix of Zen 4 and Zen 4c cores. Notably, the hybrid variants are likely lower-binned models as they lack an NPU; akin to Phoenix 2 chips.

Across the stack, RDNA 3 powers the graphical end of these Ryzen 200 processors including the Radeon 780M, Radeon 760M and Radeon 740M iGPUs (Integrated GPUs). Despite the lack of a TDP-defining suffix, these processors are very similar to the Ryzen 8040/45 series in terms of power draw. AMD has slated both Ryzen 200 PRO and non-PRO models for a Q2 2025 launch.

Kicking things off with performance metrics, AMD touts its Ryzen AI 7 350 as up to 35% and 30% faster than the Qualcomm X Plus X1P-42-100 and Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, across an average of nine

applications. Upon closer examination, the Ryzen AI 7 350 leads its Qualcomm and Intel counterparts by 30% and 54% in the Cinebench R24 multicore test, per AMD. This lead extends even further in real-world productivity utilities such as Handbrake and Blender.

Boasting a 50 TOPS NPU which is marginally higher than the competition, the Ryzen AI 7 350 amasses 1,930 points in the Procyon AI benchmark, landing it a 6% lead over Lunar Lake. Given the potential for bias in first-party benchmarks, it’s advisable to wait for independent testing before we jump to a conclusion. We’ve included the test notes below.

The Ryzen AI 300 family features a total of four models divided into two standard and two PRO models. At the top of the stack, we have the flagship Ryzen AI 7 350 wielding eight cores (four Zen 5 and four Zen 5c) and sixteen threads with a boost clock reaching 5 GHz and 24MB of combined L2 and L3 cache. The Ryzen AI 5 340 follows with six cores (three Zen 5 and three Zen 5c) and twelve threads, with a slightly lower boost clock at 4.8 GHz. The PRO variants offer similar specifications to their standard (non-PRO) counterparts but include a handful of added features for business users and extra security perks.

New to the Radeon family are the Radeon 860M and Radeon 840M equipped with eight CUs (Compute Units) and four CUs respectively, based on AMD’s RDNA 3.5 architecture. The Ryzen AI 7 350 sports the faster 860M while the Ryzen AI 5 340 utilizes the Radeon 840M. The shift to RDNA 3.5 should yield marginal improvements over last-generation offerings, though AMD didn’t explicitly say so in its slides.

Like with Strix Point, AMD’s hybrid approach with Krackan allows it to pack more cores in a smaller package. However, Strix Point reintroduced the concept of a CCX; assigning each core type to a separate CCX with its own dedicated L3 cache. Given Krackan’s smaller core count, a dual-CCX design might not be necessary. However, the final layout will be confirmed once die-shots become available.

Targeted at budget-conscious shoppers, the Ryzen 200 lineup features 11 models including four PRO variants. Leading the lineup is the Ryzen 9 270 with eight cores and sixteen threads. AMD has managed to extract marginal boost and base clock bumps across the board against Hawk Point. The Radeon 780M is paired with octa-core Ryzen 200 models, and down the stack, the Radeon 760M is integrated with hexa-core variants while the Radeon 740M is reserved for hybrid models, that also don’t include an NPU.

The PRO family has a limited SKU count and notably lacks a Ryzen 9 offering. Topping the range is the Ryzen 7 PRO 250 with a similar configuration to the Ryzen 9 270, but operates within a lower cTDP range. Keep in mind that the quad-core Ryzen 3 counterparts have significantly reduced cache sizes than other models since the L3 cache drops from 16MB to just 8MB.

All things considered; the notebook market is seeing growing competition from all sides but is also becoming increasingly price-sensitive. Despite the impressive performance and efficiency metrics posed by Strix Point and Lunar Lake, it is hard to classify these laptops as affordable. To alleviate this problem,

AMD is positioning Krackan Point (Ryzen AI 300) and Hawk Point Refresh (Ryzen 200) as budget alternatives while still delivering sufficient performance.

In the sub $1,000 market, Intel’s Arrow Lake-H may be the only viable competitor to Krackan Point, but laptop manufacturers are likely to pair these processors with a dedicated GPU. Still, we won’t know how AMD’s new CPUs will stack up against the competition until the chips are released and we perform our own independent tests.

The standard Ryzen AI 300 series will debut this quarter while the Ryzen AI 300 PRO models are slated for release in Q2 2025, aligning their launch with the Ryzen 200 family.

AMD announced its ‘Strix Halo’ Ryzen AI Max series laptop processors here at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, and by any definition, the new APUs look to be absolute monsters for the enthusiast thin-and-light gaming and AI workstation laptop markets, featuring what AMD bills as the fastest integrated graphics available in the Windows ecosystem courtesy of a new disruptive integrated memory architecture that unlocks new capabilities and a beastly 40-core RDNA 3.5 integrated GPU. 

In fact, AMD says the AI Max chips deliver up to 1.4X faster gaming performance than Intel’s flagship ‘Lunar Lake’ Core Ultra 9 288V flagship, and up to 84% faster rendering performance than the Apple MacBook M4 Pro. AMD also says the chip can deliver up to an incredible 2.2X more performance in AI workloads than the discreet desktop Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU, but at an 87% lower TDP.

If AMD keeps with tradition, which we fully expect, we will see these monstrous APU chips come to desktop PCs in the future.

Ryzen AI Max Specifications

The fire-breathing 120W Zen 5-powered flagship Ryzen AI Max+ 395 comes packing 16 CPU cores and 32 threads paired with 40 RDNA 3.5 (Radeon 8060S) integrated graphics cores (CUs), but perhaps more importantly, it supports up to 128GB of memory that is shared among the CPU, GPU, and XDNA 2 NPU AI engines. The memory can also be carved up to a distinct pool dedicated to the GPU only, thus delivering an astounding 256 GB/s of memory throughput that unlocks incredible performance in memory capacity-constrained AI workloads (details below). AMD says this delivers groundbreaking capabilities for thin-and-light laptops and mini workstations, particularly in AI workloads. The company also shared plenty of gaming and content creation benchmarks.

As designated by the ‘+,’ the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 serves as the flagship of the new series, but it’s accompanied by three other processors in varying configurations ranging from a 6-core 12-thread / 16 GPU core Ryzen AI Max Pro 380 to the 12-core 24-thread / 32 GPU core Ryzen AI Max 390. The Ryzen AI Max 390 and 385 are armed with the Radeon 8050S graphics engine. AMD also has an unlisted 16-core 16-CU model for OEMs.

All of the AI Max chips have a 55W base TDP, but also a configurable TDP that ranges from 45 to 120W to unleash more horsepower in designs that can handle the thermal output. The top three models will come in both standard and Pro series models, with the latter

including a RAS feature set for professional users. AMD plans to release these processors across Q1 and Q2 of this year.

As you can see above, the chip has a large central I/O die that houses the GPU and NPU, while the two smaller dies contain the CPU cores. The chip connects to standard memory, but you can use the Radeon Adrenaline software to make a custom memory allocation dedicated to the GPU only. 

For instance, if you have 128GB of total system memory, up to 96GB can be allocated to the GPU alone, with the remaining 32GB dedicated to the CPU. However, the GPU can still read from the entire 128 GB memory, thus eliminating costly memory copies via its unified coherent memory architecture. However, it can only write to its directly allocated 96GB pool. The combination of a shared memory pool and a dedicated memory pool enables faster performance in a range of workloads by leveraging the memory as a slower VRAM of sorts, including disruptive performance in AI workloads that we’ll outline below. But first, gaming and content creation performance.

Ryzen AI Max+ gaming and content creation benchmarks

The Strix Halo chips address both the enthusiast gaming and workstation markets, so performance in gaming is key. AMD claims the Ryzen AI Max+ is 1.4X faster than Intel’s flagship Lunar Lake Core 9 288V, but the company didn’t share real-world gaming benchmarks. Instead, AMD shared synthetic 3DMark tests that often don’t correlate well to real-world gaming performance. We won’t know more about real-world gaming performance until Ryzen AI Max hits the market, and as always, you should approach vendor provided benchmarks with the appropriate skepticism (we’ve included AMD’s test notes at the end of the article).

AMD also included numerous rendering benchmarks of its 16-core flagship against the 12-core Apple MacBook M4 Pro, claiming an up to 86% advantage in a v-ray workload. Naturally, the 14-core M4 Pro, also included in the benchmarks, is more competitive, but AMD still holds a stout lead in the Blender, Corona, and v-ray selection of benchmarks. However, the Ryzen AI Max+ isn’t as performant in the multi-threaded Cinebench 2024 test, beating the 12-core M4 Pro by a scant 2%, and trailing the 14-core M4 Pro by 3%.

AMD also took another swipe at Intel’s Lunar Lake Core Ultra 288V flagship, showing massive 3D rendering performance advantages of 2.6X faster on average, with advantages ranging from 340% to 402% in this selection of benchmarks. The 288V is geared for lower-power laptops, so comparisons against Intel’s newly-launched Core Ultra 200H and 200HX series, the latter with a dGPU, will be interesting.

AMD used a reference motherboard for its tests (a test board that typically has unlimited cooling capacity), so these results won’t reflect the performance you can expect in thermally constrained laptop. In contrast, the Apple and Intel benchmarks were generated with shipping laptops. AMD lists the tested TDP at a base of 55W, but power consumption can stretch much higher during heavy loads, especially with beefy cooling on a reference motherboard. This can lead to lopsided comparisons – for instance, the 288V has a 37W max TDP. All of the Ryzen AI Max configs were tested with only 32GB of RAM for these benchmarks.

Ryzen AI performance and systems

AMD also shared some rather impressive results showing a Llama 70B Nemotron LLM AI model running on both the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with 128GB of total system RAM (32GB for the CPU, 96GB allocated to the GPU) and a desktop Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 with 24GB of VRAM (details of the setups in the slide below). AMD says the AI Max+ 395 delivers up to 2.2X the tokens/second performance of the desktop RTX 4090 card, but the company didn’t share time-to-first-token benchmarks.

Perhaps more importantly, AMD claims to do this at an 87% lower TDP than the 450W RTX 4090, with the AI Max+ running at a mere 55W. That implies that systems built on this platform will have exceptional power efficiency metrics in AI workloads. The Ryzen AI Max models all have an integrated XDNA 2 NPU AI engine capable of delivering up to 50 TOPS of performance, but AMD didn’t share benchmarks for the NPU.

Speaking of systems, AMD’s partners will have systems built around the AI Max chips coming to market this year. HP has a ZBook Ultra G1 compact workstation and an HP Z2 mini G1a workstation, but the release date for those systems is undefined. Additionally, Asus has its gaming tablet with a detachable keyboard, the ROG Flow Z13, coming to market in Q1 of this year. That implies a hefty amount of gaming performance packed into a very slim form factor. Here’s hoping we can find these at retail, as AMD’s flagship gaming chips have often suffered from poor availability.

The upcoming Ryzen AI MAX 395+ from AMD's Ryzen 300 or Zen 5 family of APUs has emerged at Geekbench with performance that's largely identical to the desktop Ryzen 9 7950X processor — at least in short bursts. The 395+ is seen powering the upcoming ROG Flow Z13 laptop from Asus, expected to debut at CES next month. Against the last-gen Ryzen 9 7945HX, AMD has managed to extract a massive 22% performance uplift with Strix Halo.

The enthusiast laptop market will soon be greeted by AMD's flagship APUs codenamed "Strix Halo" under the Ryzen AI MAX Pro lineup. Likely to arrive at CES, these APUs reportedly serve as a one-stop solution for workstation laptops uniting Zen 5 cores with a powerful RDNA 3.5 iGPU (Integrated GPU) on a single chip.

Rumor has it that the top-end Radeon 8060S may be configured with up to 40 CUs (Compute Units) with support for fast LPDDR5X-8000 memory. Strix Halo is a one-of-a-kind product and should not be confused with the flagship-grade Fire Range series, succeeding Dragon Range (Ryzen 7045HX).

The test bench features the Asus ROG Flow Z13 "GZ302EA," listings for which surfaced a few days ago at a Belarusian retailer. Geekbench reports the Ryzen AI MAX 395+ with 16 cores and 32 threads based on AMD's Zen 5 architecture. The CPU offers a base frequency of 3 GHz, going as high as 5.1 GHz. Much like 16-core desktop chips from AMD, the 395+ is equipped with 64MB of L3 cache and 16MB of L2 cache.

Impressive scores of 2928 points and 19484 points in the single-core and multi-core categories, respectively, land the Ryzen AI MAX 395+ largely on par with the Ryzen 9 7950X. The limited clock speeds prevent it from breaching the 3,000 barrier when it comes to single-core performance. However, multi-core sees it pass with flying colors, beating the Ryzen 9 7945HX by 22%. Notably, the relatively short-duration Geekbench benchmark leads to ideal scores for the chip, as the chip will heat up and likely slow as it runs longer-duration benchmarks.

Realistically, Strix Halo has no direct equivalent from Intel's side and is more targeted as a competitor to Apple's M-series chips. It wouldn't make sense to compare Arrow Lake versus Strix Halo as the latter employs a much larger integrated GPU. Judging from the leaks, the Radeon 8060S powering the graphical end of the 395+ offers 40 CUs, which is 25% more than the Radeon RX 7600. If priced accordingly, this configuration could give upcoming RTX 5060 laptops a run for their money.

AMD is expected to reveal Strix Halo alongside Krackan Point and the RDNA 4 family at CES next month.

With less than one month left to CES 2025, leaked benchmarks have started to surface starring AMD's flagship Strix Halo APUs. The Ryzen AI MAX+ Pro 395 - now that's a mouthful - has emerged on Geekbench packing 16 CPU cores, 64GB of RAM, and a massive 40 CU (Compute Units) Radeon RX 8600S iGPU (Integrated GPU). Despite the apparent low score - set to improve with further optimizations - the real juicy details lie in the specifications.

For the uninitiated, Strix Halo or the Ryzen AI MAX 300 APUs are said to be AMD's top-of-the-line offering for workstations and laptops next year. The test bench utilizes the "AMD MAPLE-STXH" reference board, designed for the FP11 socket. Likewise, Ryzen AI MAX+ Pro 395—which we'll call Ryzen AI 395 for simplicity's sake—is paired with 64GB of RAM, going as high as 128GB per shipping manifests. The performance isn't anything to write home about at this stage, with the Vulkan score on par with an RTX 2060 resulting from early silicon.

In line with previous rumors, the Ryzen AI 395 features 16 cores based on the Zen 5 microarchitecture and 32 threads. The suspected dual-CCD design lands it 32MBx2 (64MB) of L3 cache alongside 16MB of L2 cache (1MB per core). Geekbench lists the maximum clock speeds at 4.4 GHz, which will likely improve with time.

Strix Halo's graphics solution will fall under AMD's Radeon 8000S umbrella of iGPUs: the Radeon 8060S and Radeon 8050S are based on RDNA 3.5. On an architectural level, the iGPU likely resides in the large SoC die with upwards of 32MB of MALL or Infinity Cache to avoid memory bottlenecks. Geekbench doesn't explicitly list the CU count, but previous leaks hint towards a 40 CU configuration for all Radeon 8060S models—25% more than the RX 7600.

Strix Halo is designed to compete against Apple's M-series silicon and Nvidia's dedicated GPUs in the laptop segment. It may not rival the RTX 4090 laptop GPU, but it could give mid-ranged offerings like the RTX 4070 laptop a run for its money.

Pricing is a valid concern since Strix Point - the Ryzen AI 300 family - is limited in availability and costs a pretty penny if you want the best. Nonetheless, we expect AMD to unveil its Strix Halo lineup of APUs at CES 2025 in addition to Krackan Point and the Radeon RX 8000 series.

The new high-end PC handhelds are imminent— the presale window of OneXPlayer's OneXFly F1 Pro handheld, the world's first AMD Ryzen AI 300-based handheld gaming PC, is here and open through the end of November per the official OneXPlayer store listing.

The OneXFly F1 Pro should give the Asus ROG Ally X and its ilk of Ryzen Z1 Extreme/Ryzen 7 8840U, particularly its Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 model. However, even the Ryzen AI 9 365 model can outperform the last generation while sparring Watt-to-Watt, which we'll explain in more detail soon.

For now, prospective buyers should know that of the six OneXFly F1 Pro configurations available from OneXPlayer in presale, there are only two models—one with Ryzen AI 9 365 and one with Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. The two Ryzen AI 9 365 models differ only in storage capacity (1 TB or 2 TB) and start at $1,099, while the four Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 models scale from 1 TB to 4 TB storage and 32 GB to 64 GB RAM and start at $1,339.

*Note: Ryzen AI 9 365's Zen 5 configuration has 4 Zen 5 cores and 6 Zen 5C cores. Ryzen AI 9 HX 370's Zen 5 configuration is 4 Zen 5 cores and 8 Zen 5C cores.

Beyond raw specifications pointing toward the capacity to provide a significant amp for the coming year of new AMD handhelds, the OneXFly F1 Pro also offers a 7-inch OLED display capable of 800 nits brightness, which should be suitable for HDR and high-contrast scenes in general.

The Steam Deck OLED's screen reaches 1000 nits but is only 90 Hz and operates at a much lower 1280 x 800 resolution. Still, the trade-offs OneXPlayer made here for resolution and refresh rate would be helpful in some titles. At this screen size, resolution scaling can more than compensate for the high-resolution display in more intensive games, particularly with improved FSR support across Windows and Linux alike.

While it is worth noting that the most thorough benchmarking of the OneXFly F1 Pro is currently only available from OneXPlayer themselves, the results provided are perfectly in line with what we expect from the specifications of the handheld. The most impressive gains really might be in the Ryzen AI 9 365 model— not only is it able to outperform its predecessors watt-for-watt, but its Radeon 880M iGPU has the same number of compute units as the last-gen Radeon 780M, highlighting the improvements from RDNA 3 to RDNA 3.5.

Display and performance characteristics considered, the OneXFly F1 Pro quickly becomes a contender for the top dog of the handheld PC market until competitive options with similar internals start popping up. This handheld is only lacking compared to high-end models, such as OCuLink or similar eGPU support. While USB4 ports are nice, they won't quite reach the throughput and latency required for a great external GPU gaming experience. So, using OneXFly F1 Pro as a dockable handheld gaming PC for more power will work, but maybe not to the extent you'd hope at this price point.

Finally, that presale pricing starts at $1,099 or $1,399 depending on CPU— are these performance gains worth all the extra money you'll spend over the Asus ROG Ally X, which starts at $799? Is the Asus ROG Ally X even worth all the extra money you must pay over Steam Deck OLED, which starts at $549 when you have to plug it in to get extra frames? We can't make those value conclusions for you, but we can give you the information you need to decide for yourself. If you want the best handheld PC performance currently available and don't mind the diminishing returns in frames per dollar, we recommend securing a presale OneXFly F1 Pro while you can.

Everyone else should likely wait for further reviews or more competition, though it's worth noting that each model's price will increase once the presale period has ended.

AMD has recently been on a roll with its desktop chips, growing its desktop processor market share to 28.7% in 3Q24 versus 15.8% just five years prior. This is a stunning 81% jump for AMD, and all at the expense of Intel. You can see evidence of this for yourself when you look at the best-selling CPUs on Amazon, with the top 10 spots held by AMD processors from the Ryzen 5000, 7000, and 9000 processor series. Intel sits awkwardly at 11th place, with its Intel Core i7-13700K, a processor two generations behind its latest parts.

Some might argue that the Intel Core Ultra 200 chips are too new to penetrate Amazon’s bestseller list, but AMD’s premier gaming chip, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, has launched just this month and it’s already at pole position. This is despite the massive demand that drove prices up to more than $600 (from the original launch price of $479). If that is out of your range, you could go for the previous generation Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which sits at the number two spot and has a far more accessible asking price of $349.

At number three, we have the four-year-old Ryzen 9 5900X, costing $226 — this is 60% off its launch price, making it a tempting deal for budget-conscious buyers who still want 24-threads of performance. It even outsells the Ryzen 9 5900XT, which launched this year but is more expensive at $308. The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X, priced at $194, sits in fourth place, while the older 12-thread (and cheaper, at $105) Ryzen 5 5600X is one place behind at fifth place.

Spots six through ten in the Amazon CPU bestseller list are rounded out by the AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D, Ryzen 7 5700X, Ryzen 7 7700X, Ryzen 7 5800X, and Ryzen 5 5500. These processors give buyers a wide range of options — the cheapest processor starts at less than $100 and those who have the money could splurge more than $500, allowing you to get the best CPU for gaming in your budget.

What’s interesting, though, is that there’s only one Ryzen 9000 series processor here. This is probably because of the disappointing benchmark results returned by the non-X3D variants at launch, with the company soon releasing a patch to fix the issue. Nevertheless, this small hiccup is nothing compared to the major headache that Intel has experienced with its high-end Raptor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh desktop chips.

AMD's plans for the mainstream market have come to light as the company readies its upcoming Strix Halo, Fire Range, Krackan Point, and Radeon RX 8000 offerings thanks to a series of leaked roadmaps by Golden Pig Upgrade Pack on Weibo (via WCCFTech). Most notably, the flagship Strix Halo APUs will use the Radeon 8000S moniker for their integrated GPU (iGPU) solution - set to pack upwards of 40 Compute Units (CUs).

As per the leak, AMD's Strix Halo or Ryzen AI MAX 300 APUs will use the FP11 socket and host upwards of 16 cores (Ryzen AI MAX+ 395), based on the Zen 5 microarchitecture alongside a massive 40 RDNA 3.5 CU iGPU. In addition, Strix Halo offers support for 256-bit LPDDR5X-8000 memory with shipping manifests indicating up to (but not limited to) 128GB of RAM.

Going off on a tangent, the iGPU solution will fall under the Radeon 8000S umbrella; Radeon 8060S and Radeon 8050S. This is quite different from Rembrandt, Phoenix, and Strix - all of which used nearly identical Radeon 600M, 700M, and 800M conventions and might confuse some customers since the "S" suffix was seen on some Radeon 7000 dedicated laptop GPUs; the Radeon 7700S and Radeon 7600S.

The enthusiast laptop market is expected to soon welcome AMD's Fire Range series of CPUs. Based on Zen 5, Fire Range ups the memory support from DDR5-5200 to DDR5-5600 and will come in X3D flavors as well. Notably, Fire Range won't exactly succeed Dragon Range (Ryzen 7045HX) but will operate in parallel at least until 2026.

AMD is also working on enthusiast-grade RDNA 4 (Navi 4X) GPUs, widely slated to arrive sometime next year or in 2026. The budget end of the spectrum will continue with refreshes based on Navi 33 alongside Strix/Krackan APUs. What remains to be seen is whether AMD can deliver these GPUs in volume to OEMs, since we barely saw any laptops with dedicated Radeon 7000 graphics solutions.

Sticking to the consumer side of things, Strix Point will continue its journey into 2025 and will see a refresh (possibly like Hawk Point) in 2026. Krackan Point (Ryzen AI 300), likely to be announced at CES, will supersede Hawk Point (Ryzen 8040). AMD is also prepping a Ryzen AI 200 series - a refresh of Hawk Point, which itself is a refresh of Phoenix. Rembrandt-R (Ryzen 7035) isn't retiring anytime soon and will remain a staple in budget laptops by the end of 2025 - tying into AMD's plans regarding the Ryzen Z2 series.

All in all, AMD's portfolio for the next two years is jam-packed with exciting launches and plans. Please remember, the information shared in the leaked slides could contain errors — even if it comes from a usually reliable source and passes the sniff test. What also remains to be seen is the pricing and product availability. Strix Halo, Radeon RX 8000 desktop GPUs, and Krackan Point should be officially announced at CES 2025, but AMD may still have a few surprises up its sleeve.

Whether you want to take your rig on the road, carry it to the couch, or just save space on your desk, a gaming laptop packs PC graphics performance into a compact, portable form factor. The market is loaded with choices that come with screens ranging from 14 to 18 inches graphics cards that can handle a variety of resolutions and options for any budget, from entry-level up to maxed out, multi-thousand dollar rigs. The best gaming laptops often come with fancy RGB lights, high refresh rate panels and, sometimes, even mechanical keyboards.

To help you choose the right gaming laptop, we test many models each year, benchmarking them in popular games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption 2.

For those on a tight gaming budget, we also have dedicated pages for the best gaming laptops under $1,500 and the best gaming laptops under $1,000. If you're looking to put together a full battlestation, you can also consider our lists of the best gaming mice, best gaming chairs, and best gaming headsets.

For 2026, you can look forward to gaming laptops with new processors, including Intel's Core Ultra 3 "Panther Lake" and AMD's Ryzen AI "Gorgon Point" processors. Nvidia's RTX 50-series "Blackwell" mobile GPUs are still the latest on the graphics front. At Computex 2026, we mostly saw refreshes with focuses on new screen technologies and systems that can provide the chips with more power. We can expect those systems to come out in the second half of the year.

We're also seeing a renaissance in integrated graphics in gaming handhelds, which might lead some companies to see how far they can push systems without discrete GPUs altogether. The graphics performance that we've seen in laptops Panther Lake processors with 12 Xe cores (like the Asus ZenBook Duo) have been promising, and AMD is launching laptops using the integrated graphics in its Strix Halo chips soon.

The quick list

Best Gaming Laptops 2026

The Best Gaming Laptop

Razer may suggest the Blade 18 should do dual-duty as a gaming laptop and a workstation, but let's be frank — it was designed as the former. And the system offers strong gaming performance, a solid design, and tons of ports. Then again, starting at $3,999.99 (and $5,399.99 the way we tested it), it better be good.

Just like last year, the major feature is the dual-mode display, which can switch between 3840 x 2400 at 240 Hz or 1920 x 1200 at 440 Hz, a good mix for both quick-twitch esports games and graphics-intensive action titles. And yes, 4K is nice if you want to fit more text, code, or spreadsheets on the massive 18-inch screen.

Razer's switch to Arrow Lake Refresh doesn't offer a lot of extra performance over last year's model in our testing, even alongside the RTX 5090 Laptop GPU. So if you can find the previous year's model on sale, it's $500 cheaper and you don't lose much at all.

And if you have Thunderbolt 5 docks or peripherals, Razer is still one of the few offering the port (alongside Apple and MSI) on its top system.

Like last year, Razer supports a PCIe 5 SSD but doesn't ship with one, even at this high price. Its other downside is that the system can run hot, so be sure to keep it on your desk.

Read: Razer Blade 18 review

The Best Budget Gaming Laptop

It's rare to see a truly budget gaming laptop — one under $1,000— these days, especially with a current-generation GPU. Right now, the best of these that we've tested is the MSI Katana 15 HX, which pairs a low-end Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 and a 14th Gen Intel Core i7 HX-series processor.

This system, which is $999.99 as tested, offered solid 1080p gaming performance on our suite of benchmarks, and could deliver even more frames on less taxing settings.

There are some other extras here. I appreciate the a system this cheap has slotted RAM and an easily replaceable SSD so the system can grow with you. Additionally, MSI put in a four-zone RGB keyboard, while many laptops at this price might not have RGB at all, or only offer a single color.

The biggest drawback to this machine is its screen. The 15.6-inch, 1080p panel is dim and bland, measure just 257 nits of brightness on our light meter and covering 69.3% of the sRGB gamut by volume. Games and videos alike looked pretty dull.

Read: MSI Katana 15 HX

Mid-range value

At $1,599.99 as tested, the Gigabyte Aorus 16X packs a lot of features into its 16-inch frame.

The laptop has a vibrant, 2560 x 1600 display that runs at 165 Hz for smooth first person shooters and esports. Its Core i7-14650HX CPU and GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card effortlessly handle games on the great display, and its built-in speakers are good enough that I didn't have to worry about headphones in a pinch.

On the practical side, it has a comfortable mouse and keyboard, excellent connectivity (including Thunderbolt 4 and Wi-Fi 7), and biometric security from its IR webcam. A surprising number of midrange gaming notebooks forego biometrics entirely, so I appreciated these security features.

You'll still want to carry a charger around, and Gigabyte's software isn't exactly the most intuitive. But if you want powerful gaming on a nice screen for a decent price, it's hard to argue with what's being offered here.

Read: Gigabyte Aorus 16X review

Best Lightweight Laptop

The Acer Predator Triton 14 AI is lightweight, sleek, and great for both creators and gamers alike. It's one of the nicest laptops from Acer I've seen in a long time.

The design is understated, if you can get past the many RGB lights (or just turn them off). At 3.5 pounds and 0.71 inches, the system still packs the power of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070. The CPU is a "Lunar Lake" Core Ultra 9 288V. That's fine for simple productivity, but doesn't have the power that most gaming laptops usually deliver in the processor department.

Still, the Triton 14 AI delivered capable gaming performance in our benchmark testing, easily playing most of the games we threw at it at demanding settings.

The Triton 14 AI's creative-focused features include a vivid OLED display and a touchpad that can work with a stylus. The system also boasts Nvida's Studio Drivers. While not game-focused, they make sure creative apps run with stability.

In our testing, the Triton 14 AI's screen covered 191.6% of the sRGB gamut and 135.7% of DCI-P3.

Best 14-inch Laptop

While Asus has often treated its TUF Gaming brand as a budget lineup, the A14 sure feels premium. In fact, it's my favorite 14-inch laptop that we've recently tested, standing out in a suddenly-crowded category.

Its understated design seems to borrow from the more upscale Zephyrus lineup. Despite packing an RTX 4060 in our review configuration, the TUF is just 3.22 pounds and 0.78 inches thick, putting it in line with some ultrabooks.

When we weren't using it for gaming, the A14 used Nvidia's Advanced Optimus and switched to the integrated graphics, managing to squeeze out 10 hours and 4 minutes of life on our battery test, which involves web browsing, streaming, and browser-based graphics tests.

The speakers are a bit quiet, but we appreciated the travel-friendly design. The 100W RTX 4060 can only play games at moderate settings, but if you're on the go, the A14 is a great option.

Read: Asus TUF Gaming A14 review

The Best Desktop Replacement

Desktop replacements are usually fairly permanent fixtures on your desk. The Alienware 16 Area-51 is a hefty gaming laptop with a ton of power and the option for an excellent keyboard, which is good if you want to keep your whole setup in one system. At 7.49 pounds and 1.12 inches thick, this is a system that you can carry around, but may want to just leave in your home.

Many desktop replacements are 18 inches. If that's your preference, there's an Alienware 18 Area-51 as well, but we haven't gotten to test that yet.

The system is built solid and comes in a novel "liquid teal" color. The $50 mechanical keyboard option is totally worth it; I love the way it feels. If you want to upgrade it down the line, the 16-incher has three M.2 SSD slots and slotted RAM, though the Wi-Fi is soldered.

Performance was strong, too, with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 and Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX powering through our benchmarks, often delivering higher performance than the Razer Blade 16's RTX 5090 paired with a 28W AMD CPU.

The display is nice and bright, but at this price, Alienware should have OLED options. And while gaming laptops typically don't last all day on a charge, the Area-51 lasted only 4 hours and 10 minutes on a charge, far shorter than some competitors.

Read: Alienware 16 Area-51 review

Other Gaming Laptops We Tested

💻 MSI Titan 18 HX AI

A former top pick, this Titan is a monster of a laptop with some of the most powerful components out there. Our review unit cost $6,379, which included an RTX 5090, 64GB of RAM, and three SSDs, one of which supported PCIe Gen 5.

Read: MSI Titan 18 HX AI review

💻 Acer Nitro V 16S AI

Acer's Nitro V is impressively portable for a 16-inch gaming rig and is reasonably priced at $1,299. But to offer up a one-inch profile, the company opted for an 85W RTX 5060 and a last-gen AMD Ryzen 7 260, which means it's outclassed in gaming.

Read: Acer Nitro V 16S AI review

💻 Asus ROG Strix G16

A powerful gaming laptop boasting an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GPU and a fast, colorful display. It's Ryzen 9995HX3D's X3D adds more benefit for productivity performance than gaming. It didn't hit the list, but it's worth a look.

Read: Asus ROG Strix G16 review

💻 Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

The Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 is a strong gaming laptop with an Nvidia RTX 5080 Laptop GPU and a bright display, but it doesn't feel as premium as its price tag, and its GiMate AI doesn't add much.

Read: Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 review

💻 Razer Blade 16

The Razer Blade 16 is a thin RTX 5090 laptop with a bright screen and tons of ports, but it's extremely pricey and the drivers felt unfinished on our test unit.

Read: Razer Blade 16 review

💻 Acer Predator Helios Neo Slim 14

This 14.5-inch Predator gaming laptop delivers good 1600p gaming performance and plentiful features, including Thunderbolt 4 and RGB backlighting.

Read: Acer Predator Helios Neo Slim 14 review

How We Test Gaming Laptops

Every gaming laptop that we review goes through a rigorous series of tests and benchmarks to decide whether it's worth your consideration.

Currently, games that we run and may include in our reviews are:

We also run a stress test, which currently consists of the Metro Exodus benchmark on the RTX preset, run 15 times in a loop while recording system statistics with HWInfo. (This is also when we take our heat tests).

Additionally, we run a series of productivity benchmarks, including Geekbench, Handbrake, and our in-house file transfer test. These test both single-core and multi-core performance on the processor, as well as all-around performance.

We measure gaming laptop displays with our colorimeter and light meter, and report brightness in nits, as well as the volume of the DCI-P3 and sRGB color gamut that the screen covers.

Our battery test connects to a local web server over Wi-Fi, and continuously browses the web, runs simple OpenGL graphics tests, and streams videos. We report the amount of time the laptop ran the test in hours and minutes.

Benchmarks aren't everything. We also actually use the gaming laptops that we review. Our writers and editors spend time playing games and using gaming laptops for writing, watching videos, listening to music, and browsing the web. This gives us the experience to report our own thoughts and feelings about the keyboard, design, port selection, audio, and other features. It also helps us get some valuable play time in!

Because the ability to upgrade and repair gaming laptops is essential, we open every system to see which parts are user-replaceable and document that experience so you know what you can change down the line and how difficult (or easy!) that is for you to do..

Gaming Laptop FAQs

Gaming Laptop Shopping Tips

Discounts on the Best Gaming Laptops

Whether you're shopping for one of the best gaming laptops or another model that didn't quite make our list, you may find some savings by checking out our list of the best gaming laptop deals. You can also browse our lists of Dell coupon codes, HP coupon codes, Lenovo coupon codes, Razer promo codes, or Newegg promo codes.

MORE: How to Buy a Gaming Laptop

MORE: Best Gaming PCs

MORE: Best Ultrabooks and Premium Laptops

AMD’s $480 Ryzen 7 9800X3D comes armed with eight cores and 16 threads paired with a new version of the company’s game-boosting 3D V-Cache tech that delivers impressive performance, taking the throne as the fastest gaming CPU on the market in convincing fashion. AMD claims the chip is 20% better than Intel’s latest flagship and 8% faster than the prior-gen Ryzen 7 7800X3D. However, our benchmarks show it beats Intel’s current-gen flagship Core 9 285K by an almost unrealistic 35% on average in our test suite. It even beats Intel’s fastest competing gaming chip, the Core i9-14900K, by an equally incredible 30% on average in our test suite. Naturally, the gains will vary by title due to the vagaries of the 3D V-Cache tech. Still, we recorded incredible performance that firmly cements the Ryzen 9 9800X3D as the best CPU for gaming.

AMD accomplished this feat by leveraging its tried-and-true 3D V-Cache technology, which uses a beefy, vertically-stacked 64MB L3 cache chiplet to boost gaming performance. To improve performance further, AMD moved the cache chiplet from the top of the processor to the bottom. This yields substantially higher thermal headroom, enabling higher clock rates while the additional cache unlocks the Zen 5 architecture’s peak gaming performance. As we're accustomed to with gaming-optimized X3D processors, not all games will benefit from the tech, and a few are even slightly slower (1 to 2%) than the previous-gen model. Still, the chip also vastly improves 1% low frame rates even in those titles. The higher 1% lows will also help when you’re GPU-limited, like when gaming with higher resolutions.

AMD has also now enabled full overclocking for the 9800X3D, which we’ve put to the test, allowing you to scrape out more performance in both gaming and productivity work. Speaking of which, the new design also helps to remove some of the heavy penalties in productivity work that you’ll often pay for using a gaming-optimized X3D processor, allowing the 9800X3D to match, and at times even exceed, a comparable eight-core Ryzen 9000 CPU in several productivity workloads.

The $480 Ryzen 9 9800X3D is AMD’s lone chip launch today, and the chip will be available on shelves tomorrow. The 9800X3D saves the day for gaming enthusiasts faced with not just one, but two disappointing chip launches this year: AMD’s Zen 5-powered Ryzen 9000 series debuted with lackluster gaming performance gains when it arrived earlier this year, but as you’ll see in our fresh testing we did for this review, recent firmwares and a Windows tweak have wrung out more performance. Intel also released its highly anticipated Arrow Lake Core Ultra series just two weeks ago, but those chips failed to match the gaming performance of Intel’s prior-gen chips. Unfortunately, there’s no evident fix in sight, which set the stage for a disappointing coming year for gaming chips.

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D changes that completely, bringing a top-tier gaming chip to market at a reasonable price point given its capabilities. The chip drops into existing AM5 motherboards and won’t require the pricey complementary components, like the pricey high-speed RAM kits, beefy coolers, and motherboards needed to extract the utmost performance from other top-tier chips. Meanwhile, Intel seems wholly unable to counter AMD’s 3D V-Cache tech even after two and a half long years and now three chip generations, after it debuted with the now-legendary Ryzen 7 5800X3D. Let’s look at the tech, then move on to the surprisingly good gaming benchmarks.

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Pricing and Specifications

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D features the Zen 5 microarchitecture, which you can read more about here. The processor is compatible with AM5 motherboards, and AMD's partners finally have X870E models available on the market. 

The eight-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 9800X3D debuts at $480, a $30 premium over the launch pricing of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. The 9800X3D has a 120W TDP and features 500 MHz higher base clocks and 200 MHz higher boosts than the previous-gen Zen 4-powered Ryzen 7 7800X3D.

The 9800X3D's 5.2 GHz boost is impressive, but that lags the direct Zen 5 comparable, the eight-core Ryzen 7 9700X, by 300 MHz. However, AMD has compensated with a 900 MHz higher base clock, allowing the 9800X3D to outpace the 9700X in some threaded workloads, as you'll see in our benchmarks on the following pages.

As with the prior-gen models, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D doesn't come with a cooler. AMD recommends at least a 240-280mm liquid (or equivalent) cooler. The processor has the same 95C maximum temperature (TjMax), but the new L3 cache chiplet design allows the chip to operate at higher clock rates for longer periods of time (enhanced boost residency), which equates to stronger performance gains within the same TDP envelope.

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is fully overclockable — you can tune the CPU cores, fabrics, and memory to your liking. However, while multiplier-based overclocking is available, as we've seen with other Zen 5 processors, most users with conventional cooling will be best served using the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature. We have extensive testing with this feature enabled on the following pages.

AMD also bumped memory support up to DDR5-5600 from the DDR5-5200 found with the previous-gen 7800X3D.

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D architecture

In the illustrations above, you can see AMD's original approach with its 3D V-Cache tech. With previous designs that leveraged the Zen 3 and Zen 4 architectures, AMD stacked an additional L3 SRAM chiplet directly in the center of the compute die (CCD) chiplet to isolate it from the heat-generating cores. We’ve covered the details of the first generation of this technology here.

AMD used hybrid bonding technology to join the cache chiplet to the underlying compute die. This boosted cache capacity to 96MB to accelerate performance in latency-sensitive applications, like gaming.

AMD placed the chiplet and several pieces of structural silicon on top of the compute die, but as we demonstrated with thermal throttling tests of the Ryzen 9 7950X3D processor, the cache chiplet and structural silicon shims served as a thermal blanket that hampered effective thermal transfer, essentially trapping waste heat. As a result, AMD limited the effective voltage and frequency range of the 3D V-Cache-equipped die to rein in heat generation. Simply put, the chip ran hot and thus had to run slower. 

AMD has now placed the cache chiplet underneath the die to alleviate the thermal challenges, placing the compute die closer to the thermal interface material, IHS, and eventually the CPU cooler. This improves the amount of compute performance AMD can extract from the 120W TDP envelope, and it also improves boost residency/duration. However, it comes with a new set of challenges — this design requires AMD to route the power and signal TSVs for the entire chip through the underlying L3 cache chiplet.

The new L3 cache chiplet is based on the same 7nm SRAM-optimized process node that AMD used in the previous two generations of 3D V-Cache technology in a technique that AMD now refers to as its 'Second-Gen 3D V-Cache' technology (this is an odd branding choice — this is actually the third refinement of the technology).

As before, AMD thins both the L3 cache chiplet and the 4nm (N4P) compute die to adhere to the standard Z-Height requirements for the processor package. AMD uses the same hybrid copper-to-copper bonding with a 9-micron bump pitch to join the two die. 

The chiplet now spans the entire bottom of the compute die, thus eliminating the need for the structural silicon shims. AMD isn't sharing the size of the L3 cache chiplet or the transistor density, but the compute die measures 70.6 mm^2, so it's safe to bet that's also the size of the cache chiplet. That's much larger than the 36 mm^2 L3 cache chiplet used for the Zen 4 X3D models — this is despite the use of the same process node and the same 64MB of L3 capacity. AMD likely has a lot of 'empty' silicon on the cache chiplet that's simply there for structural support, without the need to add separate shims.

Naturally, AMD has to feed more power and signal TSVs through the L3 cache chiplet, which now serves as an interposer of sorts, up to the compute die. AMD says that power TSVs are distributed throughout the SRAM die to feed the compute die that resides above. Extra power TSVs are distributed in areas that are unused for other functionality (presumably as more cache storage), which should at least partially account for the larger size. 

AMD says accesses to the L3 cache chiplet incur the same four-clock penalty as with the prior generation. We measured a sub-ns increase in L3 latency compared to the prior-gen 3D V-Cache-equipped Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which falls within the expected variance. AMD says the bandwidth between the compute die and L3 chiplet is similar to the previous-gen at 2.5 TB/s, but bandwidth varies with clock speeds.

Accesses to both main memory and I/O now have to travel through the L3 cache chiplet. As you can see in the measurements above, we see a marked increase in DDR5 latency over the standard Ryzen 7 9700X and the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. AMD says there is no increase in I/O latency due to traveling through the cache chiplet, though. We're following up for more details.

Naturally, any increase in memory latency is undesirable. However, we expect this will have minimal impact on overall performance due to the larger slab of L3 cache that minimizes accesses to main memory in some scenarios. Let's see what performance looks like in gaming on the next page. 

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AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Gaming Benchmarks — The TLDR

The particulars of our test setup are on page four. We used lifted power limits for the Intel processors, which result in higher power consumption and heat, but you get faster performance in exchange.

Nearly every title in our 13-game test suite benefits tremendously from 3D V-Cache, but this isn't the case with all games in the wild. Some games simply don't benefit as much, or at all, from the 3D V-Cache. This can be due to either the game code or a GPU limitation, though the higher 1% lows we measured throughout our suite will be very beneficial even when you are GPU-limited.

Below is the high-level view of gaming performance, using the geometric mean of our 13 gaming benchmarks at 1080p, which is then followed by the individual benchmarks further down the page. We're testing with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 to reduce GPU-imposed bottlenecks as much as possible, and differences between test subjects will shrink with lesser cards or higher resolutions and fidelity.

Keep in mind that the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 will likely arrive early next year. While 1080p gaming might seem a bit of a waste on the 4090, if the 5090 proves substantially faster — as we suspect it will — the gaps we're seeing here at 1080p would then extend into the 1440p and even 4K range. If you're after maximum gaming performance, the 9800X3D chip will almost certainly remain the best option for the coming year.

We see right away that the $480 Ryzen 7 9800X3D delivers almost unbelievable gaming performance, beating Intel's fastest gaming chip, the $440 Core i9-14900K, by an incredible 30%.

While the 14900K is Intel's fastest gaming chip, it isn't the newest flagship — that falls to the lackluster $620 Core Ultra 9 285K, which hasn't managed to match, let alone exceed, Intel's previous-gen flagship. That means the 285K fares even worse in our overall measurement: AMD claims to beat the 285K by 20%, but in our tests, the 9800X3D is an incredible 35% faster. AMD says the 9800X3D is 8% faster than the $450 Ryzen 7 7800X3D, but again, we measured a much higher delta, with the 9800X3D being 14.7% faster in our test suite.

Looking at the chart of average clock rates during the 13-game test suite is insightful. The 9800X3D ran at an average of 5.2 GHz, which is ~10% faster than the 7800X3D's clock speed. The advantages of Zen 5's higher IPC also weigh in here, helping to explain the impressive gen-on-gen improvements we see in our admittedly cache-friendly test suite.

There are other important factors, too. The stock Ryzen 7 9800X3D's 1% low frame rates (a good smoothness indicator) points to an exceptionally smooth gaming experience. In fact, the 9800X3D's 1% lows weigh in at 148 fps, which is 'only' 2.5% slower than the Core Ultra 9 285K's average frame rate. Impressive indeed.

We also tested with the base stock DDR5-5600 memory configuration for the 9800X3D, marked with '5600' in the above chart, and used DDR5-6000 memory for the standard 'Ryzen 7 9800X3D' listing. Moving up to the faster memory yields a 1.8% speedup on average. (We left that entry out of the individual tests below to make the charts easier to read.) This is a great result with extremely cheap RAM and an entirely different result than shelling out for super fast CUDIMM memory for the Core Ultra chips and receiving a mere 2% improvement.

We also tested with the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature enabled (marked with 'PBO' in the chart), and engaging this feature gave us around 2.6% more performance. Note that this will vary based on cooling, chip quality, and other factors. Also, overclocking the competing processors would yield at least some additional performance, too.

The power consumption chart shows that the Ryzen 9 7900X3D averaged 76.6W of power consumption across our suite, while Intel's Arrow Lake ran in the 65 to 67W range, and the previous-gen Ryzen 7 7800X3D consumed 66.4W. However, flipping through to the CPU efficiency chart, which plots FPS-per-watt, finds the 9800X3D and 7800X3D essentially tied for the best efficiency in our test pool, while the Arrow Lake chips are much less efficient overall thanks to their lower gaming performance, falling to the middle of the pack.

Pricing is a big factor, too. Our FPS-per-dollar chart shows that the Ryzen 7 57000X3D is the unquestioned value champ, but the Ryzen 7 9800X3D beats all Intel chips except the Core i7-14700K. Given that the Ryzen 7 9800X3D provides the fastest gaming performance overall, AMD will have absolutely no problem charging a premium.

Our overall measurement of gaming performance is much higher than AMD's for multiple reasons. AMD used multiple games that did not benefit from 3D V-Cache in its tests (our suite is very heavily skewed to 3D V-Cache-friendly titles), it used Windows 23H2 (we use 24H2), and it tested with the performance-sapping Virtualization Based Security (VBS) setting enabled, whereas we test with this feature disabled. We have included AMD's benchmarks with a very broad range of titles at the end of this page to provide a more balanced view of the impact of 3D V-Cache (a few games have 1 to 2% lower performance than with the previous-gen 7800X3D, but that is very limited).

The competition between AMD and Intel chips can vary based on the title (particularly with X3D models) and the GPU you use. It's best to make an informed decision based on the types of titles you frequently play, so be sure to check out the individual game tests below.

A Plague Tale: Requiem Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

Our first gaming chart might look like an abnormally large lead for the 9800X3D, but for 3D V-Cache chips, this is actually pretty much par for the course. Looking just at our 'normal' 9800X3D result (i.e. not the PBO or DDR5-5600 scores), it beats the 7800X3D by 16.4%, only slightly more than our overall geomean. The Intel chips are a different matter, with the 9800X3D showing a 42% lead over the 14900K and a whopping 60% lead over the 285K — yikes!

Baldur's Gate 3 Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

Baldur's Gate 3 really likes X3D as well, and the Zen 5 architecture. This time the 9800X3D beats its predecessor by 25%, with a 44% lead over the 14900K and a 47% lead over the 285K CUDIMM. So this is also one of the few games where Intel's Arrow Lake nearly matches the prior generation Raptor Lake Refresh.

Borderlands 3 Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

It's worth noting that Borderlands 3 was an AMD promotional title, and that might play a role in its performance. But here the 9800X3D only beats the 7800X3D by 11%, with a 30% lead over the 14900K and a 56% lead over the 285K. That's still a huge loss for Arrow Lake, but somewhat closer on the others.

Cyberpunk 2077 Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

Cyberpunk 2077 can be an incredibly GPU heavy game with ray tracing, and we're opting for the more CPU constrained ultra (non-RT) settings, without upscaling — and note that none of our CPU gaming tests have upscaling of any form enabled. Even without RT, it's still more GPU limited than many of our other results, with the 9800X3D delivering a 10% lead over its predecessor, 22% lead over the 14900K, and a still very large 51% lead over the 285K.

F1 2024 Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

We test F1 24 with the ultra preset, which does enable some RT effects. They're relatively lightweight compared to other games, and of course we're still hitting 200+ FPS on most of the CPUs. Here the 9800X3D leads the 7800X3D by just 2%, it's a virtual tie with the 14900K (1% lead to AMD), and 'only' 13% faster than the 285K. This is the closest result we have from our gaming suite, no doubt due to F1 24's default enablement of RT at the ultra preset.

Far Cry 6 Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

Far Cry 6 is another AMD-promoted game, which may impact the standing, though it's by no means one of the biggest outliers for our suite. The 9800X3D beats the incumbent 7800X3D by 14%, right about on par with our average result. But Intel CPUs fall well behind, with a 40% lead over the 14900K and a 43% lead over the 285K. So again, this is a game where Arrow Lake at least wasn't too far behind Raptor Lake.

Final Fantasy XIV Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

Final Fantasy XIV — not the newer Final Fantasy XVI — gives the 9800X3D yet another 16% win over its predecessor. Intel CPUs fail to impress once again, with the new Zen 5 X3D chip beating the 14900K by 39%, and the 285K by 63%. That's the biggest lead over Arrow Lake, if you're wondering.

Hitman 3 Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

Hitman 3 leverages Intel's E-cores for certain game functions, but it also likes Ryzen X3D's voluminous L3 cache. The 9800X3D leads the 7800X3D by 13%, with a less dramatic 15% lead over the 14900K and 'only' a 19% lead over the 285K.

Hogwarts Legacy Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

Hogwarts Legacy is the second most favorable result for 9800X3D compared to 7800X3D, with a 21% overall victory by the new chip. Intel's results are basically in line with our overall average: the 9800X3D ends up 33% faster than the 14900K and 37% faster than the 285K.

Microsoft Flight Simulator Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2021 obviously benefits from L3 cache — the Ryzen X3D chips are incredible in this title. 9800X3D beats the 7800X3D by 16%, close to our geomean difference, but Intel's chips fall off the pace. AMD's latest is 38% faster than the 14900K and 42% faster than the 285K. That's not Intel's worst result, but it's definitely in the lower half of the test suite as far as performance goes.

Spider-Man: Remastered Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

Spider-Man: Remastered is a curious result, in that it's one of the few games where Arrow Lake CPUs actually outperform their Raptor Lake predecessors. The 9800X3D ends up just 10% faster than the 285K, our closest test result for those two chips. Against the 7800X3D, it's still a larger than average 17.6% lead, while the 14900K seriously underperforms and the 9800X3D claims a 47% margin of victory. This is the 14900K's worst result overall, though it's only a few percent worse than the Baldur's Gate 3 and A Plague Tale: Requiem standings.

Starfield Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

Starfield is another game that doesn't hate Arrow Lake, though the 9800X3D still wins by 13%. It's also 17.5% faster than the 7800X3D, and 21% faster than the 14900K.

Watch Dogs Legion Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

And we wrap up our gaming results with Watch Dogs Legion, where the 9800X3D lead over the 7800X3D sits at 12.6% — slightly below the geomean. AMD beats the 14900K by 22%, and the 285K by 16.4%, so this is one of the few other results where Arrow Lake comes out ahead of the 14900K.

AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D Gaming Benchmarks

As mentioned, performance can vary based on the title. AMD shared its own benchmarks to highlight what you should expect in various titles. As with all vendor-provided performance data, view it with the appropriate skepticism. AMD's test notes are on the final slide.

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AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Productivity Benchmarks — The TLDR

We boil down productivity application performance into two broad categories: single-threaded and multi-threaded. These slides show the geometric mean of performance in several of our most important tests in each of these categories, but be sure to look at the expanded results below for more granular analysis.

AMD's 3D V-Cache chips have long delivered exceptional gaming performance but lagged in productivity workloads due to the lower clock rates borne of the thermal issues associated with the L3 chiplet. Reducing that disparity was one of the primary motivators for the new design, and here we can see the payoff.

The 8-core Ryzen 7 9800X3D is 4% faster in multi-threaded workloads than the 8-core Ryzen 7 9700X, which leverages a traditional CPU design. That's quite an accomplishment, and it demonstrates that AMD is putting the extra 15W of TDP headroom over the 9700X (tested in 105W mode) to exceptionally good use. We also see a big 34% increase in multi-threaded performance over the prior-gen 7800X3D.

The competing Intel chips are much faster in threaded work, though. The Core i9-14900K is 41% faster in threaded workloads, while the Core Ultra 9 285K is a whopping 64% faster. Keep in mind that the 14900K currently costs less than the 9800X3D.

The Ryzen 7 9700X has a 300 MHz higher boost clock rate than the 5.2 GHz Ryzen 7 9800X3D, so it isn't surprising to see the former take a ~3% lead in single-threaded work, a trend that you'll see repeated throughout the benchmarks below. While the Ryzen 7 9800X3D has made big generational improvements — it's 14% faster than the 7800X3D in single-threaded work — it still lags the competing Intel chips by significant margins. The Core Ultra 9 285K is 13% faster in single-threaded work, while the Core i9-14900K is 10% faster.

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D delivers truly exceptional gaming performance, but it's important to remember that similarly-priced processors provide much more performance in productivity work, so you should buy based on your priorities. You'll notice that the Ryzen 5 5700X3D, which delivers absolutely phenomenal performance for its price point in gaming, suffers tremendously in the application benchmarks due to its aging Zen 3 architecture, so remember to proceed with caution when selecting these chips over more well-rounded competitors. They truly are specialist chips for gaming. 

Rendering Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

Intel has made strong gains with Arrow Lake, as we can see throughout this series of benchmarks. The increased throughput from the CUDIMMs doesn't often make a big impact, so unless there's a pricing benefit or future firmware updates that change the situation, regular DDR5 DIMMS seem just fine.

We see some remarkable gains in threaded workloads for the 285K, with performance in Cinebench 2024, POV-Ray, C-Ray, and Luxmark all taking giant strides forward. However, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X remains strong in several tasks, like Embree, V-Ray 6, Blender, and Corona.

Encoding Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

Most encoders tend to be either heavily threaded or almost exclusively single-threaded — and it takes an agile chip to master both disciplines. Handbrake, SVT-HEVC, and SVT-AV1 serve as our threaded encoders, while LAME and FLAC are indicative of how the chips handle lightly-threaded engines.

Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

The PugetBench for Creators suite is a wonderful tool for benchmarking multiple types of Adobe applications, not to mention DaVinci Resolve. We used the benchmark for Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and DaVinci workloads.

Web Browser, Office Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

Compilation, Compression, AVX, Chess Engines, Others — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

This selection of tests runs the gamut from massively parallel molecular dynamics simulation code in NAMD to compression/decompression performance.

Y-cruncher computes Pi with the AVX instruction set, making for an exceedingly demanding benchmark. This benchmark was recently updated with specific tuning for AMD's AVX-512 implementation. The new code delivers a big boost to Ryzen. Intel's new chips make big strides in this benchmark over the prior generation, but they only support AVX-256 natively, ultimately giving AMD an easy win.

Intel has historically performed well in compilation tasks, and here we can see the 285K taking back the leadership spot in the LLVM benchmark, albeit by a slim margin. The NAMD simulation code benchmark finds the 285K making a much more definitive claim for leadership. 

Geekbench 6, Geekbench AI — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

The GeekBench AI results in the slide deck above show performance with the workload running on the CPU cores via OpenVino and ONNX. Only two CPUs in this group have in-built NPUs — the Core Ultra 9 285K and Ultra 7 265K — making them the only processors capable of running the workload on a dedicated NPU. Given that the NPU is focused on low-power inference tasks, the results are impressive relative to the performance when the workload executes on the CPU cores. 

SPECworkstation 3.1 — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

The SPECworkstation 3 benchmark suite is designed to measure workstation performance in professional applications. The full suite consists of more than 30 applications split among seven categories, but we've narrowed the list to tests that largely focus on CPU performance. We haven't submitted these benchmarks to the SPEC organization, so be aware that these are not official benchmarks.

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AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Power Consumption and Efficiency

Here we can see that the Ryzen 7 9800X3D doesn't draw as much power as the Intel comparables, thus resulting in a cooler and quieter system with more forgiving PSU, motherboard, and cooling requirements.

Note that AMD's chips generally have a higher idle power draw. I've measured this on a few motherboards, so this might be applicable across the AM5 ecosystem. AMD's AM5 chips can draw up to ~35W of power during idle compared to 12W with Intel's Core Ultra, a significant disadvantage. This is certainly something AMD should look to address with future firmware updates, as there's little reason for a modern CPU architecture to idle at such high power levels.

The final two charts take a slightly different look at power consumption by plotting the cumulative energy required for an x265 HandBrake and Blender workload. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart, with performance charted on the x-axis.

These workloads consist of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the performance during the job (bottom axis), thus generating a useful power chart. Faster compute performance and lower task energy are ideal. That means processors closest to the bottom right corner of the chart are the best.

Test Setup

All testing was conducted with Microsoft Windows 24H2, and all drivers and applications were updated to the latest versions. To speed up the testing process, we use XMP/EXPO as the default memory profiles for all tested configurations. The memory speeds used for each chip are shown in the table below.

We generated all the gaming results for the Ryzen 9000 processors with the new 1.2.0.2a AGESA. Due to time constraints, we haven't yet fully retested all of the Ryzen 9000 processors in our productivity test suite with the new 1.2.0.2a AGESA — for all but the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, our productivity benchmarks are with the 1.2.0.2 revision.

Microsoft has advised gamers to turn off several security features to boost gaming performance. For maximum performance, we disabled Virtualization Based Security (VBS) on all systems. Be aware that, due to hardware acceleration, some processor architectures handle virtualization better than others. This can provide a performance advantage in gaming with VBS enabled. We're working to quantify the performance differences and may adjust our VBS policy in the future. The table below provides further hardware details.

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The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the fastest gaming chip on the market by a large, almost unbelievable margin, easily beating Intel's competing processors. Yes, the $480 price tag is expensive, leaving room for like-priced alternatives with a more balanced performance profile in productivity applications. However, many of those competing chips come from within AMD's own stable — Ryzen 9000 has improved quite a bit with the recent firmware and Windows updates — and the fact is that AMD offers the fastest gaming performance in the world, so it can charge for it.

AMD has significantly improved performance in productivity workloads, too, helping to eliminate some of the trade-offs of selecting a gaming-optimized X3D chip. It has also fully opened up the overclocking bells and whistles, giving enthusiasts more options for tuning. You should keep your expectations in check for big gains from PBO, but this simple largely-automated feature does help in some applications.

AMD will have no problem selling the Ryzen 9 9800X3D at its price point, and Intel doesn't appear to have a chip that can compete in gaming in the near future, once again ceding the gaming crown to AMD for the indeterminate future.

Below, we have the geometric mean of our gaming test suite at 1080p and a cumulative measure of performance in single- and multi-threaded applications. These are cumulative measurements, so outliers in specific titles can impact the values. The Ryzen X3D chips use 3D V-Cache tech, which doesn’t accelerate all titles equally, and the Zen 3 and 4 versions come with performance penalties in productivity applications. Be sure to check our individual game and productivity benchmarks in the preceding sections to make an informed decision based on your intended workloads.

We conducted our gaming tests with an Nvidia RTX 4090, so performance deltas will shrink with lesser cards and higher resolution and fidelity settings. And conversely, when the RTX 5090 comes out, deltas could actually increase — we'll likely find out how much early next year.

As we said earlier, the competition isn't even close — the $480 Ryzen 7 9800X3D delivers outstanding gaming performance, beating Intel's fastest gaming chip, the $440 Core i9-14900K, by 30% in our test suite. Meanwhile, the 9800X3D is 35% faster than the current-gen Intel flagship, the $620 Core Ultra 9 285K, which hasn't managed to match, let alone exceed, Intel's previous-gen flagship. The stock Ryzen 7 9800X3D's 1% low frame rates (a good smoothness indicator) also deliver an exceptionally smooth gaming experience, which will benefit gamers even in GPU-limited scenarios.

The Core i9-14900K is a closer competitor for the 98000X3D due to its lower $440 price tag, and it does provide better performance in productivity workloads at its price point than the 9800X3D, beating it by 41% and 10% in multi- and single-threaded workloads, respectively. If you’re more interested in productivity work in this price range, the 14900K is a solid contender, albeit one that typically draws more power (except at idle).

Another benefit for AMD's CPU is that you won’t have to kit the 9800X3D out with expensive supporting componentry to extract the best of 3D V-Cache. The chip is relatively tame in terms of power and thermal requirements, exhibiting great power and efficiency metrics in our tests, and even cheap DDR5-5600 memory kits deliver within a few percentage points of performance of faster DDR5-6000 kits — the X3D chips simply don’t need EXPO memory to run at near-peak performance. That stands in stark contrast to splurging on a pricey CUDIMM kit for Arrow Lake and only scraping out ~2% more gaming performance.

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D does have a $30 higher introductory price tag than its predecessor, but you get what you pay for. Our FPS-per-dollar chart shows the Ryzen 7 9800X3D beats all Intel chips except the Core i7-14700K in terms of value. If you’re scraping together a system on a budget, you can always opt for a prior-gen 600-series motherboard, too.

Given that the Ryzen 7 9800X3D provides the fastest gaming performance overall, we expect that this chip will find no shortage of enthusiasts ready to fork over their hard-earned dollars. We also expect AMD to launch the larger dual-CCD X3D models in the coming months, so it might be best to hold off if you’re looking for something with a bit more threaded horsepower. With the move to put the 3D V-Cache die under the processing core, we could even see something like a 9950X3D with double the stacked cache — and if that happens, it might end up being the no-holds-barred performance champion for the current generation, regardless of workload.

But for now, if you want the best gaming chip on the market, there simply is no better option than the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

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As X user Hoang Anh Phu spotted, AMD's Ryzen AI 300 (codenamed Strix Point) processors have received a notable memory spec bump. They now support LPDDR5X-8000 memory instead of the previously stated LPDDR5X-7500. This change could potentially boost memory bandwidth and overall performance, making these processors more capable of handling data-intensive tasks and AI-driven applications.

The HP EliteBook X G1a is already listed as having the faster LPDDR5X-8000 memory and is expected to launch in December. The eagle-eyed user shared spec sheets comparing the old and new memory configurations from AMD’s official website.

The jump from LPDDR5X-7500 to LPDDR5X-8000 may yield only a marginal improvement in general application benchmarks. However, APUs with high-performance integrated GPUs can benefit notably, as these graphics processors rely heavily on memory bandwidth. The boost could translate into better gaming performance on the iGPU, although users should manage expectations regarding significant performance jumps.

While standard DDR5 SO-DIMMs remain at DDR5-5600, there's a change from 4x2R to 2x2R where "2R" denotes dual-rank memory. This change means Strix Point can now support up to two dual-rank DIMMs running up to DDR5-5600 instead of four. Notably, many gaming laptops use faster DDR5 modules through OEM memory overclocking to push beyond these specifications. However, LPDDR5X memory speeds are typically capped at the maximum frequency supported by the processor.

The memory speed bump for Strix Point seemingly aligns with AMD's upcoming Krackan Point and Strix Halo series, which are expected to be part of the Ryzen AI 300 lineup. Rumors suggest that the Strix Halo series will support LPDDR5X-8533, matching the capabilities of Intel’s mobile Core Ultra 200V (codenamed Lunar Lake) mobile processors. Additionally, in 2025, we might witness the launch of Krackan Point, which could arrive as a cut-down version of Strix Point and Strix Halo with support for LPDDRX-8000 memory.

As mobile and workstation applications demand greater bandwidth, AMD’s future Strix Halo APUs, branded as “Ryzen AI Max,” are reportedly expected to support up to 96GB of memory. This large capacity should appeal to mobile workstations or high-performance ultrabooks, allowing them to handle more resource-intensive applications without bottlenecks.

AMD's Ryzen AI 300 series of mobile processors beats Intel's mobile competition handily at local large language model (LLM) performance, according to recent in-house testing by AMD. A new blog post from the company's community blog outlines the tests AMD performed to beat Team Blue in AI performance, and how to make the most of the popular LLM program LM Studio for any interested users.

Most of AMD's tests were performed in LM Studio, a desktop app for downloading and hosting LLMs locally. The software, built on the llama.cpp code library, allows for CPU and/or GPU acceleration to power LLMs, and offers other control over the functionality of the models.

Using the 1b and 3b variants of Meta's Llama 3.2, Microsoft Phi 3.1 4k Mini Instruct 3b, Google's Gemma 2 9b, and Mistral's Nemo 2407 12b models, AMD tested laptops powered by AMD's flagship Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 against Intel's midrange Core Ultra 7 258V. The pair of laptops were tested against each other measuring speed in tokens per second and acceleration in the time it took to generate the first token, which roughly match to words printed on-screen per second and the buffer time between when a prompt is submitted and when the LLM begins output.

As seen in the graphs above, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 shows off better performance than the Core Ultra 7 258V across all five tested LLMs, in both speed and time to start outputting text. At its most dominant, AMD's chip represents 27% better speeds than Intel's. It is unknown what laptops were used for the above tests, but AMD was quick to mention that the tested AMD laptop was running slower RAM than the Intel machine—7500 MT/s vs. 8533 MT/s—when faster RAM typically corresponds to better LLM performance.

It should be noted that Intel's Ultra 7 258V processor is not exactly on a fair playing field against the HX 375; the 258V sits in the middle of Intel's 200-series SKUs, with a max turbo speed of 4.8 GHz versus the HX 375's 5.1 GHz. AMD's choice to pit its flagship Strix Point chip against Intel's medium-spec chip reads as a bit unfair, so take the 27% improvement claims with that in mind.

AMD also showed off LM Studio's GPU acceleration features in tests showing off the HX 375 against itself. While the dedicated NPU in Ryzen AI 300-series laptops is meant to be the driving force in AI tasks, on-demand program-level AI tasks are more prone to use the iGPU. AMD's tests with GPU acceleration using the Vulkan API in LM Studio so heavily favored the HX 375 that AMD did not include Intel's performance numbers with GPU acceleration turned on. With GPU acceleration on, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 saw up to 20% faster tk/s than when it ran tasks without GPU acceleration.

With so much current press around computers based on AI performance, vendors are eager to prove that AI matters to the end user. Apps like LM Studio or Intel's AI Playground do their best to offer a user-friendly and foolproof way to harness the latest 1 billion+ iteration LLMs for personal use. Whether large language models and getting the best out of your computer for LLM use matters to most users is another story.

Thanks to Everest on X, an APU from AMD's upcoming "Krackan Point" or mainstream Ryzen AI 300 series has allegedly surfaced in a benchmark and a shipping manifest.

The Ryzen AI 300 series launched with AMD's premier "Strix Point" silicon, which is offered across the Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 PRO series with upwards of 16 Compute Units (CUs) based on RDNA 3.5. As is tradition, AMD will follow up with a budget-oriented Krackan lineup next year—of which, we presume, the flagship has just been leaked.

The APU was spotted with the OPN code "100-000000713-21_N" at Openbenchmarking, a website that assembles benchmark data from the Phoronix Test Suite. A configuration of eight cores and sixteen threads lands it in Ryzen 7 territory, so it is safe to assume that APUs in the mainstream Ryzen AI 5/7 300 series will be based on Krackan.

It is pertinent to mention that, based on leaks, these eight cores are split up into four Zen 5 and four Zen 5c cores - though the cache configuration does not change. To further solidify our claims, the motherboard mentions "BirmanPlus-KRK" - where KRK is shorthand for Krackan.

Furthermore, this leak discloses that Krackan will support up to LPDDR5X-8000 memory, which is a nice bump from Strix and Phoenix - both topping out at just LPDDR5-7500. Rumor has it that Krackan Point APUs have a maximum of eight CUs based on RDNA 3.5. Since Lunar Lake can handily keep pace with the Radeon 890M with 16 CUs, Krackan might be on the losing end - though competitive pricing will give it an edge since Lunar Lake is not cheap to manufacture and package.

A shipping manifest also allegedly mentions two Krackan Point APUs: the Ryzen 7 PRO and Ryzen 5 PRO, with a TDP of 28W based on AMD's FP8 socket. It appears that AMD is currently sending shipments to OEMs, so Krackan might not be that far off.

Based on AMD's statement, Krackan Point is real and will arrive in early 2025. Team Red might eye CES 2025 to announce these APUs, followed by a launch in the coming weeks. Krackan Point should replace the Phoenix series - giving users the benefits of Zen 5 and the updated RDNA 3.5 architecture.

It seems that AMD's newest chipset drivers are now available, and courtesy of hardware leaker HXL, the release notes mention support for the "Ryzen AI 300 MAX" line-up. This finding was sourced from ASUS, who has the latest drivers available to download for its X670E series of motherboards. The gist is that AMD has seemingly confirmed the existence of the Ryzen AI 300 MAX series, whose rumored codename is Strix Halo.

The source of the confirmation comes via a chipset driver download from Asus, and is located in the Chipset folder on page 3 of ReleaseNotes_6.10.02.1849.rtf.

Strix Halo is AMD's yet-to-launch flagship mainstream APU offering. The top configuration allegedly packs 16 Zen 5 cores at 5.8GHz and a 40 CU-equipped iGPU based on RDNA 3.5. This beast is designed for workstations and premium top-of-the-line laptops and is expected to consume nearly 130W of power.

A previous leak gave us some insight regarding the internals of this chip, based on which Strix Halo contains three chiplets; two CCDs and one large SoC die. The SoC die packs a massive 40 CU iGPU clocked at 3 GHz, eclipsing the RX 7600 XT, 32MB of MALL (Memory Access at Last Level) cache which we assume will work similarly to Infinity Cache and may also be usable by the CPU cores as a possible L4 cache. Surrounding the package, we have eight LPPDR5X-8533 memory modules possibly indicating a 256-bit memory interface in the SoC die. On the I/O and expansion side, Strix Halo is rumored to have four PCIe 5.0 and eight PCIe 4.0 lanes alongside two USB 4.0 and USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports each.

To satisfy Microsoft's AI PC requirements, AMD will leverage its XDNA2 architecture for Strix Halo's NPU. Given the larger die size, the NPU TOPS might be slightly higher than what Strix can currently push.

Strix Halo is an ambitious project by AMD and may render many discrete mobile GPUs obsolete. AMD has already made strides in the iGPU segment with its Radeon 600/700/800M offerings. The looming question is pricing since Strix Halo will not only be more expensive to make, but we must also factor in the cost of packaging. In any case, we expect AMD to unveil the Ryzen AI 300 MAX series at CES 2025.

According to in-depth testing from Phoronix, Intel’s latest Lunar Lake mobile CPUs are not performing well in Linux benchmarks.

The Linux-focused publication tested the Core Ultra 7 256V found inside Asus’s Zebook S14, which doesn’t support Linux. The lack of official support for Linux on Lunar Lake laptops might raise some eyebrows regarding testing. Still, Intel has released Linux updates crafted explicitly for Lunar Lake throughout 2024 and even 2023. Phoronix also tested two Zenbook S16 laptops equipped with Ryzen AI 300 APUs, the AI 9 HX 370 and AI 9 365, and like the Zenbook S 14, they do not officially support Linux either.

In over 300 benchmarks, the 265V only scored a few victories over the Ryzen AI 300 chips, doing well almost solely in encryption, random read, video encoding tests, and Python, Perl, and JSON benchmarks. But when Lunar Lake lost, it lost hard, sometimes to the point where the Ryzen AI 300 APUs racked up double the performance. The average performance for these chips reflects that, as the AI 9 365 was 57% faster.

However, Lunar Lake even struggled against its predecessors; not only did the Meteor Lake-based Core Ultra 7 155H outperform the 265V by 24% on average, but the Alder Lake-powered Core i7-1280P from 2022 barely eked out a win, too. The 265V did at least beat the Core i7-1185G7 from 2020, a Tiger Lake processor.

Phoronix did note that the 265V was at least power efficient and did well in single-threaded benchmarks, but it lost primarily when workloads could utilize more threads. That’s not entirely surprising since Lunar Lake caps out at four E-cores and four P-cores, while both the 155H and 1280P have more E- and P-cores. Intel’s latest CPU is more geared towards lighter and less performance-focused laptops, similar to the M3 in the MacBook Air.

But clearly, something other than Lunar Lake’s architectural design must be at play. In our review of the Zenbook S14 with the Core Ultra 7 258V (which is just a tad faster than the 256V), we found that Lunar Lake was nipping on the heels of the 155H and even the AI HX 370 in multi-threaded benchmarks like Cinebench 2024. Phoronix speculates these performance problems could either be down to the laptop precisely (perhaps a firmware problem) or something to do with how Lunar Lake interacts with Linux.

Some strange things are happening with Lunar Lake in the Zenbook S14. Somehow, the higher-end Core Ultra 9 288V model of the S14 performs worse than the 258V-equipped model, which is incorrect. Intel claims this is because of an issue with the laptop’s current BIOS. However, it’s unclear if this problem is also responsible for the poor performance Phoronix demonstrated in Linux.

AMD's flagship Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 CPU was benchmarked in Geekbench 6 with potent results. Initially discovered by HXL on X, the Zen 5 CPU's single-core and multi-core results were high enough to outperform most of Intel's fastest mobile CPUs, featuring the same benchmark results as a desktop Core i5-13600K.

The HX 375 produced a single-core result of 2,864 points and a multi-core result of 15,012 points on an HP OmniBook Ultra Laptop 14 paired with 32GB of DDR5 memory. The Zen 5 chip's results were good enough to outperform Intel's flagship CPUs from its Meteor Lake lineup and almost good enough to surpass Intel's Raptor Lake Refresh mobile flagship.

The Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 was 5% faster than the Core i9-14900HX in Geekbench's single-core benchmark. However, the Core i9-14900HX was 7% faster in the multi-core benchmark. Compared to the Core Ultra 9 185H, the HX 375 lead was much more substantial, 27% faster in the single-core benchmark and 25% faster in the multi-core test.

We don't have official Lunar Lake Geekbench 6 benchmarks yet, but based on some leaked results, the flagship 288V appears to do single-core results in the 2,900 range, which would outperform the HX 375 by a couple of percent. However, multi-core results are generally much worse, in the 10,000 - 11,000 range.

Regardless, the Ryzen AI HX 375 can, at worst, match the performance of Intel's fastest mobile CPUs and, at best, vastly outperform its primary Intel competitors, Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake, specifically in the multi-core results. For a desktop comparison, the HX 375 matches the Core i5-13600K in terms of multi-core performance and the Core i9-14900 in terms of single-core performance.

The Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 is the flagship chip from AMD's Ryzen AI 300 lineup. The chip shares the exact specifications as the HX 370, except for the XDNA2 NPU, which has been improved by 10% and features 55 TOPS of performance rather than 50. Expect to see the Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 inside gaming laptops and mobile workstation devices.

One of AMD's Ryzen AI Max 300 (Strix Halo) APU has gone through Geekbench AI, the AI-focused counterpart to Geekbench 6. Discovered by Everest on X, the Ryzen AI Max 390 (AMD Eng Sample: 100-000001421-50_Y) was tested, but only on the Zen 5 CPU cores, not the GPU or NPU.

As always, take the Geekbench result with a pinch of salt since we don't know the state of the silicon. According to the submission, the Ryzen AI Max 390 is inside HP's ZBook Ultra 14-inch G1a, which appears to be a mobile workstation device, so the cooling should be adequate.

Using all 12 CPU cores, the Ryzen AI Max 390 outputted a single precision score of 4,733 points, a half-precision score of 4,944 points, and a quantized score of 13,944 points. Testing was accomplished on Geekbench AI 1.1.0 using the OpenVINO framework.

Since the benchmark was relegated entirely to the CPU cores, AI performance was not as good as what the chip would be able to do on the GPU or NPU. For example, the chip's quantized score was inferior to that of Intel's entry-level Arc A310 graphics card, which outputted a score of 15,453 points. It was also worse than some Core Ultra 7 Meteor Lake integrated graphics chips, with an even higher score. A similar story also goes for the single-precision and half-precision scores.

The Strix Halo chip failed to impress when looking specifically at CPU scores in an apples-to-apples comparison. Out of the relatively few OpenVINO CPU scores I was able to find, the Ryzen AI Max chip outperformed AMD's previous generation eight-core Ryzen 7 7840HS Zen 4 mobile CPU, which outputted a single precision score of 5,099 points, a half-precision score of 5,118 points, and a quantized score of 14,680 points.

I also took the liberty of testing my personal Ryzen 7 5800X3D to provide a desktop reference. It also outperformed the Strix Halo APU (for the most part). The 5800X3D featured a single precision score of 5,428 points, a half-precision score of 5,522 points, and a quantized score of 8,115 points. The quantized results were the only area where the Strix Halo chip was at an advantage.

From what I could find, the only chips that the Ryzen AI Max 390 can consistently outperform are Intel's Meteor Lake notebook chips, such as the Core Ultra 7 165H. Two listings revealed single-precision and half-precision scores below 3000 points and quantized scores below 7200 for this CPU model.

Looking at CPU-only results for AI performance is not as useless as it might seem. When AI workloads can tax the entire chip (CPU, NPU, and GPU), having capable AI performance on the CPU can be beneficial. Regardless, we are disappointed the benchmarker did not test the NPU and monster-integrated GPU inside the Strix Halo chip, which is far more critical for AI-focused workloads.

The Ryzen AI Max 300 series, aka Strix Halo, is an upcoming APU lineup focused on high-performance computing for mobile devices. Strix Halo is slated to arrive in early 2025.

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.

Jon from The Net Guy Reviews YouTube channel claims to have found spyware inside the AceMagic AD08 mini-PC that he received for review. Other models, including the AD15 and S1, reportedly present similar spyware problems.

As a quick introduction, Shenzhen Shanminheng Technology Co., Ltd., also known as Minipc Union, owns different brands: AceMagic/AceMagician, Kamrui, NiPoGi, and CTONE. Many of the cheap mini-PCs on Amazon are cookie-cutter products; sometimes, the only difference is specifications. That's why the AceMagic AD08, for example, looks identical to the Kamrui AM08.

According to Jon, Windows Defender initially detected suspicious files from the recovery partition from the NVMe drive installed inside the AceMagic AD08, which the reviewer received through dropshipping from the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service. 

The infected files consist of two executables: ENDEV and EDIDEV. The malware belongs to the Bladabindi and Redline families, which steal stored passwords from browsers and cryptocurrency wallets, log the victim's keystrokes, and extract information from the infected system - among other illicit activities. A complete system scan revealed additional spyware files hiding in the Windows folder. VirusTotal confirmed Windows Defender's diagnostics. A total of 50 security vendors flagged the files as malicious.

One Amazon buyer who purchased the AceMagic AD08 also reported malware inside the system, so the YouTuber's experience wasn't an isolated incident.

Eclectic Sal wrote, "Arrived with malware installed - Backdoor Win32/Bladabindi, a backdoor trojan which is a remote access tool known for its data-stealing capabilities. It was hardcoded into the Windows recovery, so it would not be wiped on reset. Windows was also a spoofed version, not a valid product key."

Meanwhile, Richard Deno, who picked up an AK1, stated, "Okay, first things first, this computer Backdoor:Win32/Bladabind!ml and Trojan:MSIL/RedLine!MSR malware. These are the files endev.exe and endidev.exe in the folder C:/Windows/OsVer/. There's also copies of these on the restore information, so if you do a system restore they'll be reinstalled. It's also odd that it comes with Chrome preinstalled, but given the other malware I wouldn't trust the copy they installed."

The malware issue isn't limited to just the AceMagic AD08 or AK1. The Net Guy Reviews' peers found duplicate files on the AD15; another contact found a different malware hidden inside the LED control software for the S1. Jon purchased another AceMagic AD08 mini-PC directly from Amazon, but the machine was cleaned this time. The only difference he noticed with the packaging was a small sticker denoting "P2." It seems that the vendor discovered the problem and released a revised version.

An AceMagic representative purportedly got back to Jon with the following statement:

Hi Jon,

Yes, the virus software issue has been resolved in the current stock product offering this issue will no longer be present in the current offerings as the one sent to you was the first shipment and we apologize that it had these issues and caused you some distress. But please don't worry, everything has been properly resolved now. Thank you for your support!

It's not the first time AceMagic has encountered malware problems. The vendor previously acknowledged an issue where the Bing search engine was included in the pre-installation process for the AD08, S1, and AK1 Plus RGB. However, AceMagic didn't say anything about malware, so we shouldn't assume it's the same issue.

From the spokesperson's statement, it's plausible that a specific batch of AceMagic devices presents the malware problem. That's one of the caveats of outsourcing your Windows images. The company may have already pulled all the compromised devices from retailers. However, it's also unknown how many of them got out. AceMagic hasn't issued a recall on these machines, so that number could be small. Jon and accompany may just be unlucky. If you own a mini-PC from AceMagic or one of the other sub-brands and are still using the original Windows installation, it wouldn't hurt to run a virus scan to see if you're malware-free.

Whether you're looking for the best RAM for gaming to upgrade a PC that struggles with today’s titles or building a new PC from scratch, the most suitable RAM kit for your budget depends on the platform you choose and the workloads you plan to run.

The tricky part is figuring out whether faster memory improves your system’s performance. For instance, if you’re using an Intel system with the best graphics cards, most programs won’t respond significantly to faster or slower memory. However, certain workloads, such as specific games and software, benefit from higher data rates. For example, file compression programs favor fast memory. Check out our RAM benchmark hierarchy and a ranking of the best RAM.

AMD’s Zen-based processors benefit more from higher memory frequencies, which you can read about here. Increased memory speeds on AMD Ryzen- and Threadripper-based systems often lead to real-world performance gains. In gaming, this results in higher frame rates at common resolutions, such as 1080p (1920x1080), and smoother gameplay at higher resolutions. However, the number of extra frames gained with faster RAM can vary greatly depending on the game.

Lastly, memory speed greatly affects gaming performance with integrated graphics, whether using an Intel or AMD processor (you can see how they compare in our CPU Benchmark Hierarchy). The graphics engine built into most of the best CPUs for gaming typically lacks dedicated memory, unlike discrete graphics cards, so faster RAM can also improve performance. However, if you have to pay a premium for the fastest RAM to get playable frame rates, investing in slower system memory and a discrete graphics card is a smarter choice.

In short, the best RAM is usually the fastest, especially if you’re gaming without a dedicated graphics card, using an AMD Ryzen system, and sometimes with Intel chips in specific cases. If you're looking for the best plug-and-play compatibility, DDR5-5600 works directly with AMD Ryzen 9000 (Granite Ridge) and Ryzen 9000 X3D processors. At the same time, DDR5-6400 CUDIMMs are compatible with Intel Core Ultra 200S (Arrow Lake) processors.

The global memory market is currently experiencing a significant shortage driven by the explosive growth in artificial intelligence and data center expansion. Some memory kits have doubled and even tripled in price. Despite these market fluctuations, our recommendations remain valid for both DDR5 and DDR4 platforms. While it would be unrealistic to expect these memory kits to maintain the exact pricing we observed during our original testing and review period, the value proposition of each kit holds. If you find any of our recommended memory kits at a competitive price, we strongly encourage you to act quickly. Memory deals are hard to come by, and they sell out within hours, or even minutes, of being listed.

Best RAM For Gaming You Can Buy Today

Best Performance 32GB DDR5 Kit

It's hard to find reasons not to like the Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5-6000 C30. The memory kit functions flawlessly out of the box and delivers solid performance. That alone is enough to win over the majority of buyers. Looks, as usual, are subjective, but you can't dispute the Trident Z5 Neo RGB's premium exterior. Like its competition, G.Skill utilizes SK hynix M-die ICS for the memory kit, so some headroom remains for tweaking in memory modules.

DDR5 pricing still fluctuates, but current DDR5-6000 C30 memory kits are available starting at $97.97. When you consider that, the Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5-6000 C30's $117.99 price tag suddenly doesn't look so bad. The Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5-6000 C30 has proven to be a formidable memory kit for AMD and Intel platforms. There will ultimately be faster memory kits down the road, but in the meantime, the Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5-6000 C30 is as good as it gets.

Read: G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB DDR5-6000 C30 review

Best 32GB DDR5 Kit

Best 192GB DDR5 Kit

While not focused on speed, the Vengeance DDR5-5200 C38 is the kind of memory kit that satisfies users who need a lot of memory for their work. This use case includes professionals like content creators, software developers, and data scientists—just to name a few. Current AMD and Intel processors support DDR5-3600 and DDR5-4400, respectively, in a four-DIMM setup. Therefore, DDR5-5200 is technically overclocked, so your results may vary depending on your processor and motherboard.

Corsair currently sells the Vengeance DDR5-5200 C38 for $649.99. The company also offers a more eye-catching version with RGB that adds a $10 premium. It's clear that the memory kit costs a lot, but it's a valuable asset if you need plenty of memory for your work.

Read: Corsair Vengeance DDR5-5200 C38 review

Best 96GB DDR5 Kit

The Trident Z5 RGB DDR5-6400 C32 is a fast-performing memory with generous capacity for professional users. Occupying just two memory slots, the memory kit is the ideal solution for compact workstations and enthusiast small-form-factor builds based around mini-ITX motherboards or simply conventional ATX motherboards that can only house two DIMMs.

G.Skill sells the memory kit for $339.99, a reasonable price for a 96GB memory kit of this caliber. Cheaper options are available on the current market, but they typically run at lower frequencies and don't deliver the same level of performance as the Trident Z5 RGB DDR5-6400 C32.

Read: G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB DDR5-6400 C32 review

Best 32GB DDR5-4800 Kit

The Samsung DDR5-4800 C40 memory kit targets consumers who want to stick to the JEDEC baseline speed. The memory modules don't look pretty but have shown excellent overclocking headroom. There's a good potential to hit breakneck speeds with tight timings. The B-die ICs will help you push the memory modules. Our sample got to DDR5-5800 C36 easily. However, there is no guarantee overclock, so this memory kit belongs to the high-risk, high-reward category.

The memory modules sell for $54.50. That's the consumer pricing, of course, not the IC pricing. As a result, a two-DIMM configuration will set you back $109, so it's not a bad price if you want to run JEDEC speeds. The Samsung DDR5-4800 C40 memory kit can be your ticket into the B-die overclocking world.

Read: Samsung DDR5-4800 C40 review

Best 16GB Kit For Ryzen Owners

TeamGroup did a great job with the Xtreem ARGB DDR4-3600 C14 memory kit -- It certainly ticks all the right boxes. The memory kit looks fantastic and performs equally well when lit up or powered down. The Xtreem ARGB is the fastest DDR4-3600 C14 memory kit we've tested.

The memory market only has a handful of DDR4-3600 C14 memory kits at the 16GB (2x8GB) capacity. The Xtreem ARGB is the least expensive, at $169.99. So, our only gripe is its availability. Unfortunately, Newegg is the only retailer that lists the memory kit, so finding it could be challenging.

Read: TeamGroup T-Force Xtreem ARGB DDR4-3600 review

Best High-Speed 16GB Kit

For those with a board that can handle its top speed and games or workloads that can take advantage of it, Patriot’s Viper Steel DDR4-4400 16GB kit is an excellent high-performance option that also skips RGB.

Keeping the kit simple has allowed Patriot to equip the Viper Steel with enhanced timings that dramatically boost the performance of specific programs, including some games. The Viper Steel DDR4-4400 excels in a market filled with gaming rigs and builds focused on singular tasks.

Read: Patriot Viper Steel DDR4-4000 review

Best High-Speed RGB 16GB Kit

Patriot bucks the trend of pairing cosmetic features with mainstream DRAM ICs instead of pushing data rates up to 4,133 megahertz (MHz) on its Viper RGB. As a result, this DDR4-3600 kit is only $10 more than the white-LED version and several dollars cheaper than competing products with similar latency. That makes it a great value at this speed, though slower kits have more significant pricing advantages.

The fastest DDR4-3600 kit we’ve tested, Patriot’s Viper RGB DDR4-3600 kit, provides excellent value to buyers who want to go (overclocking capability) and show (RGB LEDs).

Read: Patriot Viper RGB DDR4-3600 review

Best Overclocker Value 16GB Kit

It may not have fancy software-controlled RGB lights, and faster kits are available for higher prices, as are budget-priced kits that cost less. But for many who don’t want or need their memory to glow like a rainbow, Patriot’s Viper 4 DDR4-3400 C16 16GB (PV416G340C6K) sits in a sweet spot of price and performance.

The kit includes two 8GB modules rated with XMP values of DDR4-3400 CAS 16-18-18-36. Those last three numbers aren’t great, but DDR3 lovers must remember that 16 cycles at a 3400 MHz data rate have the same latency time as eight cycles at 1700 MHz. So this kit has an excellent DRAM overclocking value and provides some stylish red heatsinks to ensure your memory looks good enough to show off in your windowed case.

Read: Patriot Viper 4 DDR4-3400 review

Best 32GB RGB Kit

Builders who prioritize aesthetics face a tough choice between the best-looking and best-performance parts. Corsair offers a bit of both in its Vengeance RGB DDR4-3200 kit, providing four 8GB DIMMs (32GB total) at CAS 16 timings for a reasonably moderate price, given recent market trends. And this kit isn’t all about looks; it has the goods where benchmarks are concerned, too.

Superb performance and moderate pricing earn the Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4-3200 our Editor’s Choice Award for RGB-equipped memory, though its pastel colors might be off-putting to a few builders.

Corsair’s kit beat our previous favorite, the HyperX Predator RGB, in overall performance at every speed, barring the DDR4-4000 setting it didn’t reach. Corsair also provides a better-performing XMP value and a lower price than the competition, making the Vengeance RGB Pro the uncompromised winner and an excellent addition to your next RGB build.

Read: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4-3200 review

Best Two-DIMM 32GB Kit

Buyers in the performance PC market have only two excuses for stopping at DDR4-3200: Either they’re trying to save money or coax good performance from a system that can’t go much farther.

For those in either category, but the former in particular, Patriot Patriot’s 32GB Viper Steel 3200 kit outshines the competition in terms of pricing price, beating its closest competition by approximately 18%. That’s without any performance penalties beyond having the exact mid-market timings as its competitors.

Even though the Patriot Viper Steel’s performance victories are less than 1% overall, its low price puts it well ahead of even the least-expensive competitor in our basic performance-to-price comparison. As a result, value seekers within the performance PC market have just found their new champion.

Read: Patriot Viper Steel DDR4-3200 review

Best Two-DIMM 64GB Kit

The Viper Steel DDR4-3600 C18 is a terrific memory kit for content creators or professionals who don't have the luxury of many DDR4 memory slots. Performance isn't a problem because the memory kit excels at everything you throw at it.

Patriot practically binned these modules to the max, so overclocking headroom is almost non-existent, even if you're willing to go wild on the voltage. However, running the Viper Steel at the advertised frequency should be sufficient in most scenarios.

Patriot prices the Viper Steel DDR4-3600 C18 64GB memory kit very attractively. At $239.99, the memory kit is neither cheap nor expensive. Viper Steel finds itself right in the middle of the competition. Given that it stands tall in terms of performance, this kit is easy to recommend for those needing speed and density in a dual-DIMM scenario.

Read: Patriot Viper Steel DDR4-3600 C18 2x32GB review

Best High-Speed 32GB Kit for Manual Tuning

It's easy to write G.Skill's Trident Z Neo DDR4-3600 C16 kit off if you don't look beyond the published specifications. However, during our review, the RAM kit proved its performance and value in different workloads.

The real value is hidden below the heat spreader—the memory modules use Samsung B-die ICs. With patience and time, you can optimize the timings for better performance. As always, your overclocking mileage will vary, but we got our sample down to CL13.

The Trident Z Neo memory modules come with XMP timings of 16-16-16-36, which aren't the worst in the memory world. However, with the DRAM voltage set to 1.45V, we tightened the timings to 13-14-14-35 before the kit became unstable.

Read: G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4-3600 C16 2x16GB review

Best 16GB Kit for H370 and B360

Intel’s H370 and B360 chipsets instruct its Core i5 (and above) processors to lock out any memory settings above DDR4-2666, which is particularly unfortunate in a market that’s moved way past that setting. DDR4-3200 is now mainstream within the enthusiast PC market and is often treated as such by the memory sellers that cater to enthusiasts and gamers. Thus, the best way to get a top-performing brand-new DDR4-2666 kit would be to dial the way-back machine to 2016 and get the high-performing equipment from that time. Barring that, Corsair has a workaround.

Corsair’s easy workaround for the performance problem of Intel’s DDR4-2666 limit was to use older, low-density chips to populate its 8GB DIMMs with two ranks rather than the single rank of its competitors. The best part is that they did this without a significant price increase. We recommend it for anyone whose XMP-compatible platform has a maximum DDR4-2666 data rate, including most retail boxed H370 and B360 motherboards.

Read: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2666 review

Quick RAM Shopping Tips 2026

Savings on the Best RAM

Whether you're buying DIMMs that made our list of the best RAM or not, you may find savings by checking out our lists of Newegg promo and Corsair coupon codes.