AMD’s Strix Point Halo chips have been the subject of a major leak that highlights the potential power of these processors, and when they’re expected to arrive – which unfortunately won’t be in the near future for gaming laptops.
Moore’s Law is Dead (MLID) on YouTube had the scoop on these Strix Halo APUs, and according to an apparently official render leaked from AMD showing a chip, the processors will be called the Ryzen AI Max Pro series. (A bit of a ‘kitchen sink’ name there, with an element of one-upmanship in terms of the models you see in Apple’s M-series silicon, no doubt).
We also get spec details, which echo what we’ve previously heard from the rumor mill – namely that the flagship Strix Halo CPU will have 16 cores, and the integrated graphics card will be RDNA 3.5 (refreshed RDNA 3) with a mighty 40 cores. CUs.
This means that the flagship chip will at least have about the same power level as a discrete RTX 4070 laptop GPU, so the integrated graphics card could even outperform the RTX 4070. Let that sink in for a moment – remember, this is integrated graphics. Apparently we are also looking at a TDP of 120W.
We can expect the Strix Halo to launch at CES 2025 – as already rumored, and AMD will apparently have a pile of things to reveal at the show – and workstation laptops with Ryzen AI Max Pro chips will be the first in the first quarter shelves. from 2025.
After that, gaming laptops will arrive with Strix Halo in the second quarter, although we may see a few of those notebooks in the first quarter. MLID sounds pretty confident that most game launches will happen in the second quarter, with creators and other heavyweight users targeted here for the first silicon. Of course, this makes sense when it comes to poaching MacBook sales with these ‘Max Pro’ processors.
A third outlet for Strix Halo could eventually be APUs produced for small form factor PCs, depending on how successful the chips are in laptops (and we’re also guessing how many resources Team Red has behind them).
Analysis: Concerns about gaming laptops
These Strix Halo processors will be nothing short of a revelation for thin and light gaming laptops (and of course workstations as mentioned – which will be the priority for AMD, perhaps to the chagrin of gamers, but there are plentiful gains to be made in the world of sleek MacBook-style laptops for creatives and other power users).
However, as MLID points out, the slight problem is that by the time Ryzen AI Max Pro notebooks hit the market, we’ll likely have a slew of new laptop GPUs from Nvidia. With the next generation of Blackwell GPUs said to be a significant step up in power – we may see them at CES 2025 as well – the comparison between the Strix Halo’s integrated graphics and discrete laptop graphics cards won’t be as striking.
Of course, this means that when the Strix Halo launches, we’ll likely be looking at the likes of the RTX 5060 mobile, rather than the RTX 4070 as mentioned in the comparison drawn by the leak – and it doesn’t sound like it obvious. -opening. Keep in mind, however, that the kind of laptops the Strix Halo might be packed into won’t play host to a discrete Nvidia GPU and its associated cooling, which would require a larger chassis.
In short, these are still some heavyweight APUs to look out for, which will pack quite a punch for more compact notebooks. If anything, the concern for us might be that workstations are being favored over gaming laptops to a greater extent than we would ideally like – we’ll see. It’s possible that more modest variants of the Strix Halo CPUs will power gaming laptops, and as VideoCardzwho spotted the leak also points out that most of the leaks (benchmarks) surrounding Ryzen AI Max Pro so far have been related to workstations.