AMD: New Ryzen 9000HX and AI MAX+ (PRO) Mobile CPUs
[21:35 Mon,6.January 2025 by Rudi Schmidts]
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), AMD, Intel, and Nvidia regularly showcase their latest consumer IT products for the upcoming year. This usually includes mobile and desktop CPUs and GPUs, which typically become available in the following weeks and months.
AMD Ryzen 9000HX Fire Range Mobile CPU Series
AMD officially announced its new HX-series processors for gaming laptops. The Ryzen 9000HX series, codenamed "Fire Range," features up to 16 cores based on the Zen 5 architecture. Unlike in previous years, AMD is also simultaneously introducing a new X3D processor with added cache. This mobile 16-core flagship is called the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D and boasts a total of 144 MB of cache. This CPU will likely be found in high-end gaming laptops, but media professionals might also be interested in this CPU monster in combination with a powerful GPU. At least under Windows, no faster mobile CPU is expected to be available for the time being. However, this won&t come cheap, especially since a dedicated GPU will usually need to be added.
Video editing, however, often doesn&t require such a powerful CPU in many applications. Therefore, AMD&s product portfolio also includes two cheaper "Fire Rangers" without additional cache: The Ryzen 9 9955HX with 16 cores and 80 MB cache, and the Ryzen 9 9855HX with 12 cores and 76 MB cache. AMD confirmed that the Ryzen 9000HX series will launch in the first half of 2025, although no exact release date was given.
§PIC1§: Ryzen AI MAX+ (PRO) 395 – Eye to Eye with Apple&s M4 Pro?
AMD Ryzen AI MAX - Strix Halo
However, the Strix Halo is likely to cause a bigger stir. With this new APU (a combination of CPU and GPU), AMD aims to surpass Apple&s M4 Pro. This new architecture not only combines Zen 5 cores with integrated RDNA3.5 graphics but also features a 256-bit wide memory interface capable of transferring approximately 256 GB/s.
The Ryzen AI MAX series will be launched in two variants with up to 16 Zen 5 cores and up to 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units: a consumer gaming variant and a PRO version for business and workstation laptops. The following configurations are expected to be available first:
Ryzen AI MAX+ (PRO) 395: 16 CPU cores, 40 GPU cores Ryzen AI MAX (PRO) 390: 12 CPU cores, 32 GPU cores Ryzen AI MAX (PRO) 385: 8 CPU cores, 32 GPU cores Ryzen AI MAX PRO 380: 6 CPU cores, 16 GPU cores
The GPU part with 40 cores should be on par with smaller desktop graphics cards, which naturally puts the platform in direct competition with many laptops with dedicated GPUs. However, AMD has not released any concrete comparative figures. Since Strix Halo can address up to 128 GB of unified memory, of which 96 GB can be allocated to the GPU, there was only one interesting comparison from the AI field to tease Nvidia a bit.
A Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 is 2.2x faster than an RTX 4090 in Llama 3.1 70B-Q4, and at half the power consumption. This comparison isn&t entirely fair, as Nvidia has to swap a lot due to the small memory of only 24 GB. But the example clearly shows that GPUs with a lot of memory can use AI models locally that cannot be run efficiently with Nvidia in this price range.
The "Halo" series is designed for special flagship systems that will receive the "Copilot+-PCs" sticker. AMD also showed that the largest model, the Ryzen AI MAX+ (PRO) 395, can outperform an Apple M4 Pro 12C by 12–86 percent and simultaneously delivers 1.4 times the average performance of the Intel Core Ultra 9 288V (Lunar Lake) in 3DMark tests and 2.6 times better rendering performance. However, a Ryzen AI MAX+ (PRO) 395 is likely to be far less energy-efficient than comparable Apple processors. In return, the surcharge for the exciting 128 GB of RAM will not be as high with AMD.
Oh yes, up to 50 TOPS (Tera Operations Per Second) should be available via the special AI NPU for AI functions. According to AMD, the first Strix Halo series devices should be launched in the first quarter of 2025. Let&s see if that happens. Mini-computers like the Mac Mini should also be available on this basis.
Surprise: Dell instead of RX9070
The most interesting news, however, was the newly announced partnership with Dell&s business PC unit. For decades, this has been an unbreakable Intel bastion. The fact that AMD is now gaining a foothold speaks volumes about Intel&s current state. But that&s a different topic. However, it is interesting that Dell is relying on AMD for AI in business laptops, which Nvidia will certainly not like.
On the other hand, it was unexpectedly quiet regarding the upcoming RX90x0 graphics cards. AMD obviously wants to wait for Nvidia&s release in a few hours to then most likely counter with the price.
