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AMD 'Strix Halo' Ryzen AI Max+ Debuts with RDNA 3.5 Graphics and Zen 5 CPU Cores
- jsheard 2y agoThis is the first x86 SoC to follow the lead set by Apple Silicons huge unified memory bus. Bandwidth is more or less on par with the M4 Pro, and it supports up to 128GB.
- unusualmonkey 2y agoRemember that AMD has been making x86 SoC's with unified memory for quite some time.
- jsheard 2y agoYeah but they had pretty meagre memory bandwidth until now, aside from the parts they made exclusively for Xbox and Playstation. AMD didn't seem to be interested in bringing fast unified memory to real computers until Apple did it. Now they need to double up the bus again to make an M4 Max-alike...
- BeefWellington 2y agoIt's possible they were restricted by agreements with Microsoft or Sony not to release anything before this year.
- hedgehog 2y agoHistorically PC OEMs cared about price more than graphics performance so that's what they got. If you look at mobile SoCs or the eDRAM-equipped SKUs Intel made for Apple you see more emphasis on memory & graphics performance similar to consoles.
- kmeisthax 2y agoThose agreements would be >15 years old at this point, I doubt AMD would agree to sandbag their entire APU lineup going forward just to make the base model PS4 and Xbone look good, and I especially doubt that they would do that again with the PS5 and Xbox Series when they actually had money and room to negotiate. Likewise, it doesn't make sense as a restriction Microsoft or Sony would impose: the console business is one of convenience, not power. They aren't trying to beat PCs and they don't care if PCs are a better deal. They care if they can get you to buy a box that locks you into their DRM scheme. Furthermore, during the chip shortages of the last few years, AMD was actually selling broken PS5 silicon for use as a normal Windows PC[0]. If there were restrictions on selling APUs above a certain performance level, then this PC wouldn't exist. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h08cMFwqRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h08cMFwqRc
- babypuncher 2y agoIt isn't what the market wanted, and by market I mean OEMs, because I'm sure consumers would have loved it. The OEMs buying APUs to use in laptops and SFF desktops were more interested in cutting costs than boosting graphics performance. Users who want better 3D performance can buy a higher end laptop with a discrete GPU and juicier profit margin.
- sliken 2y agoTrue, but apple's the benchmark in this space and have managed thin laptops with good battery life and decent (but not class leading) GPU performance. Doubling the memory width (and tripling the bandwidth) helped Apple's GPU performance substantially and should do the same for AMD. Which means that a larger fraction of the laptop market should consider it "good enough" and still have a reasonable TDP to avoid the 2" think laptop that last for less than an hour on battery while sounding like a hair dryer.
- unusualmonkey 2y agoIn part because it's an odd compromise. With the exception of LLM's which are a decent development... there wasn't a lot of need to high memory, but moderate GPU compute parts. You'd either have a lot of memory and a CPU, or a lot of memory and a beefy GPU.
- sliken 2y agoRight, but none wider than 128 bits, unless you count PS5 and XboxX.
- crest 2y agoIt "just" doubled the memory bus width from 128 to 256 bit and cranked up the interface clock speed. I wonder what it means for the infinity fabric. Is it going to run at ~4GHz to keep up?
- timschmidt 2y agoIntel's Knights series of chips (a.k.a. Xeon Phi, a.k.a. Larabee) for servers shipped 8gb of 320gb/s on package memory in 2012: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon_Phi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon_Phi
- okasaki 2y ago> AMD says this delivers groundbreaking capabilities for thin-and-light laptops Laptops with 120W cpus aren't thin or light.
- getcrunk 2y agoAmd in general has allowed their mobile cpus to power scale. I don’t see why this would be any different. 15w on the go. 120 with plug Edit: per article these are positioned from 45w up
- eigenspace 2y agoAMDs slides say 45-120W.
- davrosthedalek 2y agoBase TDP is 45. I think you could go below base, if you really wanted, but AMD wants you to design for 45.
- enragedcacti 2y agoThe quoted tdps seem to be for CPU+GPU combined and these SKUs have huge increases in GPU size (40 CUs up from a max of 16 last gen). The M4 Pro and M4 Max fall into the same tdp range.
- crest 2y agoThat's for both CPU, supposedly no-longer puny iGPU and the NPU. You'll get ≥80% real-world throughput for about half the power budget which is can easily be cooled in a 14" laptop that's thin for a gaming laptop without shattering your eardrums. I'll grant that you'll have to pick between acceptable acoustics, thermal throttling, or form factor when you go beyond 60W continuous heat output.
- okasaki 2y ago> That's for both CPU, supposedly no-longer puny iGPU and the NPU. Right, the CPU.
- ncann 2y ago> AMD 'Strix Halo' Ryzen AI Max+ 395 PRO Gosh that name is a mouthful
- leptons 2y agoI hate it. Whatever does "strix" even mean?? The rest of it is stupid too.
- hnuser123456 2y agoStrix Halo is the codename, not marketing name, so you can remove that part. "AI" seems to have replaced the segment number. The + is because it's the top-end model of the lineup. Not sure what's Max or Pro about it though.
- ncann 2y agoThey managed to put Max, plus, and Pro into the name, which is kinda impressive in a way. Now we just need Ultra to complete the set.
- jmward01 2y agoIf they can deliver the drives and support for pytorch out of the box then I know what my next laptop will have in it.
- UncleOxidant 2y agoYep. Though I'd prefer just to have a small form factor box on my desk. Something the size of a Mac Mini.
- ksec 2y agoI cant find any information on memory it uses for its 256GB/s. It said New Memory interface. Seems high even for 256Bit LPDDR5X. Zen 5 CPU, RDNA 3.5 GPU, and XDNA 2 NPU. No word on process nodes.
- adrian_b 2y agoIt uses LPDDR5X-8000, with a 256-bit memory interface (double in comparison with standard desktops). 8 GHz x 32 bytes = 256 GB/s This has been known for a long time. What annoys me is that AMD does not say whether the Zen 5 cores of Strix Halo have full vector processing pipelines, like Granite Ridge and Fire Range, or they have the narrow pipelines of Strix Point and Krackan Point.
- wtallis 2y agoThese should be re-using the same CPU chiplets from the desktop and server products, so it'll be the full-sized Zen 5 cores.
- sliken 2y agoVarious leaks have claimed that some products would ship with DDR5-8533 which is 266GB/sec. I wouldn't be surprised if a range of frequencies ship with the 1st gen devices. Maybe even a SFF sized motherboard that allows CUDIMMs, which is a nice fit since each CUDIMM is 128 bits wide.
- davrosthedalek 2y agoLTT showed a slide which said 4nm IIRC or was that the 9950X3D?
- kcb 2y agoAMDs comparison with the M4 Pro. https://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/3d-rendering-vs-m4-pro.jpg?fit=720%2C720&p=1 https://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/3d-...
- diggan 2y agoWhat is the graph supposed to measure, actually? Renders are usually measured in seconds, so high=worse, but then clearly they highlight it as they're better, so it's the second-difference as a percentage or something? Why can't companies just include absolute numbers in their comparisons...
- zamadatix 2y agoIt's first party marketing so always orienting the scale towards "higher=better=ours" and measuring via "whatever measurement gave the best numbers to present". They could give all the information in the world and I'd still wait and see what 3rd party reviews say the performance actually is rather than look into the 1st party number.
- tedunangst 2y agoThey're benchmark scores.
- danudey 2y agoBetterness.
- zamadatix 2y agoSource article of that (though it's actually linked in TFA as well) https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-mobile-processors-announced-at-ces-2025/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-mobile-processor... Non-thumbnail version of the chart: https://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/3d-rendering-vs-m4-pro.jpg https://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/3d-...
- bearjaws 2y agoNot shown: Wattage 100% chance its chewing through at least 50% more power to achieve the result. Infact based on their TDP guidance, it goes up to 120w, which is more than double M4. But we don't know what the configuration was for this benchmark. We also don't have great numbers for M4's power consumption either. Then you throw in the fact 120w TDP from AMD is not actually a power consumption figure... and it's all made up.
- Lerc 2y agoIf it runs pytorch at speed without hand holding I would probably get one. If it runs tinygrad at speed(a lower bar developmentally) I might get one. Is there a model benchmarking site where you can select varying degrees of models by source code and see how they perform on different hardware. It would assist people to evaluate whether or not a specific piece of hardware is good for the jobs that they want it to do.
- diggan 2y ago> Is there a model benchmarking site where you can select varying degrees of models by source code and see how they perform on different hardware. It would assist people to evaluate whether or not a specific piece of hardware is good for the jobs that they want it to do. Not that I'm aware of (at least based on real benchmarks), but it's something I've been noodling about building, together with with some other associated data that can be helpful when wanting to select a model. Glad to hear I'm not the only one wanting it :)
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- UncleOxidant 2y ago> If AMD keeps with tradition, which we fully expect, we will see these monstrous APU chips come to desktop PCs in the future. How far in the future? I don't need another laptop, but would be nice to have a box to run local llms on. If these things can run LLMs at a decent clip then this would be sort of a "shut up and take my money" situation.
- wmf 2y agoHP already announced a mini workstation with this chip.
- UncleOxidant 2y agoI'm seeing a laptop [1] do you have a link to the workstation? EDIT: Oh, I see they're calling the laptop a workstation. [1] https://liliputing.com/hp-zbook-ultra-14-g1a-mobile-workstation-with-amd-strix-halo-packs-up-to-16-cpu-cores-and-40-gpu-compute-units-into-a-laptop/ https://liliputing.com/hp-zbook-ultra-14-g1a-mobile-workstat...
- sliken 2y agoThere's a laptop AND a desktop, called the HP Z2 Mini G1a. https://www.pcworld.com/article/2567865/hp-z2-mini-g1a-packs-incredible-power-into-a-mini-pc.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2567865/hp-z2-mini-g1a-packs...
- UncleOxidant 2y ago"coming soon" and no pricing.
- sliken 2y agoSure, but the previous iterations (like Strix in the non-halo form) and similar AMD laptop chips are popular with numerous SFFs from the likes of ASUS, ASRock, Gigabyte, Beelink, Minisforum, GMKtex, Lenovo, and many others. I've heard similar rumors of similar SFFs from framework, system76, and similar VARs. The Strix Halo does seem pretty compelling for those that want less volume, power, and money than a discrete GPU. I'd love a small SFF with either 128GB ram (some parts will have the ram in the package)) or two CUDIMM slots. Generally SFFs use laptop parts, but tend to be out a few months later than the equivalent laptops. I expect similar with the Strix Halo/AI Max.
- sylware 2y agommmmh.... I wonder how much the CPU ram usage will slow down the GPU with real life loads.
- sliken 2y agoI'm optimistic that it won't be a big issue. After all if 256 bit wide memory helped a wide range of application it would have been added earlier. After all xbox and playstation have had similar for 2 generations so far. The bandwidth should mostly help the GPU performance for games or LLMs, but not random desktop apps.
- sylware 2y agoUsually, this is all about memory latency. Until the game devs are aware of this latency issue, games should be ok... but it means you need more control on CPU machine code execution, in other words, you need to ge closer to the bare metal. 100fps is 10ms for a frame (we now know 60pfs is not enough, fps must never drop below 75-80fps, but I would really target 100+ fps)
- sliken 2y agoThe strix halo announce was pretty much exactly what was leaked. However one big surprise was that the Halo 395 chip runs Llama 3.1 70B-Q4 2.2x times faster than a RTX 4090 24GB. Anyone have any details? The slide mentions seeing AMD endnote SHO-14 for details. Maybe 70B-Q4 doesn't fit in 24GB?
- plasticchris 2y agoLast time I played with it, 70b models are much larger than 24gb without a lot of quantization.
- sliken 2y agoIt mentioned Q4, but after searching around a bit looks like 70B-Q4 need 35GB or so. So strix halo is 2.2x faster than a 4090 when it's paging to system ram. Not so impressive 8-(.
- sabareesh 2y agoAbout 4090 it is bad metric because that given model wont fit on 4090 Grrr Nvidia.
- UncleOxidant 2y agosure. But that's kind of the point. A 4090 with 24GB is going to cost more than one of these strix halo mini PCs with 64GB to 128GB. You're going to be able to run larger models on it without thrashing around between VRAM and DRAM. Will it run as fast as a model that could fit entirely on that 4090? No way, but it will be able to run larger models at fairly decent speed for home use.
- DrNosferatu 2y agoWasn’t intel floating a iGPU with 128GB VRAM?