2 weeks Ago By Anthony Garreffa
AMD only just released its Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs, but with a heavily beefed-up "Strix Halo" teased in the rumor mill for months now...
but now we're hearing about a new Ryzen AI Max naming scheme for Strix Halo. The company is reportedly working on new Strix Halo APUs that will be split into three newly-rumored SKUs: the Ryzen AI Max+ 395, Ryzen AI Max 390, and Ryzen AI Max 385 each with differing CPU and GPU core counts. Each of the new Strix Halo APUs will supported up to a monster 96GB of DDR5 RAM, which completely destroys the hardware limit of just 32GB of on-package memory with Intel's soon-to-be-here Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" processors.
AMD's new Strix Halo APUs will include two CCDs with 8 cores each, with the lowest-end Ryzen AI Max 385 featuring 8C/16T, this chip has just one of the CCDs enabled (the other is disabled). But, the higher-end SKUs will have 12 cores and 24 threads and the monster 16 cores and 32 threads (this is just an APU, not a laptop or desktop processor, so 16C/32T is nuts). The ability of supporting up to 96GB of RAM is a very important milestone for AMD, as Intel's bleeding-edge Lunar Lake CPUs ship with only two memory options: 16GB and 32GB.
Now, don't get me wrong...
it's impressively done: on-package memory, sitting next to the SoC itself. That is impressive, but the 32GB hard limit is pathetic for laptops that are selling on the tail end of 2024, and into 2025. AMD will be entering 2025 with the announcement of its new Strix Halo APUs that will be more powerful (in CPU and GPU) over Lunar Lake, while supporting 3x the RAM at 96GB total versus just 32GB.
AMD will be better competing against Apple if anything, with its new M3 supporting up to 128GB of unified RAM. To recap: Intel Lunar Lake has up to 32GB, AMD Strix Halo has up to 96GB, and Apple M3 has up to 128GB..
