make new CPUs, but keep the old AMDs new laptop CPU lineup is a mix of new silicon and new names for old silicon New Ryzen AI CPUs boost speeds, but cheaper laptops get another Ryzen rebrand. Andrew Cunningham Jan 6, 2025 3:31 pm | 9 One of AMD's Ryzen AI Max processors. Credit: AMD One of AMD's Ryzen AI Max processors. Credit: AMD Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAMD's CES announcements include a tease about next-gen graphics cards, a new flagship desktop CPU, and a modest refresh of its processors for handheld gaming PCs. But the company's largest announcement, by volume, is about laptop processors.Today the company is expanding the Ryzen AI 300 lineup with a batch of updated high-end chips with up to 16 CPU cores and some midrange options for cheaper Copilot+ PCs. AMD has repackaged some of its high-end desktop chips for gaming laptops, including the first Ryzen laptop CPU with 3D V-Cache enabled. And there's also a new-in-name-only Ryzen 200 series, another repackaging of familiar silicon to address lower-budget laptops.Ryzen AI 300 is back, along with high-end Max and Max+ versions Ryzen AI is back, with Max and Max+ versions that include huge integrated GPUs. Credit: AMD We came away largely impressed by the initial Ryzen AI 300 processors in August 2024, and new processors being announced today expand the lineup upward and downward.AMD is announcing the Ryzen AI 7 350 and Ryzen AI 5 340 today, along with identically specced Pro versions of the same chips with a handful of extra features for large businesses and other organizations. Credit: AMD The 350 includes eight CPU cores split evenly between large Zen 5 cores and smaller, slower but more efficient Zen 5C cores, plus a Radeon 860M with eight integrated graphics cores (down from a peak of 16 for the Ryzen AI 9). The 340 has six CPU cores, again split evenly between Zen 5 and Zen 5C, and a Radeon 840M with four graphics cores. But both have the same 50 TOPS NPUs as the higher-end Ryzen AI chips, qualifying both for the Copilot+ label.For consumers, AMD is launching three high-end chips across the new "Ryzen AI Max+" and "Ryzen AI Max" families. Compared to the existing Strix Point-based Ryzen AI processors, Ryzen AI Max+ and Max include more CPU cores, and all of their cores are higher-performing Zen 5 cores, with no Zen 5C cores mixed in. The integrated graphics also get significantly more powerful, with as many as 40 cores built inthese chips seem to be destined for larger thin-and-light systems that could benefit from more power but don't want to make room for a dedicated GPU. Ryzen AI Max and Max+ chips have big integrated GPUs with as many as 40 cores, which should provide decent gaming performance without taking up as much space as a dedicated GPU. Credit: AMD The Ryzen AI Max+ 395 includes 16 Zen 5 CPU cores and a Radeon 8060S GPU with 40 cores. The Ryzen AI Max 390 has 12 CPU cores and a Radeon 8050S GPU with 32 cores, and the AI Max 385 has eight CPU cores and the same Radeon 8050S GPU. All chips include the same 50 TOPS NPU as the other Ryzen AI processors.All three of those chips also have Pro counterparts. There's one more Ryzen AI Max CPU that only comes in a Pro version: the six-core Ryzen AI Max Pro 380, which still has the same NPU but only includes 16 graphics cores. All of these Max+ and Max processors are slated for sometime in either Q1 or Q2 of 2025.Ryzen HX and HX3D: Desktop-class CPUs for gaming laptops and workstations AMD is repackaging desktop CPUs for high-performance gaming laptops and workstations, including its second mobile 3D V-Cache CPU. AMD AMD is repackaging desktop CPUs for high-performance gaming laptops and workstations, including its second mobile 3D V-Cache CPU. AMD One CPU with 3D V-Cache and two without. AMD One CPU with 3D V-Cache and two without. AMD AMD is repackaging desktop CPUs for high-performance gaming laptops and workstations, including its second mobile 3D V-Cache CPU. AMD One CPU with 3D V-Cache and two without. AMD For gigantic gaming laptops that will take advantage of dedicated GPUs, AMD has three new CPUs, all without NPUs or high-performance integrated GPUs. The 16 core Ryzen 9 9955HX and 12-core Ryzen 9 9850HX are essentially laptop versions of the Ryzen 9 9950X and 9900X, while the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D is a laptop version of the new Ryzen 9 9950X3D desktop chip. It's AMD's second laptop processor (after the rare 7945HX3D) to take advantage of 3D V-Cache, 64MB of extra L3 cache stacked underneath one of the processor's CPU chiplets.Like other recent HX-series CPUs, these are essentially Ryzen desktop chips repackaged to fit in laptops, rather than silicon purpose-built for laptops. (It's the reverse of what AMD does with the Ryzen 8000G desktop chips, which are laptop CPUs repackaged for desktop systems.) It's why these processors stick with the same naming convention as the Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs and why they lack the NPUs and modern integrated GPUs of all the Ryzen AI processors.Ryzen 200: Blast from the (recent) pastFor cheaper laptops, AMD is announcing a slate of seven processors in the new Ryzen 200 familynote that there's no "AI" here, indicating that these chips don't have an NPU fast enough to qualify for Copilot+ functionality.But none of these processors is truly new. Though AMD retired its complicated decoder ring system for its CPU model numbers, looking at context clues like NPU performance (16 TOPS) and the amount of cache available, you can tell that these are rebadged versions of the Ryzen 8040 series chips announced in December 2023. Those CPUs were themselves very lightly refreshed revisions of the Ryzen 7040 chips from May 2023. Everything old is new again, again. If the Ryzen 200 lineup seems familiar, it's because these are all essentially a year-old refresh of 19-month-old silicon. None of them meetMicrosoft's Copilot+ performance requirements. Credit: AMD Aside from clock speeds, the Ryzen 9 270, Ryzen 7 260, and Ryzen 7 250 are all basically the same chip, with eight Zen 4 CPU cores and a Radeon 780M GPU with 12 graphics cores. The Ryzen 5 240 and 230 are the next big step down, with six Zen 4 CPU cores and Radeon 760M GPUs with eight GPU cores. The Ryzen 5 220 still has six CPU cores, but split between two Zen 4 cores and four smaller, lower-performance Zen 4C cores. The four-core Ryzen 3 210 is the slowest of the lot, with just one full-speed Zen 4 core and three Zen 4C cores. Both of those last two processors have Radeon 740M GPUs with four cores.These processors are still relatively new, all things considered, and they'll be a fairly significant improvement over anything in a 5- or 6-year-old system. It's just another example of a frustrating trend, present in both Intel's and AMD's CPU lineups and the USB spec: the tendency to simply rename old things to make them seem "new" or to make them fit into yet another rebranding scheme that never actually seems to make things any easier to understand than they were before.Andrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 9 Comments