AMD Ryzen AI 300 “Strix” APUs Combine Up To 12 Zen 5 CPU, 16 RDNA 3.5 GPU & 50 TOPS XDNA 2 NPU Cores, Faster Than Snapdragon X

Today, AMD debuts its Ryzen AI 300 "Strix" APU family for the AI PC segment, featuring a new Zen 5 CPU, RDNA 3.5 GPU, and XDNA 2 NPU cores.

The AI PC ecosystem is evolving by the second as everyone tries to get a piece of the cake. AMD was essentially the first chipmaker to introduce an "AI PC" SOC with its Phoenix APU family back in 2023 and this was followed by the release of the much improved Hawk Point series which offered higher NPU TOPS.

With the arrival of the Microsoft Copilot+ PC platform, AMD is going even grander & introducing its Ryzen AI 300 "Strix" platform which combines several aspects to meet the demand for these next-gen transformational AI experiences in the consumer world. For AMD, the goals are very clear, to offer increased AI performance, offering rich new GenAI & Copilot+ experiences, and all while doing so locally on the PC.

So today, AMD is revealing its new Ryzen AI 300 family and the naming might confuse you a bit but it's a fresh new approach to a new beginning of the AI PC ecosystem. AMD's Ryzen naming scheme over the past two generations looks like the following:

The starting from 300 series is to mark the 3rd Generation of the AI PC APU with Phoenix being the first and Hawk being the second. It's also mentioned that with Ryzen AI, AMD is converging its portfolio & no longer relying on a fixed TDP for a select SKU. So they don't have to use the U/H/HS series branding anymore. Instead, AMD is giving OEMs the flexibility to adjust these APUs to their demands with TDPs of 15W and up to 54W. The "HX" designation will mark the cream of the crop SKU while the non-HX SKUs will be the power-conservative designs.

As mentioned above, the AMD Ryzen AI 300 "Strix" APUs combine three major core technologies which include:

AMD Zen 5 is a brand new architecture which has made will also be introduced on several other processor families such as the Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" Desktop CPUs for high-end PCs. The AMD Strix APUs are still based on a singular, monolithic die based on the TSMC 4nm process node and come with up to 12 cores and 24 threads which employ both Zen 5 and Zen 5C cores. This approach is done to achieve maximum efficiency with the Zen 5C cores and maximum performance with the Zen 5 cores since the former tend to run at a slightly lower clock speed while retaining the same ISA.

The AMD RDNA 3.5 iGPU for the Ryzen AI "Strix" APUs is now optimized and features certain architectural updates along with support for a higher number of compute units which add up to 16 for the flagship part.

Then, we have the highlight of the show, the XDNA 2 NPU, offering up to 50 TOPS alone & that's big. The NPU is faster than the one featured on the Snapdragon X CPU platform and more than the Intel Lunar Lake platform which AMD expects to end up around 45 TOPS.

AMD Ryzen AI 300 "Strix" APU SKUs & Specs

Alright so with the core IPs out of the way, we can talk about the SKUs. For now, AMD is introducing just two SKUs within its Ryzen AI 300 "Strix" family. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and the Ryzen AI 9 365.

Starting with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, we are looking at a 12-core and 24-thread chip that features a four Zen 5 and eight Zen 5C configuration. This chip runs at up to 5.1 GHz boost clocks, offers 36 MB of cache (24 MB L3 + 12 MB L2), and the Radeon 890M iGPU with 16 compute units or 1024 cores. So versus the previous flagship, the Ryzen 9 8945HS, you are getting 50% more cores/threads, 33.3% more compute units, and 3.12x the NPU performance which is great gen-over-gen gains.

AMD says that the XDNA 2 NPU features enhanced AI tiles which enable 2x the multitasking capabilities for increased compute and they are also twice as efficient with specific improvements for GenAI workloads. This leads to the XDNA 2 NPUs being up to 5x faster than last-gen offerings in LLMs.

The second chip in the lineup is the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 which is a 10-core and 20-thread part with a boost clock of up to 5.0 GHz, 34 MB of cache, and a Radeon 880M iGPU with a total of 12 compute units or 768 cores. This chip comes with four Zen 5 and six Zen 5C cores. Both Strix APUs pack the same level of NPU capabilities with their XDNA 2 hardware delivering up to 50 TOPS of AI performance.

AMD Ryzen AI 300 "Strix" APU Performance

In terms of performance, AMD decided to tackle all three fronts including Qualcomm Snapdragon X, Apple M3 & Intel Core Ultra. AMD wants to go after Snapdragon X as a priority since they are the first to the new Copilot+ PC platform.

So compared to that, AMD's new Ryzen AI 300 "Strix" APU platform offers:

Versus Apple's M3, AMD's latest APUs offer:

Last but not least, we have the comparisons against Intel's Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" lineup:

AMD also shares some gaming-specific numbers for its Ryzen AI 300 "Strix" APUs against the Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" APUs. The comparison was done between the flagship Core Ultra 9 185H and the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. The Strx APUs deliver an average 36% improvement in gaming performance and the breakdown is as follows:

These gains sound great not only for thin and light laptops but also for the handheld market which is bound to get a Strix update sooner or later. This along with the Mini PC segment will also see a major performance uplift.

As for availability, AMD states that its first Ryzen AI 300 "Strix" Copilot+ PCs will start rolling out in July 2024 and there will be over 100 platforms to choose from by leading manufacturers such as ACER, ASUS, HP, Lenovo, and MSI. A few laptop designs were also showcased which include:

With the world's fastest NPU, delivering 50 AI TOPS, AMD can indeed shake things up in the AI PC segment with its Ryzen AI 300 series chips. We can expect more laptops by the time of launch and better availability by the holiday 2024 season.