AMD's new Strix Halo leaks: powerhouse APU 'at least trades blows' with RTX 4070 Laptop GPU

AMD's upcoming Strix Halo APU has received some more details ahead of its CES 2025 unveiling, with a teaser render of the new Strix Halo APU available below:

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The fresh information on AMD's upcoming Strix Halo is coming from leaker Moore's Law is Dead, with a full leak on the details inside of the Strix Halo APU. We can expect 16 cores of Zen 5 processing power, a huge 40 CUs of RDNA 3.5 GPU power, a larger 120W TDP, and support for LPDDR5X-8533 memory. MLID says that the flagship "at least" trades blows with NVIDIA's current-gen GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU.

We can expect 32GB and 64GB models to launch in the first half of 2025, with flagship 128GB models launching in 2H 2025. AMD is expected to unveil Strirx Halo at CES 2025, with MLID adding that workstation models are launching in Q1 2025. However, Strix Halo APU-powered gaming laptops aren't expected until Q2 2024.

• Read more: HP ZBook Ultra 14 laptop features AMD's upcoming 'Strix Halo' APU
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• Read more: AMD to unveil its beefed-up Strix Halo and Kraken APUs at CES 2025 in January

If AMD sees strong Strix Halo sales, MLID says that AMD 'might push for it for SFF as well" which would be awesome to see: the huge revival of the SFF gaming PC movement with the Strix Point APU.

AMD already has its Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs on the market, but they aren't anywhere near as beefy as the upgraded Strix Halo APU. First off, Strix Point maxes out at 12 cores and 24 threads, Strix Halo expands that up to 16 cores and 32 threads.

There's only 24MB of L3 cache on Strix Point, compared to the huge 64MB of L3 cache on Strix Halo, while there's also 32MB of MALL cache on Strix Halo, which isn't present on Strix Point. We've also got a huge upgrade in the memory bus, with a 128-bit memory bus on Strix Point compared to the doubling to 256-bit on Strix Halo.

However, the huge upgrade comes in the 40 CUs of RDNA 3.5 GPU inside of Strix Halo, a gigantic upgrade over the 16 CUs of RDNA 3.5 GPU inside of Strix Point. This is where we're now expecting RTX 4070 Laptop GPU levels of performance, all out of an APU that is sipping a 120W TDP.

AMD is expected to unveil Strix Halo at CES 2025, with the latest being that we'll see Strix Halo APU-powered gaming laptops in Q2 2025. We've recently heard that NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 50 series Laptop GPUs will be built into new gaming laptops in 2025 using older-gen Intel Core 13th Gen and 14th Gen CPUs, as well as AMD's previous-gen Zen 4 CPUs.

I wonder how many of the sub $1500 gaming laptop market that AMD can chew into with Strix Halo in 2025...