AMD's new 'Strix Point' APU is out: game-changing APU has RTX 4070 levels of gaming performance

AMD's new Ryzen AI Max+ 300 series "Strix Halo" APUs have launched, first appearing in ASUS's new ROG Flow Z13 gaming tablet that reviews have just gone live on.

The new flagship Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" APU inside of the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 gaming tablet, and torn down for review by ASUS China PM Tony Yu, which confirms that Strix Halo's new Zen 5 CCDs have TSV (Through-Silicon Via) which could see future APUs rocking 3D V-Cache. AMD's next-gen Zen 6-based Medusa Halo APU should have X3D cache, and now we know that's definitely a possibility.

For me, the GPU power inside of AMD's new Strix Halo APU is the most impressive thing on show: we have a huge 40 Compute Units of RDNA 3.5 GPU goodness, up from the 16 CUs inside of Strix Point APUs. This provides performance that gets close to the GeForce RTX 4070, and easily beats the RTX 4060 which is bloody impressive to see out of an APU.

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Our friends over at Hardware Canucks reviewed the new ASUS ROG Flow Z13 gaming tablet with AMD's new flagship Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" APU inside with multiple games, with Cyberpunk 2077 running at 1600p on the Highest preset and reaching 39FPS average... beating a Ryzen 9 8945HS (78W) + RTX 4070 (70W) combo inside of a gaming laptop which scores 37FPS average.

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DOOM Eternal running at 1600p on the Ultra Nightmare graphics setting has the Strix Halo APU running at 149FPS average, another bloody impressive result considering this is an APU inside of a gaming tablet using just 70W of power. The higher-end laptop with the RTX 4070 is only 4FPS faster at 153FPS average in DOOM Eternal.

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Even if you are playing something like Counter-Strike 2, the new Strix Halo APU spits out 137FPS average at 1600p running the highest graphical detail with 4 x MSAA enabled, losing out to the RTX 4070 which scores 166FPS average.

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In some other benchmarks against competing gaming handhelds, the new Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" APU inside of the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 running at just 25W has impressive performance in Returnal running at 720p with FSR2 running on Balanced, and the Low graphics setting.

We have 73FPS average from the new Strix Halo APU with 25W power, 60FPS average at 60FPS, beating out the 35.9FPS average from the GPD Win Max 2 at 25W (8840U + Radeon 780M). Even the Strix Halo APU at just 15W spits out performance better than the GPD Win Max 2, with 42FPS average on the Strix Halo APU using 15W.

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Another itch of mine that got scratched with the new Strix Halo APUs being launched are the gorgeous die shots that ASUS China boss Tony Yu shared. We get to see the I/O die and the 32MB of Infinity Cache on the Strix Halo APU.

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In the shot above, we've got the I/O die with those 40 Compute Units of RDNA 3.5-based GPU that is called the Radeon 8060S.

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Another great shot is the comparison of the new Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" APU side-by-side with the Ryzen 9 9950X desktop processor.