AMD's beefed-up Strix Halo APU leaked: upgraded RDNA 3.5 GPU offers RTX 4070 80W gaming perf

AMD's new Zen 5-based Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs are finally out in the wild, with some fresh leaks on the beefier "Strix Halo" APU that will be released in 2025.

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The new Strix Halo APU will feature up to a higher 16 cores and 32 threads of Zen 5 processing power, and a massively upgraded RDNA 3.5 GPU system over the current Strix Point APUs that will deliver discrete GPU levels of gaming performance.

In the new leak, we're seeing the new Strix Halo APU huge package: 37.5 x 45.0 mm and using the same FP11 package. The APU itself will be much smaller, with the biggest die on the Strix Halo APU being the RDNA 3.5 GPU that will consume 307mm² die space, while the 2 x Zen 5 CCDs use 66mm² die space, with a total die space (Strix Halo is multi-chiplet) of 439mm².

There's been some juicy leaked thermal design data for AMD's upcoming Strix Halo APU, where we're to expect three different configurations: 55W, 80W, and 120W. These figures don't consider memory power consumption, with AMD saying it would be 9W power for 32GB, and 13W of power for 128GB RAM. The leak also confirmed that the LPDDR5X-8533 memory would be tied to a 256-bit memory interface.

AMD's new Strix Halo APU is being compared to an Intel system featuring a GN21-X6 graphics card. This codename refers to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, which is capable of drawing much more power than 80W. In this situation, a system with an RTX 4070 80W would have the same power requirements as a Strix Halo APU-based system.

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AMD is expected to use 40 Compute Units of RDNA 3.5 GPU power in its Strix Halo APU, which is a huge, huge improvement over the 12-16 Compute Units of RDNA 3.5 GPU found inside of the Strix Point APU that was just released.

This means we can expect over 2x the gaming performance out of Strix Halo than we do with Strix Point, keeping up with an RTX 4070 80W, which is not bad at all out of an APU. I can see AMD enjoying a fruitful year in 2025 with Strix Halo dominating laptops and handhelds, and I can't wait to see what designs we'll see powered by Strix Halo in 2025.