AMD Ryzen AI Max 300 Strix Halo Zen 5 CPU Launch Is Teased By ASUS

The early rumors concerning the naming convention of AMD's upcoming mobile processors appears to be true. We already suspected this, but things took a turn when the company revealed the final name of its "Strix Point" SoCs earlier this year: the Ryzen AI 300 family, headed up by the flagship Ryzen AI 9 HX 375.

"Strix Point" is the foundation of AMD's mainstream mobile processors. "Stix Halo" is the codename from AMD's upcoming high-performance mobile processors for gamers and enthusiasts, which sport additional cores. Rumors indicated that the red team might name its massive "Strix Halo" series processors by simply incrementing the model number and sticking "MAX" onto the name. Now, its seems like that really is the case. Get ready for the Ryzen AI MAX 300 series SoCs.


This information comes to us from ASUS by way of perceptive enthusiast HXL. ASUS posted a newer AMD chipset driver on its website than is currently available from AMD itself; AMD's current driver is version 6.07.22.037, while the driver from ASUS is version 6.10.02.1849. This much newer driver includes Platform Management Foundation software for newer processors, including the "Ryzen AI MAX 300 Series".

Well, there you go. The only way it gets "more confirmed" than that is when AMD actually announces the parts. That obviously hasn't happened yet, but we expect it won't too much longer, with CES being the favored target for the launch. AMD likes to trot out new mobile processors at CES, and while Strix Halo isn't strictly a laptop part, it will probably be BGA-only.


If you're lost, Strix Halo (or the "Ryzen AI MAX 300 Series") is an upcoming processor from AMD that, in its top configuration, is said to have sixteen Zen 5 CPU cores, a whopping 20 RDNA 3 Workgroup Processors, and a double-wide 256-bit memory bus to feed it all. In terms of design, it's like a more monstrous Apple M3, and we'll likely see it in similar configurations: professional laptops, small-form-factor workstations, and so on.

The Ryzen AI MAX 300 SoCs really are a new class of product for x86 CPUs, and we're dying to find out what these parts are capable of. Will they match the performance of low-end discrete GPUs? Will the top-end MAX 300 chip be competitive against the Ryzen 9 9950X? Both parts have sixteen full-fat Zen 5 CPU cores, after all. It's anyone's guess what the real performance of Ryzen AI MAX 300 will be, but you'll know as soon as we do.