Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

AMD’s upcoming APUs might destroy your GPU

By
AMD CEO Lisa Su holding an APU chip.
AMD

The spec sheets for AMD’s upcoming APU lineups, dubbed Strix Point and Strix Halo, have just been leaked, and it’s safe to say that they’re looking pretty impressive. Equipped with Zen 5 cores, the new APUs will find their way to laptops that are meant to be on the thinner side, but their performance might rival that of some of the best budget graphics cards — and that’s without having a discrete GPU.

While AMD hasn’t unveiled Strix Point (STX) and Strix Halo (STX Halo) specs just yet, they were leaked by HKEPC and then shared by VideoCardz. The sheet goes over the maximum specs for each APU lineup, the first of which, Strix Point, is rumored to launch this year. Strix Halo, said to be significantly more powerful, is currently slated for a 2025 release.

Recommended Videos

Let’s dig into the specs. STX APUs are said to max out at 12 Zen 5 cores and 24 threads, as well as eight work group processors (WGP), which adds up to a GPU with 16 compute units (CUs) based on RDNA 3.5 architecture. There’s also 12MB of L2 cache and 24MB of L3 cache, as well as AMD’s XDNA 2 AI accelerator that is said to offer up to 50 trillion operations per second (TOPS). This is a huge upgrade in terms of AI over its predecessor, which offered 16 TOPS, but the gains are really across the board — moving up from eight Zen 4 cores and eight RDNA 3 CUs.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!
Privacy Policy

Strix Point is interesting, but it’s the Halo lineup that’s shaping up to be truly exciting, all thanks to its reported graphics performance. The APU is said to max out at 16 cores and 32 threads, as well as 16MB of L2 cache, 32MB of L3 cache per core chiplet die (CCD), and an additional 32MB of MALL cache, which seems to be something similar to AMD’s Infinity Cache.

Specs for AMD Zen 5 Strix Point and Strix Halo.
HKEPC

The XDNA2 NPU in Strix Halo ramps up to 60 TOPS, which is not a massive difference from Strix Point, but a huge upgrade over previous generations. Lastly, the iGPU in this APU is said to sport up to 20 WGPs, which translates to a massive 40 RDNA 3.5 CUs. For comparison, AMD’s RX 7600 XT only comes with 32 RDNA 3 CUs, so it’s easy to imagine that laptops equipped with Strix Halo will outperform mainstream graphics cards.

There’s a lot of potential for this kind of graphics performance. Thin-and-light laptops aren’t typically associated with gaming, but with this kind of hardware, they might start to be. That’s not to mention that if AMD will be able to adapt these APUs to run in gaming handhelds like the Asus ROG Ally, it will open up portable gaming on a whole new level.

We’re seeing more and more signs of Zen 5 cropping up, such as the recent motherboard updates from last week, so it’s clear that AMD and its partners are getting ready for launch. Official release dates are still a while off for these, but it’s likely that AMD will talk about Zen 5 at this year’s Computex in June. Desktop variants might make an appearance, and we’ll hopefully learn more about RDNA 4.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Monica J. White
Monica J. White
Computing Writer
Monica is a UK-based freelance writer and self-proclaimed geek. A firm believer in the "PC building is just like expensive…
AMD is valiantly keeping its word to gamers
Someone holding the Ryzen 7 5800X3D in a red light.

AMD's aging AM4 platform has been around since 2016, and it's a socket that AMD has promised to support for "for many years." We thought we'd waved goodbye to AM4 for good, but a new leak says that AMD has two new 3D V-Cache chips in the works, namely the Ryzen 7 5700X3D and the Ryzen 5 5500X3D. If the rumor is to be believed, AMD may not be done with AM4 yet, which is great news for those hoping not to have to upgrade their entire PC just to get the latest performance.

As per the user @g01d3nm4ng0 on Twitter, the new chips will serve up the same massive L3 cache we've come to expect from AMD's X3D chips, making them solid options for gamers on a tighter budget. No one expected that AMD would keep releasing new versions of last-gen chips well over a year since the launch of the Ryzen 7000, and yet, it seems that they're in the works.

Read more
AMD is slowing down at the worst possible time
AMD CEO Lisa Su holding an APU chip.

AMD has a strong hold on the handheld gaming market, and given the growing popularity of such consoles, that's a good place to be. AMD's chips power the Steam Deck, but also consoles like the Asus ROG Ally or the Ayaneo 2S. While it's crucial for AMD to keep pushing and release new, more powerful APUs, the latest rumors imply that we may not see its most-anticipated update until 2025 -- a huge delay compared to the previous road map. As a result, are we about to witness Intel take the lead with Meteor Lake?

AMD has plans that go far beyond its current APUs, although no official release dates have been confirmed for these chips as of yet. However, according to the rumor mill, we expected to see Strix Halo and Strix Point APUs in 2024, just in time to rival Intel's fresh Meteor Lake chips. Now, according to Moore's Law Is Dead, we might have to wait a lot longer.

Read more
This AMD GPU could have destroyed Nvidia, but we might never see it
Radeon logo on the RX 7900 XTX.

Rumor has it that AMD may have decided not to launch any high-end GPUs in the next generation of graphics cards, meaning RDNA 4. However, this freshly leaked diagram gives us some insight into what could have been -- or perhaps, what will be -- if AMD's best graphics card of the next generation was made. It appears that AMD's next-gen architecture is a lot more complex than RDNA 3.

The diagram comes from YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead, who, as always, cites his own anonymous sources. It's only a partial diagram, but even that quick look into the architecture of RDNA 4 tells us a lot. While not sure which GPU this is, Moore's Law Is Dead refers to it as Navi 4C, and all signs point to it being AMD's top GPU for the next generation. Still, it's unclear if this new naming convention refers to Navi 41 or perhaps Navi 42, as Navi X and Navi M have also been mentioned recently.

Read more