There are a few weeks left until CES 2025, but a series of leaks gives us an idea of what to expect from chip manufacturers. We've already seen plans revealed from Nvidia and Intel today. In the case of AMD, the regular version of the company's Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 (codenamed Strix Halo) has seemingly just appeared on Geekbench.
This new APU will likely power an update to the Asus ROG Flow Z13 gaming hybrid to sweeten the deal. According to a retailer listing (h/t VideoCardz), the new ROG Flow will debut with AMD's Strix Halo under the hood. The original was revealed at CES 2022, so its appearance at next month's show would make sense.
The Pro variant of Strix Halo appeared some months ago on benchmarking sites, but this is our first look at how the regular versions of CPU and GPU will perform. A reminder: these will be AMD's top-tier processors for laptops and desktops in 2025, so you can expect to hear a lot more about them in the coming months.
The single-core score for the AMD Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 is reportedly 2,894 points in Geekbench, which may not seem too impressive. As Notebookcheck.net points out, it falls behind Intel's Raptor Lake Core i9 CPU from last year. But the multi-core performance tells a whole different story.
The multi-core score for the Strix Halo APU is reportedly 20,708 points. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it blows the likes of Intel's x86 chips out of the water. It can't match the sheer power offered by Apple's M4 Pro (with two fewer CPU cores and ARM architecture). In our testing, we benchmarked Apple's chip's multicore performance as 22,822 inside a MacBook Pro 16-inch. But what's in store from AMD is still a monstrous chip that'll come to the fore when discussing graphical gaming performance.
The Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 — like the Pro variant — packs six cores based on the Zen 5 microarchitecture, and there are integrated Radeon 8060S graphics. In essence, it'll be capable of RTX-4069-level gaming and may even compete with mid-range laptops featuring RTX 4070 GPU. Not to mention the improvements in power efficiency and, therefore, battery life.
This is where we come to the Asus ROG Flow Z13, which could be described as the combined offspring of a Microsoft Surface tablet and a gaming laptop. The form factor will probably remain unchanged — a 13-inch gaming-focused tablet with a kickstand and detachable keyboard.
It might not have the raw power of the iPad Pro M4, but gamers will probably find a lot more to like about Asus' offering if (or when) it becomes official at CES 2025 next month.
