AMD is gearing up to launch its Strix Point Halo and Krackan Point APUs, with a release expected in January at CES 2025. Recently, details emerged about an Acer Swift Go 16 laptop featuring one of these new AMD chips, identified through a Geekbench listing.
The disclosed information reveals that this laptop is equipped with an engineering sample of the Krackan Point processor, carrying the OPN Code “100-000000713-40_Y,” likely corresponding to the Ryzen AI 7 350. This chip comprises eight cores structured into two clusters of four, employing both Zen 5 and Zen 5c designs. It has a base frequency of 2GHz and can achieve a maximum boost frequency of 5.05GHz, along with 16MB of L3 cache and 8MB of L2 cache.
The Acer laptop with the Ryzen AI 7 350 achieved scores of 2677 in single-core and 11742 in multi-core evaluations via Geekbench 6.3. According to Tom’s Hardware, the Krackan CPU is set to compete against Intel’s Lunar Lake chips, notably the Core Ultra 7 258V, and outperforms AMD’s own Hawk Point-based Ryzen 7 8845HS. However, it’s worth noting that it falls short of the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 in multi-core performance, as the Strix Point CPU boasts a total of 12 cores.
Additionally, this APU is anticipated to incorporate the Strix Point’s XDNA 2 NPU (Neural Processing Unit), which is capable of 50 tera operations per second (TOPS). It will also feature a Radeon 860M RDNA 3.5 integrated GPU with 8 compute units. Meanwhile, the high-performance Strix Halo range is expected to introduce the Ryzen AI Max branding, potentially delivering an even more powerful integrated GPU to rival Nvidia’s RTX 4060 in laptops.
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While these details haven’t been confirmed, they align with previous leaks from Zhangzhonghao, a leaker known for sharing information about upcoming releases. AMD is set to present a variety of next-generation processors, which includes the Krackan Point APUs and Ryzen AI Max CPUs for laptops featuring RDNA 3.5 graphics.
The high-performance Strix Halo models could comprise the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (16 cores), 390 (12 cores), and 385 (8 cores). New Fire Range CPUs, based on the Zen 5 architecture, will specifically target gaming laptops.
AMD may also unveil X3D laptop CPUs, alongside next-gen Ryzen Z2 chips for handheld gaming devices, promising improved performance over the already successful Ryzen Z1 Extreme.
