While NVIDIA kicked off CES 2025 with the launch of its new Blackwell GeForce RTX 50 Series, AMD also had a slew of products to announce on the day itself. And by a slew of products, I’m talking about what is essentially a laundry list of items in the Ryzen and Radeon departments. And to kick off, we’ll start with…
Ryzen 9 9950X3D And Fire Range HX3D
Like almost everything hardware news that sprung from the rusty plumbing of major brands, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D was long expected to break cover at CES 2025. It’s got 16 Zen5 CPU Cores and like the 9800X3D, it’s got a massive 3D V-Cache attached to it. 144MB of L3 Cache, to be precise.
Like the the 9800X3D, AMD fitted the 9950X3D with its second generation 3D V-Cache technology, meaning that you can make it run faster than its advertised 5.7GHz boost clock. In terms of gaming performance, the red chipmaker boasts an 8% average increase over the previous generation 7950X3D and 20% average increase in frames when compared to the Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K.
AMD has said that the Ryzen 9 9950X3D will be made available to the masses sometime in the first quarter of 2025 but didn’t give an exact date. It will also be launching the 12-core 9900X3D and its 140MB L3 Cache at the same time.
The chipmaker also announced its “Fire Range” HX3D mobile CPU SKU, the 9955HX3D. Like its non-X3D counterpart, it’s a 16-core mobile processor with a 144MB 3D V-Cache, a 54W TDP, and a 5.4GHz boost clock.
The CPU will begin appearing in laptops within the first half of this year.
Radeon RX 9070 Series, RDNA4, And FSR4
As said by AMD, the brand no longer desires to play catch up with NVIDIA in the high-end and enthusiast GPU market and instead, wants to focus on recapturing the “market share” and focus on the mid-range market.
Enter the Radeon RX 9070 Series. Expected to be available from the first quarter onwards, the series comprises the 9070 XT and a non-XT variant of it. There’s just one small problem with the announcement: AMD hasn’t officially launched the cards and hasn’t actually provided any specs for them.
The information it did provide, though, was that the card is based around its new RDNA4 GPU architecture, and designed to support the latest FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (FSR4), ad and when the GPUs become available to wider public. We saw the upscaling technology running very briefly on a game of Call of Duty Black Ops 6 at 4K and honestly, it does look good.
Ryzen Z2 Series
The AMD Ryzen Z2 Series is another milestone and follow-up to the remarkable and wildly successful Ryzen Z1 that made its debut with the ASUS ROG Ally. There are three SKUs in descending order: the Z2 Extreme, the standard Z2, and the Z2 Go.
Both the Z2 and Z2 Extreme come with eight cores, but the Z2 comes with 12 RDNA3.5 cores, while the Extreme model comes with 16. The Z2 Go, on the other hand, has 12 RDNA2 cores, along with four Zen2 cores but does boost to 4.3GHz.
I saw the latter in action with the Lenovo Legion Go S, which was also announced recently. I’ll save the details for my hands on with it but speaking briefly, it’s a solid console but I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to test it out running SteamOS.
New Ryzen AI And AI Max CPUs
So, AMD finally added a more SKUs to its Ryzen AI portfolio in the form of the Ryzen AI 7 350 and AI 5 340. The AI 7 350 is an 8-core processor with a 5GHz max boost, while the AI 5 340 runs on six cores and has a 4.8GHz max boost.
These new Ryzen AI mobile CPUs will be available in laptops starting in the first quarter of this year. AMD is also releasing PRO variants of the two CPUs, but these CPUs will be made available during the second quarter of 2025.
In addition, AMD broke cover with the official announcement of its Strix Halo Ryzen AI Max and Max Pro mobile CPUs. There are four SKUs in total, with the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 sitting pretty at the top. We’re talking 16 Zen5 cores, a 5.1GHz max boost, an 80MB Cache, and 40 RDNA3.5 graphics cores, all flanked by a cTDP that runs between 45W and 120W.
The Ryzen AI Max and Max Pro CPUs will be made available throughout the first half of 2025, with the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 set to be one of the machines that runs with it.
Lastly, AMD also announced its Ryzen 200 series mobile processors. While the lack the “AI” moniker in their name, the specs sheet certainly ensures us that there is an NPU in all seven SKUs. Yes, seven.
The Ryzen 200 Series starts from the Ryzen 3 210, and goes all the way up to the Ryzen 9 270, with the majority of models having about as much NPU power as Intel’s Meteor Lake SKUs. These mobile processors will be available in laptops starting from the second quarter of this year.
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