A Mountain of Mobile CPUs: AMD's 2025 Fleet Features New Ryzen 9 X3D & AI Max+

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AMD announced a staggering slate of new mobile silicon today at CES 2025, revealing a fleet of Ryzen laptop processors across all performance levels, alongside some fresh desktop chips and new-generation Radeon RX 9000-series graphics cards.

The new mobile lineup covers a range of user segments, including gaming- and content creator-focused processors, new chips for high-powered AI workloads, and CPUs for more mainstream and budget laptops. These comprise potent Ryzen 9000 HX and HX3D “Fire Range” processors, top-of-the-line Ryzen AI 300 “Max” series chips, consumer Ryzen AI 300 series CPUs, everyday Ryzen 200 series CPUs, and even new AMD Z2 processors for handheld gaming devices.

AMD provided a rundown on these lineups and their specific chip stacks, which are all set to land before the second half of 2025, and I've pre-digested all the details for you below.

Ryzen 9 'Fire Range': HX3D and HX Processors for High-End Gaming

Let's start with the new Ryzen 9 9000 Series HX processors for users running demanding games or content-creation workloads. This new generation is headlined by the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D processor, with two additional chips below it in the hierarchy.

An “HX” suffix denotes a high-performance tier, while the flagship chip also carries the “3D” branding that represents AMD’s vertical stacking technology. These “3D” chips layer more cache onto the CPU, reflected in the much higher listed cache spec in the chart above. AMD also has new Ryzen 9 9000 X3D desktop chips alongside this mobile version.

We first saw AMD’s mobile 3D V-Cache in action with the inside an Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 X3D laptop in 2023. My showed modest performance improvements in limited use cases. It’s particularly useful for gaming, as it helps the CPU render frames more effectively, so we’ll have to see how the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D fares in bringing the second generation to mobile.

Again, note that the lower two Ryzen 9000 HX chips here have a smaller cache but share the same total thermal design power (TDP) and max boost. The mid-tier 9955HX chip has the same 16-core and 32-thread counts as its 3D V-Cache sibling, while the lowest (9850HX) option drops those down to 12 cores and 24 threads. All three will be available in laptops in the first half of 2025.

Ryzen AI Max: Look Out, Apple M4

Next, in keeping with the higher-power platforms, AMD announced the Ryzen AI Max series, which may be the biggest barn-burner in the bunch. The so-called "Halo"-class products sit even above the existing Ryzen AI 9 CPUs, meant for the most demanding power users and workstation shoppers.

Think of the intended buyers here as professional media editors, content creators, animators, engineers, and users with other similarly demanding pro-grade workloads—essentially anything you’d want a top-end Apple MacBook Pro for. You’ll find these new chips in workstation laptops, the most capable portable systems, and even in some micro desktops.

AMD has four main chips in this stack, though three of them technically come in Pro and non-Pro versions, bringing the total distinct count to seven. (Pro, in this instance, denotes IT features for enterprise, not performance superiority.) Here’s a look at the specs below...

The top-of-the-line chip is the Ryzen Max+ 395 (and its Pro version, but I'll refer to them together), which AMD calls “the most advanced mobile x86 processor ever created.” A single chip based on the company's "Zen 5" architecture, the Max+ 395 features 16 performance cores, 32 threads, 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units, a neural processing unit (NPU) capable of up to 50 trillion operations per second (TOPS), and a 256GB-per-second-bandwidth memory interface.

AMD provided all of the following performance comparisons with competitors using the Max+ 395 as a basis, so you can’t necessarily extend these presumptions to the standard Max chips. These are also compared with existing-generation competition, not necessarily comparable alternatives launching in 2025.

With that, AMD claims 1.4 times faster graphics performance than the "Lunar Lake" Intel Core Ultra 9 288V in various 3DMark suite tests and 2.6 times faster rendering than the same Intel chip in benchmarks like Cinebench, Blender, Vray, and Corona. AMD is also eager to compare with the mighty Apple M4 Pro, though it notably steers clear of any M4 Max comparisons below.

Perhaps AMD's most eye-catching claim was in the AI space versus Nvidia’s current-generation GPUs. AMD claims that, with its on-die unified memory architecture (of which up to 96GB is available to the graphics cores at any given time), AI Max+ 395 can run a vast 70-billion-parameter large language model (LLM) up to 2.2 times faster than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 (with 24GB VRAM) as measured by tokens per second. Of course, knowing that it can bring more memory to bear on this task makes sense of the result, but it also does this, AMD claims, at 87% lower TDP.

This silicon will launch in Q1 and into Q2; AMD didn't specify which chips would land when, but if it follows the Ryzen AI 300 roadmap (below), the Pro models will likely come later. AMD also shared some specific Copilot+ PC product examples with these CPUs: The Max Pro processors will be released in professional products like the HP ZBook Ultra G1a and the HP Z2 Mini G1a mini workstation, while Max chips will launch in a new version of the Asus ROG Flow Z13.

Ryzen AI 300 Series: New Ryzen 5 and 7 Chips for More Mainstream AI Performance

Staying in the Ryzen AI 300 family, we’re moving down to the latest Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 chips—this is the “Advanced Series” tier below Halo and Premium in the graphic leading off the previous section. Look at the new consumer-grade CPUs in this category: four total chips, with two “Pro” enterprise-specific spinoffs of the leading processors...

The 300 series represents the third generation Ryzen AI, with just one Ryzen AI 7 and one Ryzen AI 5 processor in the stack to kick things off. With up to eight cores and 16 threads and a wattage range of 15 to 54 watts, these processors will appear in everyday and business laptops; Ryzen AI CPUs will arrive in more than 150 notebooks in 2025, AMD claims.

While they are not at the power level of Ryzen AI 9, general performance and AI capability (it is still in the name) remain important for Ryzen AI 5 and 7. AMD compared the AI 7 350’s general multi-tasking performance with both Intel and Qualcomm alternatives, with the same testing caveats as before.

On media-creation benchmarks such as Cinebench R24, HandBrake, and Blender (the last using the Classroom test project), AMD claims an average improvement of 35% over Qualcomm’s X Plus X1P-42-100 chip and an improvement of 30% over Intel’s Core Ultra 7 258V.

These chips also include an XDNA 2 NPU with more than 50 TOPS performance, which AMD dubs the fastest Windows NPU in Procyon AI. (We'll see if those claims clash with others before CES is through.)

Naturally, battery life is essential for the intended types of systems these chips will go in, and so AMD claims at least 24 hours of video-playback battery life. Video playback is hardly the only use case, so mileage will vary, but that’s also how we gauge battery life at PCMag, and it’s in line with the existing super-long results of other platforms we’ve tested in this class.

As mentioned, the AI 300 chips will launch in Q1 of this year, while the Pro models will follow in Q2.

Ryzen 200 Series: Everyday Power at the Entry Level

Last, but not least, AMD has the Ryzen 200 series for laptop processing. These are processors for mainstream consumer and commercial laptops, and as you can see in the following outline, a wide range of chips and supporting specs will deploy across different types of devices.

Like the Ryzen AI 300 chips, think of these as more mainstream options, dialed down in performance a bit further. (Note the lack of “AI” in the 200-series name, too.) These chips are intended for everyday scenarios, and only some of the TDP ratings reach the 50W range, with generally modest core and thread counts and a lower floor.

Expect reliable battery life, more basic AI capability (note the 16 peak NPU TOPS), and lower price points on laptops using these processors. As with other the series, the Pro versions are for IT-managed environments; counting these Pro variants where available, 11 total Ryzen 200-series chip models will launch in Q2 2025.

AMD Ryzen Z2: Gaming Handhelds Finally Get More Juice

The odd one out in this group is the Z2 platform—still a mobile processor, but intended for the growing market of handheld gaming devices rather than laptops. We’ve reviewed all of the mainstream Windows-based alternatives to the Steam Deck, notably the the , and the . The Legion Go and ROG Ally ran on AMD’s previous Z1 and Z1 Extreme chips, which were codesigned with these handhelds in mind.

Enter the Z2 generation, which aims to deliver even more potent performance on these handhelds. AMD will sprint out of the gate with Z2 Extreme, Z2, and Z2 Go processors.

Given the limited physical space for discrete graphics in handheld devices, these chips handle both processing and visuals. The Z1 Extreme also featured eight cores, 16 threads, and a 24MB cache, but only 12 graphics cores and a 30W maximum TDP, so the ceiling is lifted at the top level. Z2 is still based on RDNA 3 graphics, not RDNA 4, with these chips for more-limited systems on a different cadence than AMD's desktop graphics.

Power and efficiency are crucial in squeezing out as many frames per second as possible, so a new processing generation will be met with open arms—we’ve seen a couple of updates to these devices, like the ROG Ally X that updated the device’s design and features but still ran on the Z1 platform. This generation should also improve battery life, though AMD makes no specific claims yet. AMD still expects this relatively new market to grow through this year. Interestingly, though, just before CES 2025 with Intel’s "Lunar Lake" processors. (Hit the link for our first look at the new Claw.)

We look forward to testing all of this new silicon when it arrives inside laptops big and small this year. As samples become available, check back for our comprehensive testing and analysis.