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So far, my team and I have been blown away by the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (codenamed Strix Halo) — packing integrated graphics so powerful they match up to dedicated Nvidia laptop GPUs. In fact, it’s one of the more crucial chips to 2026 being the year of the laptop.
And in response, Team Red is bringing this prowess to more mid-range options with two new Strix Halo chips. These reduce the total CPU cores and the clock speed, while giving you that same 40-core GPU, and I’m so excited to see these capabilities come at better prices.
Meet the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ family
Model | Cores / Threads | Max boost (up to) | Graphics cores | GPU TFLOPS (up to) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Ryzen AI Max+ 395 | 16 / 32 | 5.1 GHz | 40 | 60 |
Ryzen AI Max+ 392 (NEW) | 12 / 24 | 5.0 GHz | 40 | 60 |
Ryzen AI Max 390 | 12 / 24 | 5.0 GHz | 32 | 48 |
Ryzen AI Max+ 388 (NEW) | 8 / 16 | 5.0 GHz | 40 | 60 |
Ryzen AI Max 385 | 8 / 16 | 5.0 GHz | 32 | 48 |
A gaming powerhouse
Over the course of 2025, one thing became abundantly clear — that AMD Radeon 8060S GPU built into the Ryzen AI Max+ chip is the key reason why “integrated” is no longer a dirty word in PC gaming.
Whether it’s the Asus ROG Flow Z13 or the Framework Desktop, we’ve been stunned at just what that RDNA 3.5 architecture can pull off in AAA games running at buttery smooth framerates. Turn on FSR and that potential gets even higher.
And this year, by compromising a little on the CPU side, that same fully-loaded GPU can come to cheaper systems. Price was always one of the main obstacles here, so it’s great to see the company tackle this head on.
A true workhorse
And one of the key things that grew in the background of all this is the ability to support huge offline large language models via this chipset’s GPU cores. In fact, it can run ChatGPT-OSS 120B 1.7x faster than Nvidia’s own DGX Spark AI mini supercomputer (according to AMD’s own testing).
In a more apples-to-apples comparison, it has 1.4x faster AI performance than an M5 MacBook Pro, and 1.8x faster content creation performance to boot.
Put simply, Strix Halo drove a lot more of the AI PC era than any chip’s NPU ever did, in terms of actually getting stuff done. And I’m excited to see the systems this chip ends up in from the likes of Asus, Acer, HP, Lenovo and more.
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