AMD's Ryzen AI Max, codenamed "Strix Halo," was our Best-in-Show winner for CES 2025, and with good reason.
Thanks to its innovative approach to x86 chip design, the Ryzen AI Max series of APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) offers incredible performance in gaming, content creation, and AI. With up to 128GB of unified memory, up to 16 cores and 32 threads, and a boost clock that ranges from 4.9GHz to 5.1GHz this Ryzen series has earned its "Max" name.
But we gave the Ryzen AI Max chips Best-in-Show for more than just its beefy tech specs.
Asus ROG Flow Z13 with Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
The Asus ROG Flow Z13 features a Ryzen AI Max APU chipset onboard, designed to make this a powerful gaming tablet on its own. You can also connect it to the XG Mobile eGPU with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 or RTX 5090 to make it a gaming powerhouse.
AMD showcased the Flow Z13 at CES, running Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart on the Ryzen AI Max chipset. While Rift Apart is not the most graphically demanding game, the Flow Z13 kept up with the fast-paced teleporting combat without any frame drops or stuttering.
While the Flow Z13 was plugged into AC power for the gaming demo, so we can't say if you'll see a massive framerate dip on battery power only, the fact the Flow Z13 can provide a smooth 60+fps gameplay experience at 1080p is a solid win for the Ryzen AI Max and AMD's commitment to iGPU gaming.
HP ZBook Ultra 14 G1a with DaVinci Resolve
The HP ZBook Ultra 14 G1a was our Best Laptop of CES 2025. There was plenty of stiff competition for this coveted spot, but the ZBook Ultra blew us away with its powerful performance and ultra-light build, weighing under 4 pounds.
At the AMD suite at CES 2025, we watched the ZBook Ultra chew through an transcription test in just seconds utilizing its powerful AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro's 50 TOPS NPU in Black Magic's DaVinci Resolve. Editors can also make changes to the transcript, either before or after dropping it into the video, though according to reps from AMD the transcription AI is generally pretty accurate.
While a powerful desktop workstation is still going to be faster at basically any video editing workload, the easy portability of the ZBook Ultra makes it fantastic for editing in the field. Tasks that used to take hours are down to just minutes of time.
Is Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" the one chip to rule them all?
Systems featuring the Ryzen AI Max APUs are expected in Q1 2025, with the Asus ROG Flow Z13 and HP ZBook Ultra 14 being the first two products announced for the consumer and professional lines of the chip.
If the Ryzen AI Max's powerful gaming and workstation performance, and unified memory, have put Apple's M-series silicon in mind, there is a good reason for that. In an interview with Engadget, AMD's Joe Macri credited Apple for proving people will buy powerful computers without discrete graphics. Additionally, AMD compares the Ryzen AI Max chip's performance to Apple's M4 Pro silicon. So there are plenty of reasons for the Apple comparisons.
Intel's Lunar Lake chips also have unified memory, with 32GB of RAM soldered right onto the CPU package. However, AMD's Ryzen AI Max offers a truly bonkers 128GB of unified memory, of which up to 96GB can be dedicated to the GPU.
With Qualcomm gunning for MacBook users with its new suite of creative applications and AMD aiming at M-series performance, we could see an interesting shakeup in the Apple market this year.
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