AMD’s latest chipset drivers appear to be available now, courtesy of hardware leaker HXL, with the release notes mentioning support for the “Ryzen AI 300 MAX” lineup. This finding was provided by ASUS and you can download the latest drivers for the X670E series motherboards. The bottom line is that AMD appears to have confirmed the existence of the Ryzen AI 300 MAX series, with the rumored codename Strix Halo.
The verification source is provided through the chipset driver download from Asus and can be found in the Chipset folder on page 3 of ReleaseNotes_6.10.02.1849.rtf.
Strix Halo is AMD’s yet-to-be-released flagship mainstream APU product. The top configuration is said to feature 16 Zen 5 cores at 5.8GHz and an RDNA 3.5-based iGPU with 40 CUs. This beast is designed for workstations and top-of-the-line laptops, and is expected to draw close to 130W of power.
(Image credit: HXL, ASUS)
Previous leaks gave insight into the internals of the Strix Halo based on the fact that it contains three chiplets. Two CCDs and one large SoC die. The SoC die features a massive 40 CU iGPU clocked at 3 GHz, surpassing the RX 7600 XT’s 32 MB of Memory Access at Last Level (MALL) cache, which functions similarly to Infinity Cache. However, it is conceivable that it can also be used in CPU cores. Possibly L4 cache. There are eight LPPDR5X-8533 memory modules around the package, likely representing the 256-bit memory interface of the SoC die. In terms of I/O and expansion, Strix Halo is rumored to have four PCIe 5.0 lanes and eight PCIe 4.0 lanes, each with two USB 4.0 ports and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port.
To meet Microsoft’s AI PC requirements, AMD will leverage the XDNA2 architecture for the Strix Halo’s NPU. Considering the larger die size, NPU TOPS could be slightly higher than what Strix can currently push.
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(Image credit: ChipHell)(Image credit: ChipHell)
Strix Halo is an ambitious project by AMD that could make many discrete mobile GPUs obsolete. AMD has already made strides in the iGPU segment with its Radeon 600/700/800M products. The immediate issue is pricing, as Strix Halo is not only more expensive to manufacture, but you also have to factor in the cost of packaging. In any case, AMD is expected to announce the Ryzen AI 300 MAX series at CES 2025.
