Saturday, May 31st 2025
8-Core AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro 385 Benchmark Appears As Cheaper Strix Halo APU Launch Nears
It looks as though AMD might be planning to finally commercialize the more affordable version of its Ryzen AI Max APUs that have proven to be capable of powering impressively high-end gaming experiences. The first set of benchmarks of the new Strix Halo APU, dubbed the AMD Ryzen AI Max 385, have appeared on Geekbench, and the new APU is putting up some impressive numbers. AMD originally said that the Strix Halo line-up would be available between Q1 and Q2 2025, so the timing makes sense.
One major difference between the Ryzen AI Max 395 and the 385 is the iGPU, which is downgraded from the Radeon 8060S to the 8050S. When AMD launched the Strix Halo line-up, it revealed that AI Max Pro 385 would have an eight-core CPU paired with 32 graphics cores, instead of the 16-core CPU and 40-core iGPU setup. While we don't yet have GPU benchmark results for the 8050S, the CPU results put up by the APU are impressive on their own, with 2,489 points in the single-core benchmark and 14,136 points in the multicore benchmark. The laptop the new Ryzen silicon was tested in was an HP ZBook Ultra G1a with 32 GB of RAM. The results put the 385 only slightly behind the AI Max+ 395 in certain configurations, but in a similar HP ZBook Ultra G1a laptop, the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 comes out ahead of the 385 by as much as 45%. It's unclear just how much laptops with this new Ryzen AI Max Pro 385 APU will cost, but they will almost certainly be cheaper than the current crop of Ryzen AI Max+ laptops, which generally run well north of $2,000.
Sources:
Geekbench, WCCFTech
One major difference between the Ryzen AI Max 395 and the 385 is the iGPU, which is downgraded from the Radeon 8060S to the 8050S. When AMD launched the Strix Halo line-up, it revealed that AI Max Pro 385 would have an eight-core CPU paired with 32 graphics cores, instead of the 16-core CPU and 40-core iGPU setup. While we don't yet have GPU benchmark results for the 8050S, the CPU results put up by the APU are impressive on their own, with 2,489 points in the single-core benchmark and 14,136 points in the multicore benchmark. The laptop the new Ryzen silicon was tested in was an HP ZBook Ultra G1a with 32 GB of RAM. The results put the 385 only slightly behind the AI Max+ 395 in certain configurations, but in a similar HP ZBook Ultra G1a laptop, the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 comes out ahead of the 385 by as much as 45%. It's unclear just how much laptops with this new Ryzen AI Max Pro 385 APU will cost, but they will almost certainly be cheaper than the current crop of Ryzen AI Max+ laptops, which generally run well north of $2,000.
61 Comments on 8-Core AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro 385 Benchmark Appears As Cheaper Strix Halo APU Launch Nears
So these new chips will be able to handle all your AI operations efficiently and without bogging down the CPU. Past AI products have been including the CPU core's contribution to the tops output (8840hs for example has 36 tops if you include the CPU cores) but you don't really want to use your CPU cores for AI tasks, it's less efficient.
2. It has an extremely powerful iGPU with 256bit memory, and can assign something like up to 96GB to the iGPU. If you are doing deep learning tasks, the huge memory pool can pull it ahead of many discrete GPUs. Some benchmarks I saw put it at over twice the speed of a RTX5090 once you run tasks larger than what fits inside the RTX5090 memory. That's only really because it has so much more memory than any discrete GPU, not due to the cpu/npu/gpu part inside (well, the quad channel memory controller also helps).
But it's mostly just the marketing BS.
I'd say that it's the NPU with enough TOPs to satisfy Copilot+ branding that makes AMD want to add "AI" to the name.Interesting. If it's just marketing BS, does that mean that the 50 TOPs of the NPU are and will remain useless, or are not aimed at AI workloads?
Anything interesting you'll be making use of the iGPU which supports more data formats and is faster than the NPU anyways.
Main reason to have an NPU is for local processing without using much energy. Think of text suggestions in your phone's keyboard, or those gallery features such as searching for people or objects.
At the moment there's no such use case in the desktop world.
When you said to your device:
- Good morning, Siri
And got answer:
F**k you, why wake up me so early!
i really hope that is not the future, but i wouldn't be surprised if it is.
:roll:
sad with tiling/chiplets it doesn’t really matter how big they get.
on the server side where they use hbm equipping a card with loads of ram is t as big of an issue.
It's all NPU bashing, and yeah I'm with you there 100%, but it's kind of done by now, here and in other threads.
I don’t hold it likely they’ll introduce a special slot—that thing, which I believe is a couple years old by now only does 2×4TOPS, whereas even Hawk Point and Meteor Lake’s NPUs already do 16 or 11.5 TOPS.
As others have pointed out, NPUs are mostly dead silicon for desktop usecases so far, one can basically always just use the GPU, and even on laptops, there’s A LOT of die space used for limited gains. I think the plan was to have wake-on-voice and such, which people don’t embrace. I’ve also seen presence detection being used, automatically putting the system to suspend when you leave.—Uhh, nice, but why can’t the monkey just press the button!? :banghead:
Of course, it’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, but who knows how using that space for more GPU (maybe clocking it slower under partial load, which would then be lower, due to the size-up) or maybe some cache could have influenced energy efficiency.
Besides, Framework is already taking pre-orders for their mini-PC with 385 APU. It's much cheaper than the halo SKU and this one will hit the mainstream beyond LLM hobbyists.
The top SKU 395 is new and its current price reflects its name - Halo. Come back during Black Friday and check deals if you need one.