by AMD’s upcoming Strix Halo APU is one of the most exciting chips on the horizon, what with its console-like specs and the promise of more efficient and affordable portable gaming. Now a new rumor has surfaced that suggests it could be a chip design using the same eight-core CPU CCDs as AMD’s next-generation Zen 5 desktop processors.
This particular information dump comes courtesy of some slides posted on the Chiphell forum. The slides show the AMD Strix Halo APU, also occasionally referred to as Sarlak, consisting of a pair of 8-core CCD Zen 5 or Core Chiplet Dies as well as a monster SoC tile containing various I / O functionality, the memory controller plus Strix Hello’s. defining feature, which is its amazing iGPU.
Keep that thought, we’ll come back to the iGPU. The Strix Halo concept is a new chip design, but it makes sense. Cramming in 16 Zen 5 cores, along with a large iGPU, would make a huge monolithic chip. So splitting it all up, just like Intel did for its latest Meteor Lake laptop CPU, makes sense.
Using the same Zen 5 CCDs as AMD’s next-gen desktop CPUs, Strix Halo is also said to offer the full cache memory allocation of those desktop chips, including L3 cache. AMD’s APUs for laptops have cut down on cache memory, which may affect some applications more than others.
Unfortunately, games are one such type of app that tends to run low on cache memory. And that’s why we found that AMD desktop APUs didn’t make great gaming chips, like when we reviewed the Ryzen 7 8700G.
If that’s the good news, there are question marks about effectiveness. Chiplet designs are generally less efficient than monolithic chips. Throw in 16 full-spec desktop cores, a 256-bit bus, plus a big iGPU, and it doesn’t exactly sound like a recipe for all-day battery life. It was a shame, because if you don’t care about battery life, you might as well have a full discrete GPU in your gaming laptop.
In fact, the appeal of Strix Halo is the ability for a simplified single-chip laptop that is cheaper and more efficient because it does not have a dedicated GPU, and still offers good gaming performance.
Of course, the exact source of these slides has not been established. The post on the Chiphell forum is titled “Some information and speculation about AMD Strix Halo”. While the data presented is believable, the slides don’t immediately look like AMD’s internal presentations.
In fact, with entries like “small probability” and “Like Navi31”, it seems almost certain that these slides are not from AMD at all, but based on whatever information the poster got from sources.
Anyway, what about that mega iGPU? It has long been rumored to rock no less than 40 CUs. In simple architectural terms, that puts it on par with a desktop Radeon RX 6700 XT in terms of raw CU count.
However, Strix Halo is getting what is referred to as RDNA 3.5-spec GPU technology. It’s unclear what upgrades RDNA 3.5 will have over RDNA 3 technology as found in existing Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs, such as the 7800 XT and 7900 XT.
However, recently leaked documents regarding the upcoming Sony PS5 Pro could provide a pointer. The updated RDNA graphics for that console are said to offer a two to four times boost in ray tracing performance over the RDNA 2 graphics in the standard PS5.
This all gets a bit convoluted, but long story short, if RDNA 3.5 has something to do with the new GPU in the PS5 Pro, it can give a big boost to ray tracing performance. Regardless, in terms of graphics performance the Strix Halo has one more trick up its sleeve. Where existing APUs use a single 128-bit memory bus, Strix Halo uses a full 256-bit bus for significantly better memory bandwidth.
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The slides require a total bandwidth of 500GB / s, which is quite healthy, although it is shared across the iGPU and those 16 Zen 5 cores. Benchmark results are also presented in the slides in 3DMark placing Strix Halo between Nvidia’s RTX 4060 and RTX 4070 mobile chips.
Notably, it holds that position in the 3DMark Port Royal test, which is 3DMark’s main test of ray-tracing performance. It’s all interesting and promising, although plenty of questions remain about features like battery life and pricing.
Oh, and availability. We originally expected Strix Halo to come out later this year. Its smaller single-chip sibling is expected in 2024. But the latest indication is that Strix Halo is now a 2025 product.
If true, that means it will likely be up against Nvidia’s next-generation mobile GPUs, likely called the RTX 5060 and RTX 5070, for most of its operating life. And that could put another twist on his performance. Watch this space, there’s a lot to play at.
