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HP ZBook Ultra 14 Laptop Featuring Upcoming AMD Ryzen AI Max 390 “Strix Halo” APU

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HP ZBook Ultra 14 Laptop Featuring Upcoming AMD Ryzen AI Max 390 “Strix Halo” APU

AMD’s upcoming Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” series APU has been heavily rumored recently, but we’ve now learned that it will appear in the new HP ZBook Ultra 14 mobile workstation.

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The new HP ZBook Ultra 14 mobile workstation has been spotted with the AMD Ryzen AI Max 390 “Strix Halo” APU in engineering sample (ES) form on Geekbench, with 12 cores and 24 threads of the Zen 5 CPU, a powerful 40 compute units of the integrated RDNA 3.5 GPU, and support for up to 96GB of RAM.

The Geekbench results page shows the processor ID “AuthenticAMD Family 26 Model 112 Stepping 0” running the 14-inch HP ZBook Ultra G1a Mobile Workstation PC in AI tests, scoring 4,733 points in single-precision tests, 4,944 in semi-precision tests, and 13,944 in quantum tests.

The new HP ZBook Ultra 14 mobile workstation is powered by the AMD Ryzen AI Max 390 “Strix Halo” APU, whose Geekbench score shows a base CPU frequency of 3.2GHz, which is 1.2GHz higher than the base clock speed of the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 “Strix Point” APU. Both of these APUs have 12 cores and 24 threads, but the new Strix Halo has a lot more power (and a lot more power on the GPU side + support for 96GB of RAM).

AMD’s upcoming Ryzen AI Max 390 “Strix Halo” APU isn’t even the fastest Strix Halo APU yet, as the 12-core and 24-thread Ryzen AI Max 390 processor packs a punch with the flagship 16-core and 32-thread Ryzen AI Max+ 395 “Strix Halo” APU with the same 40 RDNA 3.5 GPU compute units.

Expected AMD Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” APU Features:

  • Zen 5 Chiplet Design
  • Up to 16 cores
  • 64MB shared L3 cache
  • 40 RDNA 3+ compute units
  • 32MB MALL Cache (for iGPU)
  • Memory Controller LPDDR5X-8000 256-bit
  • Integrated XDNA 2 engine
  • Up to 60 AI TOPS
  • 16 PCIe Gen4 Lanes
  • Market launch in 2H 2024 (expected)
  • FP11 Platform (55W-130W)

Each of the new Strix Halo APUs will support up to a whopping 96GB of DDR5 RAM, completely breaking away from the hardware limitation of just 32GB of memory on board the soon-to-be-released Intel Core Ultra 200V series “Lunar Lake” processors.

  • Ryzen AI Max+ 395: 16 cores, 32 threads (Zen 5) + 40 compute units (RDNA 3.5)
  • Ryzen AI Max 390: 12 cores, 24 threads (Zen 5) + 40 compute units (RDNA 3.5)
  • Ryzen AI Max 385: 8 cores, 16 threads (Zen 5) + 32 compute units (RDNA 3.5)

The company is reportedly working on new Strix Halo APUs, which will be split into three new versions: Ryzen AI Max+ 395, Ryzen AI Max 390, and Ryzen AI Max 385, each of which will differ in the number of CPU and GPU cores.

The new AMD Strix Halo APUs will feature two CCDs with 8 cores each, with the cheapest Ryzen AI Max 385 having 8C/16T, this chip only has one of the CCDs enabled (the other is disabled). However, the more expensive models will have 12 cores and 24 threads, and the monster 16 cores and 32 threads (this is just an APU, not a laptop or desktop processor, so 16C/32T is crazy).

Support for up to 96GB of RAM is a huge milestone for AMD, as Intel’s top-of-the-line Lunar Lake processors only ship with two memory options: 16GB and 32GB. Don’t get me wrong… it’s impressive: in-package memory, sitting right next to the SoC itself. That’s impressive, but the hard 32GB limit is pathetic for laptops that will ship in late 2024 and into 2025.