3DMark benchmarks show off AMD’s big daddy Strix Halo laptop chip in action and I’m a little underwhelmed

Strix Halo, AMD’s upcoming and extremely large APU, has finally seen some benchmarks in 3DMark Time Spy. These early results are in line with its Geekbench debut last December. This is not only a potential affirmation of what we previously saw but a sign its performance may be a little worse than we expected (hoped).

Over on the Baidu forums (as spotted by Wccftech), two pictures were posted, one of which showing what was claimed to be the AMD Radeon 8050S integrated GPU but the CPU’s OPN actually suggests it is the 8060S-equipped AI Max+ 395. This is more than likely just a prelaunch software or database issue. This device managed to achieve a GPU score of 10,106 and a CPU score of 5,571 points in 3DMark Time Spy.

For clarity, that GPU score places what is currently assumed to be the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 around 2,000 points in the GPU category ahead of the average score of laptop RTX 4050 scores on 3DMark’s website, and just a few hundred points behind laptop RTX 4060 scores. 3DMark is a pretty good benchmark for understanding graphical power though it’s important to note it’s not the be-all and end-all of gaming performance. A wider suite of games might give a better idea, but nevertheless this is a good starting point to figure out where AMD’s top APU lands.

Ryzen’s APU goes without a dedicated GPU, like those measured laptops above, which means if the score holds firm in actual testing, we might be able to expect RTX 4060 laptop performance out of this chip when it lands in gaming laptops, and at least one tablet from Asus.

We were hoping for a little more from the big leap in graphics cores to make the larger APU worth it over more power-savvy numbers for handhelds, like the Ryzen AI 9 HX 390. AMD previously suggested the top-end chip would perform similarly to an RTX 4070 gaming laptop (well, tablet) but these early figures put it closer to an RTX 4060 laptop. Discrete performance from an integrated GPU is still impressive but not quite what we were expecting.

It reportedly took AMD four goes to actually get the Strix Halo APU right and that’s because it’s more bespoke than one might think on first look. Strix Halo uses its own Zen 5-based CPU CCDs and it uses a new way to interconnect them, as the methods to get the Ryzen 9 9950X up and running saw limitations in power efficiency.

This power efficiency could allow the chip to become less power-hungry, which is a natural boon for the battery life of gaming laptops. That being said, the configurable wattage of this chip goes all the way up to 120 W and any change in the power of a given machine could make for large fluctuations in performance.