At CES 2025 in Las Vegas, AMD announced a number of new chips for devices ranging from desktops to gaming handhelds.
AMD is in great shape heading into this year's CES. The company captured a 28.7% share in the desktop CPU segment in the third quarter of 2024, an increase of 9.6 percentage points compared to the same period last year. In the mobile space, AMD held 22.3% of the chip market in the third quarter of last year, up 2.8 percentage points from the previous fiscal year.
But the company isn't resting on its laurels. AMD's 2025 strategy is aggressive and multifaceted, starting with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D.
Aimed at “gamers and creators,” the 9950X3D features 16 cores based on AMD's Zen 5 architecture and clocks up to 5.7 GHz. According to the company's benchmarks, the 9950X3D is on average 8% faster than AMD's 7950X3D in popular games like Hogwarts Legacy and Starfield.
Image credit: AMD
AMD says the 9950X3D will ship in the first quarter of 2025, along with the Ryzen 9 9900X3D, a lower-tier processor with 12 cores clocked at up to 5.5GHz.
To complement the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D, AMD also announced a new lineup of “Fire Range” chips targeted at midrange laptops and ultraportables. Scheduled to launch in the first half of 2025, the series (including the Ryzen 9 9850HX, 9955HX, and 9955HX3D) will offer 12 to 16 cores clocked at up to 5.2 GHz to 5.4 GHz.
In particular, the Fire Range chip consumes approximately 54W of power. This is less than half the wattage requirement of the 9950X3D (170W).
AI PC chip
To power the next generation of Copilot+ PCs (laptops and compact desktops with AI-accelerated Windows 11 features), AMD launches new and refreshed processor series: Ryzen AI 300 Series and Ryzen AI Max Series .
All chips in this series feature a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) to accelerate certain AI workloads, such as running text summarization language models and AI-powered image editors in Windows 11.
Scheduled to launch in Q1/Q2 2025, Ryzen 300 series chips will feature 6-8 cores running at up to 5GHz and offer “24+'' battery life in best-case scenarios (e.g., light duty only). It will come true. ). There are four SKUs: Ryzen AI 7 350, Ryzen AI 5 340, Ryzen AI 7 Pro 350, and Ryzen AI 5 Pro 340.
Image credit: AMD
As for Ryzen AI Max, it's AMD's flagship product for Copilot+ PCs, featuring 6 to 16 cores running at up to 5.1 GHz, combined with integrated graphics and a new memory interface. AMD claims that its Ryzen AI Max chips can achieve cutting-edge 3D rendering and AI application performance.
The series includes the following SKUs: Ryzen AI Max+ 395, Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395, Ryzen AI Max 390, Ryzen AI Max Pro 390, Ryzen AI Max 385, Ryzen AI Max Pro 385, Ryzen AI Max Pro 380. Scheduled to launch in the first quarter or early second quarter.
AMD also debuted its new Ryzen 200 series of chips, targeting more budget-friendly “mainstream” devices. The processors, most of which are sports NPUs, will feature 6-8 cores clocked at up to 5.2GHz and are expected to launch in Q2 2025.
handheld processor
Handheld PCs like Valve's Steam Deck continue to be a major growth area for AMD. To this end, the chipmaker announced its new Ryzen Z2 series of processors, aimed at a lightweight and gaming-focused form factor.
There's the Ryzen Z2 Go with 4 cores and 12 graphics cores clocked up to 4.3GHz, and the Ryzen Z2 Extreme with 8 cores and 16 graphics cores clocked up to 5.0GHz. These join the 8-core Ryzen Z2, which has a top core speed of 5.1 GHz and 12 graphics cores.
All three Ryzen Z2 SKUs are expected to launch in Q1 2025.
graphics card
Finally, AMD announced its next discrete desktop GPUs, the Radeon RX 9070 XT and Radeon RX 9070. These are based on the company's RDNA 4 architecture, or 4nm architecture, which the company says has improved ray tracing performance and better performance. Improved media encoding quality and AI acceleration.
RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 cards are expected to be available in Q1 2025 from manufacturers including Acer, Asus, Gigabyte, and XFX.
Image credit: AMD
AMD highlighted its FidelityFX Super Resolution 4.0 upscaling technology, which it says was developed for RDNA 4 hardware. According to AMD, Super Resolution 4.0 leverages AI algorithms to upscale game content to up to 4K resolution with minimal delay.
In a related development, AMD Adrenalin, AMD's software that allows users to manage and tune AMD hardware, including Radeon graphics cards, includes new AI capabilities. Adrenalin uses built-in image generation models to generate images, leverages local language models to summarize files such as PDFs, and can answer AMD-related questions via an AI-powered chatbot interface. It has become.