Huge leak of next-gen Asus gaming laptops suggests just how powerful Strix Point CPUs could be

Asus' upcoming Strix Point gaming and productivity laptops appear to have leaked online as listings confirm the hardware and model numbers which could soon be available for purchase.

Starting with productivity machines, Harukaze5719, a regular leaker on X (formerly Twitter), posted a screenshot seemingly confirming that the Asus Vivobook S 16 OLED will feature the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 170 processor which features 12 cores and 24 threads with an NPU running at 77 TOPs (trillions of operations per second). The chip is shown with a boost clock of up to 5.1GHz and 36MB of L3 cache.

If this leak is right, we can also see that the Strix Point AI PCs will co-exist alongside Hawk Point models which appear to feature more conventional CPUs under the Ryzen 8050 brand. Spotted processors in this category include the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS and the Ryzen 7 8845HS, high-end and mid-range solutions respectively; all of which appear to be paired with Nvidia RTX 40 series GPUs. 

This isn't the only leak that has sprung around Asus hardware, either. According to Wccftech, the entire incoming line of Asus Creator ProArt X13 and P16, the TUF Gaming A14 and A16, and ROG Zephyrus G16 laptops running Strix Point have had their model numbers and specs detailed, too. 

What's most interesting about the leaked specs is that the Asus ROG flagship will reportedly feature up to an RTX 4070 which leaves the more powerful RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 out of the equation. This is corroborated by a now-deleted retailer listing which outlines the Asus ROG Zephyrus with the model number "GA605WI-O93210G0W" running a 12-core Zen 5 APU with 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM and the aforementioned GPU. 

Things are getting hot and heavy

Taking Asus as a prime example, there already appears to be some division between the AMD APUs for AI PCs and the more conventional mobile CPUs which will be found in the Ryzen 9000 and 8000 series at the same time. The naming conventions leave a lot to be desired, and the 'AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 170' is clunky to say the least.

What's interesting about AMD's Ryzen AI APUs is that they are clocked lower than we've seen from the current range of gaming processors. Should the Ryzen AI 9 HX 170 be the flagship at 5.1GHz as suggested, clearly the rest of the line-up is going to be lagging behind that clock speed. At a time when Intel's current crop of CPUs is closing on 6GHz on mobile, that's a little disappointing. 

Ultimately it's going to come down to utilization as the power is being split between the CPU, integrated RDNA 3 GPU, and the NPU which will supposedly be up to 77 TOPs (very fast). The implementation of integrated graphics paired with a discrete graphics processor means even more grunt for hardware accelerated AI processing alongside that nippy NPU on the chip. As for how this all comes together, that remains to be seen.

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