Many RTX 50 series laptops may stick with previous-gen CPUs for 2025 — leaker claims affordable CPU product launches are becoming increasingly difficult

A new leak claims that next-generation RTX 50 series laptops arriving in 2025 will not be predominantly powered by the latest generation of Intel and AMD CPUs. A reliable hardware leaker, Golden Pig Upgrade Pack, shared on Weibo that many vendors may pair mobile RTX 50-series GPUs with 13th and 14th Generation Intel or AMD Zen 4 CPUs.

According to the leaker (machine translation), “it is predicted that the notebook platform combination next year will be mainly N-1 or even N-2 generation CPU + 50 series. If Intel wants to stop the 13th generation HX, then 14650HX + 50 series will be the main force. AMD has Zen4 + 50 series.”

Golden Pig says that “it is becoming increasingly difficult to launch new CPU products economically. The notebook CPU product position should be readjusted in the future. At least the desktop U should be the last generation, but that will be in 2027.”

It’s important to highlight that the leaker doesn’t claim that all gaming laptops using the RTX 50 series will leverage previous-generation CPUs. Still, apparently, the vast majority of these devices will be.

The leaker’s claims seemingly concern the economic side, meaning Arrow Lake.H/HX may be significantly more expensive than previous-generation chips for laptop vendors. If that were the case, it would make sense for vendors to stick to mobile Raptor Lake or Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs for most of the product portfolio instead of using the latest and greatest chips. We also have to look at it from a performance perspective. Perhaps Arrow Lake-H/HX isn’t a strong gaming performer due to the lack of CPU cores.

Of course, all of this is speculation. Intel’s Arrow Lake-H/HX series is rumored to launch in the first quarter of 2025, while Nvidia’s upcoming mobile GeForce RTX 50 series purportedly launches in early 2025.