AMD may completely dominate CES 2025

AMD might really go all-out during CES 2025 this January. According to a known leaker on the Chiphell forums, AMD is readying a slew of consumer products, ranging from more X3D desktop CPUs to handheld chips and RDNA 4 graphics cards. Here’s what we have to look forward to.

The tantalizing bit of gossip comes from Zhangzhonghao, a leaker who’s been known to discuss new releases ahead of time. Starting with laptops, AMD is reportedly set to release next-gen Kraken (or “Krackan” as referred to by this leaker) Point APUs alongside Ryzen AI Max (or Strix Halo) and, lastly, Fire Range CPUs.

That’s a lot of different product ranges, so for a quick refresher, Kraken Point is expected to be the successor to AMD’s current Ryzen 8040 series. Leakers claim that it’ll come with up to four standard Zen 5 cores and four Zen 5c cores, as well as RDNA 3.5 graphics with up to eight compute units (CUs).

Strix Halo processors are more on the high end of the scale, and AMD may launch three laptop CPUs to start with, all under the Ryzen AI Max umbrella: The Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with 16 cores, the Ryzen AI Max 390 with 12 cores, and the Ryzen AI Max 385 with eight cores. All of them will offer built-in RDNA 3.5 graphics. Fire Range is the successor to Dragon Range and will essentially be the laptop version of Zen 5 desktop CPUs aimed at high-performance laptops for gamers. Zhangzhonghao also claims that AMD will unveil X3D CPUs for laptops at the same time.

Those on the hunt for some of the best gaming handhelds will be able to look forward to a mix of new chips, including the Ryzen Z2, the Ryzen Z2 Extreme, and the Ryzen Z2G. The Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip powered many successful handheld PCs, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of improvements AMD will introduce with its next-gen options.

The graphics cards part of the announcement is no surprise: AMD is said to be launching RDNA 4 GPUs during CES 2025. For a long time now, it’s been said that AMD will let Nvidia dominate the high-end portion of the market and will stick to mainstream GPUs with this generation. This could mean a flagship RX 8800 XT, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Lastly, there are the Zen 5 X3D CPUs. AMD itself confirmed that it’ll unveil a new Ryzen 9000X3D CPU on November 7, but it didn’t specify which exact model it will be. However, most sources expect it to be the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and this leak only serves to prove that. AMD will follow it up with the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and the Ryzen 9 9950X3D at CES 2025.

This has been a fairly disappointing year for PC hardware. While we’ve had new desktop CPUs from both Intel and AMD, they mostly failed to deliver much in the way of gen-on-gen improvements. GPU enthusiasts endured the greatest disappointment, as out of the three new lineups we’ve expected to see in 2024, not one was actually released. However, it looks like CES 2025 will make it all better, with AMD’s stack of new products and Nvidia’s RTX 50-series said to be announced at the same time.