AMD is allegedly readying budget hexa-core Krackan Point APUs — Hybrid 3+3 core “Zen 5 + Zen 5c” offering surfaces at Geekbench

A new hexa-core processor under AMD’s Krackan Point (KRK) lineup of APUs has emerged at Geekbench – thanks to Olrak at X. The CPU wields a rather unconventional 3+3 hybrid configuration – taking a different approach than AMD did with its Phoenix 2 APUs.

Krackan Point is AMD’s cheaper alternative to Strix Point – packing upwards of eight cores and an eight Compute Unit (CU) RDNA 3.5-based iGPU (Integrated GPU). Krackan Point utilizes a hybrid-core design to save valuable die space, featuring up to four Zen 5 and four Zen 5c cores. The six-core offering has an OPN code of “100-000001600-40_Y,” corresponding to a Ryzen 5 APU per previously leaked shipping manifests. The benchmark, being an AI test, isn’t that exciting once you consider that Krackan employs the same 50 TOPS XDNA 2 NPU as Strix Point.

Going over the listed specs, the budget Ryzen 5 300 APU packs three Zen 5 and three Zen 5c cores alongside 12 threads – quite different from the Phoenix 2-based Ryzen 5 7545U – which had two Zen 4 and four Zen 4c cores. Moreover, the APU was being tested in an Asus validation platform and had a relatively low base frequency of 2 GHz – but that’s likely a result of early silicon.

AMD reintroduced a dual-CCX design with Strix Point – splitting up the Zen 5 and Zen 5c cores across different rings – with separate L3 caches for both core types. Interestingly, for the Krackan Point APU in question, Geekbench divides the core count into two clusters. However, Olrak suggests that AMD might package all six cores together – connected through a unified ring bus – sharing a coherent L3 cache. To chip in, the Ryzen 5 7545U (Phoenix 2) also employed a single CCX, but the final decision rests on AMD.

Rest assured, laptops powered by AMD’s Krackan Point offerings are set to arrive in early 2025 – starting at $799 if we go by leaks. Overall, CES 2025 will be jampacked with next-gen launches from all major players. Expect to see AMD unveil Krackan Point alongside Strix Halo APUs, Fire Range CPUs, and Radeon RX 8000 “RDNA 4” GPUs.