Feed: AnandTech
Feed Link: https://www.anandtech.com
---

Title: The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Review: Unleashing Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5 Into
Notebooks

Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2024 09:00:00 EDT
Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21485/the-amd-...

During the opening keynote delivered by AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su at Computex 2024,
AMD finally lifted the lid on their highly-anticipated Zen 5
microarchitecture. The backbone for the next couple of years of everything
CPU at AMD, the company unveiled their plans to bring Zen 5 in the consumer
market, announcing both their next-generation mobile and desktop products at
the same time. With a tight schedule that will see both platforms launch
within weeks of each other, today AMD is taking their first step with the
launch of the Ryzen AI 300 series - codenamed Strix Point - their new Zen 5-
powered mobile SoC.

The latest and greatest from AMD, the Strix Point brings significant
architectural improvements across AMD's entire IP portfolio. Headlining the
chip, of course, is the company's new Zen 5 CPU microarchitecture, which is
taking multiple steps to improve on CPU performance without the benefits of
big clockspeed gains. And reflecting the industry's current heavy emphasis on
AI performance, Strix Point also includes the latest XDNA 2-based NPU, which
boasts up to 50 TOPS of performance. Other improvements include an upgraded
integrated graphics processor, with AMD moving to the RDNA 3.5 graphics
architecture.

The architectural updates in Strix Point are also seeing AMD opt for a
heterogenous CPU design from the very start, incorporating both performance
and efficiency cores as a means of offering better overall performance in
power-constrained devices. AMD first introduced their compact Zen cores in
the middle of the Zen 4 generation, and while they made it into products such
as AMD's small-die Phoenix 2 platform, this is the first time AMD's flagship
mobile silicon has included them as well. And while this change is going to
be transparent from a user perspective, under the hood it represents an
important improvement in CPU design. As a result, all Ryzen AI 300 chips are
going to include a mix of not only AMD's (mostly) full-fat Zen 5 CPU cores,
but also their compact Zen 5c cores, boosting the chips' total CPU core
counts and performance in multi-threaded situations.

For today's launch, the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series will consist of just three
SKUs: the flagship Ryzen AI 9 HX 375, with 12 CPU cores, as well as the Ryzen
AI 9 HX 370 and Ryzen 9 365, with 12 and 10 cores respectively. All three
SoCs combine both the regular Zen 5 core with the more compact Zen 5c cores
to make up the CPU cluster, and are paired with a powerful Raden 890M/880M
GPU, and a XDNA 2-based NPU.

As the successor to the Zen 4-based Phoenix/Hawk Point, the AMD Ryzen AI 300
series is targeting a diverse and active notebook market that has become the
largest segment of the PC industry overall. And it is telling that, for the
first time in the Zen era, AMD is launching their mobile chips first - if
only by days - rather than their typical desktop-first launch. It's both a
reflection on how the PC industry has changed over the years, and how AMD has
continued to iterate and improve upon its mobile chips; this is as close to
mobile-first as the company has ever been.

Getting down to business, for our review of the Ryzen AI 300 series, we are
taking a look at ASUS's Zenbook S 16 (2024), a 16-inch laptop that's equipped
with AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. The sightly more modest Ryzen features four Zen
5 CPU cores and 8 Zen 5c CPU cores, as well as AMD's latest RDNA 3.5 Radeon
890M integrated graphics. Overall, the HX 370 has a configurable TDP of
between 15 and 54 W, depending on the desired notebook configuration.

Fleshing out the rest of the Zenbook S 16, ASUS has equipped the laptop with
a bevy of features and technologies fitting for a flagship Ryzen notebook.
The centerpiece of the laptop is a Lumina OLED 16-inch display, with a
resolution of up to 2880 x 1800 and a variable 120 Hz refresh rate.
Meanwhile, inside the Zenbook S 16 is 32 GB of LPDDR5 memory and a 1 TB PCIe
4.0 NVMe SSD. And while this is a 16-inch class notebook, ASUS has still
designed it with an emphasis on portability, leading to the Zenbook S 16
coming in at 1.1 cm thick, and weighting 1.5 kg. That petite design also
means ASUS has configured the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chip inside rather
conservatively: out of the box, the chip runs at a TDP of just 17 Watts.

---
VRSS v2.1.180528