AMD's Ryzen AI Max chips came as a huge surprise at CES 2025. They're basically super-powered versions of the company's Ryzen AI hardware with up to 16 CPU cores and 50 RDNA 3.5 graphics cores, alongside a pool of as much as 128GB integrated RAM.

AMD served up a smorgasbord of new laptop processor lines: gamer-riffic X3D chips, a workstation-minded Ryzen AI Max family, and the new low-cost Ryzen 200 series.

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D has been a phenomenal success among what had been a fairly underwhelming Zen 5 lineup – we called it the new gaming

The new Ryzen AI Max chipsets were codenamed “Strix Halo” and offer powerful gaming, content creation, and AI performance across the full APU. With up to 128GB of memory on package that can be allocated between the CPU, GPU, or NPU as needed, the Ryzen AI Max chipset is an absolute beast of a processor.

AMD says the 9950X3D should be around 8 percent faster on average than the previous 7950X3D, based on benchmarks run on 40 games at 1080p. The gaming performance should be similar

AMD announced its Ryzen AI Max processors at CES, ushering in a new series of AMD-based AI PCs and laptops. The chipmaker also unveiled low- and midrange CPUs with AI capabilities, ensuring that buyers with different budgets have a chance to snag an AI PC.

W hen it comes to PC gaming if you’re looking to build a beast of a PC, you want the best components possible, and the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is arguably the best CPU on the market