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's latest Ryzen AI Max chips probably wouldn't have existed without Apple, an AMD executive has admitted, thanks to the popularity of Apple Silicon.

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. All of these chips are set to become available over the course of 2025.

The former is now known as the Ryzen AI Max and Ryzen AI Max Plus, boasting the most powerful graphics AMD’s ever put in a chip, with up to 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units, 16 Zen 5 C

AMD kicks of CES 2025 with a bang: its Ryzen AI Max processor combines discrete-level graphics with powerful AI, all surrounding a state-of-the-art Zen 5 CPU.

What this enables is some truly monstrous improvements over Intel’s Core Ultra 9 288V. For example, for creative workloads, the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 has an average 2.6x faster rendering time in the likes of Blender and Cinebench. As for games, you’re seeing an average 1.4x faster GPU performance in 3DMark tests.

Not only has Apple left its CPUs in the dust, but AMD’s new Ryzan AI Max chips claim to do the same to Intel’s flagship Core Ultra 9 288V. The new chips take the same approach as Apple Silicon in combining CPU,