AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 7945HS: Revolutionizing Mobile Computing with Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024 Edition) Gaming Laptop Review: AMD "Strix Point" Ryzen AI 9 HX 370

The ROG Zephyrus is a mid-range portfolio offering from the ASUS ROG gaming brand that tows both sides of the market with Intel and AMD-powered systems. More recently, with the launch of Strix Point APUs, AMD has brought Zen 5 architecture to mobile, and with that, ASUS has launched an entire lineup under the G16 branding, and we just so happened to get our hands on a unit for testing! Hardware for the 2024 Zephyrus G16 comes in several flavors, all powered by the new AMD Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 APU. This APU has 12 cores and 24 threads in a traditional CPU design. Base and boost clocks come in at 2GHz and 5.1GHz, respectively, while the onboard NPU, which AMD calls their XDNA NPU, offers 50 TOPS of performance. The memory situation for Zephyrus could be better, as this unit does feature soldered LPDDR5X. That said, this allows for higher speed memory of 7500MHz - ASUS sent our unit with 32GB, the maximum available for this lineup. NVIDIA supplies the graphics for the G16 on both sides of the aisle. Our unit shipped with the GeForce RTX 4070 offering with 8GB of VRAM. It connects to the 16" WQXGA panel with a beautiful 1600p resolution backed by Dolby Vision HDR 100% DCI-P3 certified, so creative professionals will surely enjoy it. This machine's connectivity is excellent. Two USB3.2 Gen 2 use the Type-A port and two USB-C, one taking advantage of USB4 and the other using USB3.2 Gen 2. And it's worth noting that both USB-C ports support DisplayPort connectivity and Power Delivery. Additionally, we have HDMI 2.1 and an SD card slot that supports the SD Express 7.0 specification. The pricing of the ROG Zephyrus G16, as configured above, comes in at $2299. The G16 was delivered to our door in its retail form as usual. The power adapter is branded ASUS and is a 200W model. Unboxing, the Zephyrus is an absolute masterpiece with a modern design on an aluminum chassis. The machine's ports include power, HDMI, USB4, and a single USB 3.2 on the left side. The right side of the machine gives us the second USB-C, USB-A, and SD card slot. The bottom of the unit is nearly fully vented. Rubber feet keep the machine off your desktop. Opening up the G16, we have a solid workspace. The keyboard is a chiclet design that offers a centered design. It does offer a midrange tactile click, which is certainly in my wheelhouse. The lighting on this board is a single zone but supports AURA Sync. The trackpad is sizable, again, much to my liking, and it is nearly seamless to the chassis, which I adore even more. It offers a shallow tactile click across the surface, and movement is without issue. The display on this model is a 16" 2560x1600p panel offering a fantastic 240Hz refresh rate. It is 100% DCI-P3 certified, so it's ready for video production and does support Dolby Vision HDR. The colors on this panel were quite good; it is one of the better panels we have seen. It is not quite OLED, but we were getting close. When the G16 is opened, the battery occupies the bottom half of the chassis, which is standard for vendors. Above, we have both NVMe slots flanking the M.2 PCIe Wi-Fi slot in the center. The Zephyrus has quite extensive cooling. It includes three fans, with two more giant fans pushing through a massive copper heatpipe array that ASUS says can offer 0db ambient cooling under appropriate conditions. In the center, we have yet another fan that offers additional cooling directly to the motherboard. Additionally, these fans can push up to 11% more flow than 1st generation Arc Flow offerings in the previous Zephyrus. Unfortunately, the Zephyrus G16 is not a very friendly machine in terms of upgradability; in fact, nothing apart from the two NVMe slots and perhaps the PCIe-based Wi-Fi card can be upgraded. Consumers must specify their model appropriately when purchasing and possibly consider future-proofing. The ROG Zephyrus G16's BIOS is similar to that found on ROG motherboards. It has an "easy mode" that gives users access to all the basic options, such as system layout, CPU, GPU, memory, display resolution, USB ports, and storage. In addition to the accessible mode, an advanced mode displays hardware information in more detail. It includes options for Cloud Recovery, System Diagnostics, Armoury Crate, SVM Mode, and Display Mode, as well as settings for EZ-Flash to update the BIOS. Performance can be tuned through the Armoury Crate while doubling as a full suite for hardware monitoring. The image above shows that the G16 supports slash slighting, which offers customization of the machine's lid. Additional options in Armoury Crate include tuning the display through Game Visual; several presets are available. Cinebench is a long-standing render benchmark that Intel and AMD have relied on to highlight their newest platforms during unveilings. The benchmark has two tests: a single-core workload that utilizes one thread or 1T and a multi-threaded test that uses all threads or nT of a tested CPU. In Cinebench 2024, the G16 landed with a 116 single core score and 1217 nT. CrossMark is an easy-to-run native cross-platform benchmark that uses real-world application models to measure overall system performance and responsiveness. CrossMark supports devices running Windows, iOS, and macOS platforms. CrossMark picked up 1829 overall, which puts the machine at the bottom middle of the charts. Memory performance was 89K read, 102K write, and 82K copy. The latency was 114ns. Geekbench scored 2836 in single-core workloads and 14766 in multi-core, sticking to the middle of our charts. We added in a quick AI run with the ONNX CPU workload. The G16 offered the highest Quantized and the best half-precision scores, coming in at 916 and 5161, respectively. Looking at the GPU, we picked up 105K in OpenCL and 112K in Vulkan. We also tested the 890M in the HX 370 and picked up 44K and 45K, respectively. DirectML on the RTX 4070 gave us a second AI workload for the G16. The Zephyrus pulled a solid 31K half-precision score and 18K single-precision. PCMark Extended landed at 10545, the middle of the pack of all gaming laptops tested. Surprisingly, the CPU Profile for one and two cores has us near the top of the chart, with the G16 picking up 1173 single-core and 2283 multi-core. Increasing the core counts to four, eight, and sixteen, we pick up where we left off with 4255 at four threads and 6599 at eight. We finish with a score of 8292 at sixteen threads. Storage landed at the bottom of our charts. The Zephyrus did not come with the best drive from the factory, only pushing 152 MB/s throughput. Pushing into gaming benchmarks, Steel Nomad gives us a score of 2554 with the RTX 4070. In Cyberpunk 2077, the Zephyrus scored a solid 86 FPS with the low preset, 66 FPS at medium settings, and 55 FPS with the high preset. These are all solid and easily playable framerates from the HX 370 + RTX 4070 combo. Forza Motorsport is tricky because it uses dynamic rendering. The G16 came in at 104 FPS using the low preset. Performance held quite well moving into the medium setup at 103, losing nearly no FPS. Last, we have high settings, finishing testing at 93 FPS. With the low preset, Ashes initially delivered 109 FPS. When we increased it to high, we saw a modest drop to 105 FPS. Upon further rising to the crazy preset, we shook up the RTX 4070 a bit, pulling it down to 71 FPS. We did run through the gaming battery life test in PCMark, though we aren't sure how many choose to run games in this configuration. The ROG Zephyrus did quite well, offering nearly 2.5 hours of battery life in the gaming scenario. The Zephyrus G16 is just our second look at an ASUS gaming laptop, both coming from the ROG arm of the company. The Zephyrus is different, offering a modern aesthetic that would make you think it's just a run-of-the-mill productivity machine without knowing the underlying hardware, which is genuinely quite good and capable. The chassis is an aluminum masterpiece with a unique slash lighting lid on a dark metallic colorway that pops on your desk like a work of art. The keyboard has a solid chiclet design, offering single-zone lighting. It provides plenty of feedback for those who need that comfort when typing while not making you fat finger keys when gaming. The new AMD Zen 5-based Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 offers impressive performance compared to AMD's previous mobile products. Although Intel's Raptor Lake CPUs still perform better in single-thread or single-core workloads due to their higher IPC, the HX 370 excels in multi-core tasks, outperforming the entire Meteor Lake H lineup by a solid margin in many of our workloads, as evidenced by our charts. In broader system-wide workloads, the HX 370 performs well in both CrossMark and PCMark, with Crossmark placing the G16 in the middle of the pack and PCMark showing the machine to be 100 points faster than the Legion 7i we recently reviewed, one of the better Intel-powered machines. As for pricing, the Zephyrus G16 is reasonably priced at $2299, though it does appear that ASUS has the entire market on lockdown, with not one other vendor offering an HX 370-powered machine.

ASUS Zenbook S16 Laptop Review - Showcasing AMD's Strix Point APU

The new ASUS Zenbook S16 is one of the very first laptops to market with AMD's brand new Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" APU, and boy, does it leave a smile on your face. It's a beautiful laptop from the moment you open up the box to putting your hands on the keyboard and then turning on that 16-inch 3K (2880 x 1800) 120Hz ASUS Lumina OLED display. It's gorgeous. ASUS is using some proprietary materials on the new Zenbook S16, with an aluminum + ceramic mix it calls "Ceraluminum" and it is oh-so-very Apple-like, and I love it. It's super-premium, super-swish, and makes the Zenbook S16 feel even more premium than it already is. The attention to detail by ASUS is nothing short of incredible. Yeah, it'll fit into your backpack, and you can carry it one-handed: ASUS has built a beautiful, powerful, thin-and-light laptop powered by the new Strix Point APU from AMD with its new Zenbook S16. You can very easily hold it in one hand (whether opened or closed) to tote it around or throw it in your backpack, and it takes up just a tiny amount of room. The ASUS Zenbook S16 measures in at 13.92 x 9.57 x 0.47 inches and weighs 3.31 pounds, making it quite light. In comparison, Apple's 15-inch MacBook Air powered by the M3 processor (the new 2024 model) measures in at 13.4 x 9.35 x 0.45 inches and 3.3 pounds making the Zenbook S16 just a tad thicker, and a smidge heavier than the M3-powered 15-inch MacBook Air. On the left side, we've got 2 x USB4 Type-C ports, an HDMI 2.1 output, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the right side, we've got USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A and a full-sized SD card slot. ASUS takes the design of the Zenbook S16 OLED to an 11, with the company completely redesigning the laptop from the inside out. ASUS is using its exquisite new high-end "Ceralaminum" which provides the characteristics of hardness, while completing the ultra-slim design that just looks fantastic. Inside, the ASUS Zenbook S16 OLED features AMD's new Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APU that is enhanced by quiet ambient cooling (and only 33W of power). It's only 1.1cm thin, packing in an advanced 16-inch 3K 120Hz ASUS Lumina OLED display, and a 6-speaker sound system. 16-inch 3K resolution (2880 x 1800) OLED panel with both touch and stylus support at a super-smooth 120Hz refresh rate and 0.2ms response time. There's up to 500 nits of peak brightness, 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and 100% DCI-P3 color gamut coverage. Wait, what is Ceraluminum? The high-tech ceramic that was revered by the aerospace and luxury watch industries is an industry-first innovation that provides increased strength, resisting wear with ease. ASUS says Ceraluminum isn't just durable, it's a "symbol of endurance and individuality". To the physical touch, the Ceraluminum on the Zenbook S16 is nothing short of awesome, it feels incredible, very premium. Yeah, it's thin and light alright: The ASUS Zenbook S16 OLED laptop is just 1.1cm thin and only 1.5kg in weight, so you can lug it around in one hand without an issue, or throw it directly into your backpack without taking up half the space inside of your bag. It might be thin and light, but the Zenbook S16 will provide its ample performance efficiently with just 33W of power consumption, thanks to its advanced cooling system packing dual fans, an ultra-slim vapor chamber, and geometric grille design. This enables the optimal 28W TDP without throttling, even under heavy loads, all while maintaining a whisper-quiet under-25dB operation in light workloads through ambient cooling technology. The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" CPU has 12 cores and 24 threads of Zen 5 processing power at up to 5.1GHz, simply blowing away Qualcomm and Intel's offerings, while Intel is in the middle of launching its new Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" CPUs, as it stands the Strix Point APU beats everything Intel has in mobile right now. Connectivity-wise, ASUS has it in spades with the Zenbook S16 OLED: we've got 2 x USB 4 Type-C ports which both support DisplayPort and USB-PD output, a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port and a single USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A port. You've also got Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, so wired and wireless connectivity are taken care of. ASUS uses an utterly gorgeous 16-inch ASUS Lumina OLED panel on the Zenbook S16, with a native 2880 x 1800 resolution and uber-smooth 120Hz refresh rate. It's bananas for gaming and adds to productivity. Flying around your desktop and the operating system at 120Hz is far, far better than 60Hz. ASUS uses a beautiful backlit chiclet keyboard that feels utterly fantastic to type on, coming in off my time with the Dell XPS 16, the Zenbook S16 keyboard is leaaaaagues better. There's a dedicated Copilot+ button on the Zenbook S16, proving you with access to an AI-powered assistant inside of Windows. Above the keyboard, you'll see something that resembles a CNC-machined speaker grill, but it's not; it's an external vent for cooling. In my laptop reviews I will fully shift over to the particular one I'm using at the time, so in this case I had some great time (around two weeks) with the ASUS Zenbook S16 OLED and fell in love. I'm in Chrome all day long most days of the week, with an unreasonable amount of Chrome tabs open. I normally sit here and listen to music through Spotify, with my Apple AirPods Max headphones connected (the only Apple product I own) through Bluetooth to the Zenbook S16 OLED laptop. I've got the brightness on 100% all the time and plugged in, obviously (apart from when I'm testing battery life). 70-80% of my day would be writing content for TweakTown, while the other is split between web surfing, scrolling X, and playing Overwatch 2, of course. The ASUS Zenbook S16 OLED was an absolute joy to use, feeling uber-premium from the start with its premium look and feel... but then you see the 16-inch 1800p 120Hz OLED panel, and you instantly fall in love. I did, and I know you will, too. The integrated RDNA 3.5 GPU inside of the Strix Point APU was able to handle AAA games like Forza Horizon 5 at over 60FPS, while Overwatch 2 is something I need to play with at least 120FPS. After dialing down all of the settings in the graphics menu, and turning on FSR, I was getting a respectable 90-110FPS average on the Zenbook S16 OLED. Not perfect, but a damn impressive result considering how thin and light this laptop is and that it only draws a maximum of 33W of power. It's sitting there sipping power, blasting out a super-bright, beautiful 1800p 120Hz OLED, and still pumping around 100FPS in Overwatch 2; not bad, not bad at all. ASUS has a bunch of AI features inside of the Zenbook S16 with the latest AMD Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APU and its dedicated NPU for AI workloads offering 50 TOPS of performance. We have Copilot+ in Windows as your everyday AI companion, and a suite of ASUS AI applications. ASUS includes a bunch of AI features with the new Zenbook S16 laptop, including rich content assistance, superior video calls, captions in real-time, background removal, video generator, and a media hub. There's plenty to do if you want to play with some AI on the ASUS laptop. There's also plenty of security and privacy with the ASUS Zenbook S16, with the ultimate security delivered through Windows Hello and its facial recognition technology. There's also Microsoft Pluton, which integrates cutting-edge hardware, firmware, and software to defend against threads -- built into the CPU itself. For the synthetic testing side of things, I'm only using a couple of benchmarks on the Strix Point APU: 3DMark (TimeSpy Extreme, TimeSpy, and FireStrike Ultra) as well as the ever-reliant Cinebench 2024 benchmark. New laptop, gotta run Cinebench 2024 right? The single-threaded and multi-threaded tests of Cinebench 2024 are a fantastic benchmark to see your CPU or APU stretch its legs on the open benchmarking road. Performance thoughts: Between the different Windows 11 build 23H2 and 24H2, we notice close to 10% more performance on the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" APU. Not bad at all. Once again, it was a free performance, my friends. It was a free performance. Not that you'll be running Cinebench 2024 all day, but we can see the raw performance of Zen 5 scaling up with a simple Windows 11 update. Ahhhh, 3DMark, it wouldn't be a benchmarking session without you. For the ASUS Zenbook S16 OLED laptop and its AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" APU, we've got to run some 3DMark tests on this chip. We're running TimeSpy Extreme, TimeSpy, and FireStrike Extreme. Performance thoughts: As you can see from the TimeSpy Extreme score, the new 24H2 update adds a chunky 39% faster in its CPU score while adding another 8.6% performance to the graphics score in TSE. Not bad, not bad. However, we see some regression in performance in FireStrike Ultra. On the gaming side of things, I've only tested a few games on the Strix Point APU between the 23H2 and 24H2 updates. For games, we've got Black Myth: Wukong, Cyberpunk 2077, and Forza Horizon 5, all using their built-in benchmarks to keep everything nice and neat and repeatable. I did do some different resolutions, FSR enabled and disabled, and low, medium, high, and ultra graphics presets in Cyberpunk 2077 and Forza Horizon 5. For Cyberpunk 2077, I've tested at 1080p only, but provided stock presets and then re-benched with RT (ray tracing) and FSR (AMD's in-house AI-powered FidelityFX Super Resolution tech, their answer to NVIDIA DLSS). In Forza Horizon 5, we've got a different style of game to Cyberpunk 2077 (it's a driving game, duh) so I've run FH5 in both 1080p at Medium and Ultra presets, then again with FSR 2.2 on Performance enabled, and then again at 1800p at Medium and Ultra presets (with FSR disabled), and then again with FSR 2.2 enabled on Performance. For Black Myth: Wukong, I've run just the native 2880 x 1800 resolution (1800p) on the ASUS Zenbook S16 OLED laptop, and you will be damn surprised at what the Windows 11 build 24H2 brings to the table over 23H2. As you scroll down through these benchmarks, we've got Cyberpunk 2077 running at native 1080p with ray tracing (RT) disabled, and FSR disabled. From top to bottom, we've got Low, Medium, High, and the Ultra preset. Performance thoughts: Cyberpunk 2077 enjoys around 10% more performance on the Low, Medium, and High presets at native 1080p with the new 24H2 update on the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" APU while enjoying over 20% more performance on the Ultra preset (26FPS versus 33FPS average). Now, let's enable some ray tracing and turn on FSR 2.1 onto Performance and see how this Strix Point APU goes with the new 24H2 update. Once again we're running 1080p here, with RT enabled and FSR 2.1 @ Performance, from top to bottom we've got Low, Medium, High and Overdrive RT presets. Performance thoughts: The gains are more visible, but that's because the FPS is dropping at the same time because we've enabled RT (at Low, Medium, High, and Overdrive). At 1080p on the Low RT setting, we've got 28FPS on the 23H2 build but 32FPS on 24H2. 30FPS+ running Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p with RT enabled at just 33W of power on this Strix Point APU is damn, damn impressive. Forza Horizon 5 gets some tweaked testing, with both 1080p and 1800p resolutions tested. I've run 1080p at both the Medium and Ultra presets and then again with FSR 2.2 enabled on Performance mode. Once again, I've re-run the benches at 1800p on the Medium and Ultra presets and then again with FSR 2.2 enabled on Performance mode. From top to bottom we've got 1080p on the Medium preset, 1080p on the Medium preset with FSR 2.2 on Performance, and then again at 1080p but this time at Ultra, and once again at Ultra with FSR 2.2 on Performance. Performance thoughts: Straight away, we can see the huge performance improvement on the Strix Point APU between Windows 11 build 23H2 and 24H2, with a gigantic 28% performance improvement at 1080p on the Medium preset (no FSR 2.2 enabled). This is a AAA game running at 60FPS on an APU sipping just 33W, bloody awesome. But what about FSR? Forza Horizon 5 running at 1080p on the Medium preset with FSR 2.2 enabled and on Performance mode, bumps that up to a huge 82FPS - and that's up from a solid 60FPS on the 23H2 build. 24H2 delivers a whopping 36% performance improvement. That's just at the Medium preset, and the same performance uplifts are noticed on the Ultra setting with 26% more performance on Ultra without FSR at 1080p, and a gigantic 45% uplift with FSR enabled. Wow. Once again, but at 1800p with the same bench runs from top to bottom: 1800p on the Medium preset, then again with FSR 2.2 on Performance. After that, we've got 1800p again but on the Ultra preset, and then once more (with feeling) on Ultra but with FSR 2.2 enabled on Performance. Performance thoughts: Alrighty, this is the situation that something like the ASUS Zenbook S16 OLED laptop is made for: a fantastic workstation and content creation laptop, with some awesome AAA games running at 60FPS+ on that 2880 x 1800 (1800p) OLED panel at a super-smooth 120Hz. Forza Horizon 5, running at its native 2880 x 1800 resolution on the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" APU, is spitting out a 37FPS average on Windows 11 build 23H2, but on 24H2 that skyrockets to 51FPS - a 37% increase. At 1800p on the Ultra preset with FSR enabled, you can enjoy a decent 33FPS average. I wouldn't play at 1800p myself on the Strix Point APU, but I would easily play a game like Forza Horizon 5 at native 1800p and 51FPS at Medium settings. It looks great, runs great, and once again, all for 33W. For Black Myth: Wukong, I only ran the native resolution of 2880 x 1800 on the ASUS Zenbook S16 OLED laptop, with massively surprising results out of one of the most talked about games of the moment. I did a similar run on Black Myth: Wukong from top to bottom of Low, Medium, High, Very High, and the Cinematic presets. I enabled FSR 3 at 40% scaling, no ray tracing (RT) with FG (Frame Generation) enabled. Check them out: Performance thoughts: Yeah wow, Windows 11 build 23H2 to 24H2 offers some huge improvements on the Strix Point APU. We're talking about 32FPS to an incredible 58FPS, which is a mind-boggling 81% improvement in performance with a simple Windows update on the Low preset of Black Myth: Wukong. I re-ran this test a few times just to be sure. But even on the Medium preset (again, this is with FSR 3 enabled), we're talking about going from 28FPS to 47FPS, making the game far more playable, an improvement of 67%, all for free through a Windows update. Fantastic to see, and a reminder: all at just 33W through the Strix Point APU. Hot damn. Note: your performance will match the 24H2 results in the above charts, the Zenbook S16 laptop was tested before and after the update. The new ASUS Zenbook S16 is priced at $3499 AUD in Australia or around $1700 USD in the USA, configured with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" APU, 32GB of LPDDR5X memory, and 1TB of Gen4 SSD. You're bestowed upon by a beautiful 16-inch 3K ASUS Lumina OLED display (2880 x 1800) with a smooth 120Hz refresh rate, powered by RDNA 3.5-based Radeon 890M integrated graphics. ASUS uses its new in-house "Ceraliminum" coating on the Zenbook S16, which truly has to be felt in order to be believed. It's very, very Apple-y and I totally, totally love it. From the very first moment of taking the Zenbook S16 out of the box, you know you're in for a quality product through and through. It's not just for looks either, as the Ceraliminum coating strengthens the chassis, too. If you are after a new laptop and didn't want something too cheap and wanted higher-end features like a 16-inch 3K 120Hz OLED, a fantastic keyboard, and a beefed-up RDNA 3.5-powered integrated GPU... oh, and you didn't want to be sucking down 200W+ of power on the go? The ASUS Zenbook S16 laptop is perfect for most people: tons of power, 32GB RAM + 1TB SSD storage, CPU + GPU grunt, and sips 33W of power. All of this wrapped into an incredibly thin, incredibly beautiful 16-inch laptop that is powered by USB-C and features an utterly gorgeous 16-inch 3K 120Hz ASUS Lumina OLED. This is one of the most impressive laptops you can buy, and the perfect showcase of AMD's new Strix Point APU. Kudos, ASUS and AMD.

Review: AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 / ASUS ZenBook S 16 (Zen 5 Mobile / RDNA 3.5)

Introduction The ZenBook S 16 is one of the first laptops to incorporate AMD's Ryzen AI processor, specifically the Ryzen 9 HX 370. This inclusion marks a change in how laptops handle demanding tasks, enabling enhanced performance across various applications, and in this case, what I like to call the Ai hype train. The model tested includes 32 GB of memory, a 1 TB SSD, and a built-in AMD Radeon 890M GPU. The ZenBook S 16 is its 2880×1800 (3K) OLED touchscreen display with a 120 Hz refresh rate. The OLED display provides deeper contrast, vibrant colors, and sharper visuals, making it nice choice for creative professionals or users who prioritize display quality. The 16-inch screen also offers a heaps of workspace without compromising on portability. But it's what's on the inside that matters. The start of this show is the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chip, a powerful advancement in AMD's ongoing rivalry within the chip industry. The AMD Ryzen AI 300 series will include three primary models: Ryzen AI 9 HX 375, Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, and Ryzen AI 9 365. Zen 5/Strix Point) CoresBase FreqTurbo FrequencyL3 CacheGraphicsNPUTDPRyzen AI 9 HX 3754 x Zen 5 8 x Zen 5c 2.0GHzZen 5: 5.1GHz Zen 5c: 3.3GHz24 MBRadeon 890M 16 CUXDNA 2 (55 TOPS)15-54WRyzen AI 9 HX 3704x Zen 5 8x Zen5c 2.0GHzZen 5: 5.1GHz Zen 5c: 3.3GHz24 MBRadeon 890M 16 CUXDNA 2 (50 TOPS)15-54WRyzen AI 9 3654x Zen 5 6x Zen5c 2.0GHzZen 5: 5.0GHz Zen 5c: 3.3 GHz24 MBRadeon 880M 12 CUXDNA 2 (50 TOPS)15-54W The flagship model, Ryzen AI 9 HX 375, features 12 CPU cores, while the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and Ryzen AI 9 365 have 12 and 10 cores respectively. Each of these System on Chips (SoCs) integrates both standard Zen 5 cores and compact Zen 5c cores within the CPU cluster. They are also equipped with Radeon 890M/880M GPUs and an XDNA 2-based Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for enhanced AI processing. The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 has a wide configurable TDP (Thermal Design Power) range from 15 to 54 watts. This flexibility allows the Strix Point chip to be used in a variety of devices, from ultrabooks to larger gaming laptops. However, the chip's performance, especially in tasks that require both the CPU and GPU, depends heavily on its TDP setting. This review focuses on the ASUS Zenbook S 16 (2024), a 16-inch laptop powered by the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 includes 4 Zen 5 cores and 8 Zen 5c cores, complemented by AMD's RDNA 3.5 Radeon 890M integrated graphics. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor supports a configurable Thermal Design Power (TDP) range from 15 to 54 watts, depending on the notebook's configuration, allowing for optimization between performance and power efficiency. Despite its 16-inch size, the ASUS Zenbook S 16 is set up quite conservatively. Originally designed for 28 watts, ASUS has reduced it to 17 watts for the initial setup, which they call "Standard Mode." This mode makes the laptop very efficient and quiet, though it does sacrifice some performance to keep noise levels down. For everyday computing tasks like handling multiple browser tabs, document editing, and streaming, the new Ryzen chip performs faster and more efficiently, as expected from an updated processor. Its improved capabilities are particularly beneficial for creators, aiding in tasks such as photo and video editing, gaming, and using professional-grade applications. This latest laptop is marked as AI-enabled, thanks to a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) that supports the execution of on-device large language models and generative AI applications. Currently, AI features are somewhat limited. On the ZenBook S 16, two applications, Asus' StoryCube and Amuse, an AI-driven image generator, illustrate the AI integration but do not fully demonstrate the AI's broader potential. ZenBook S 16 has the specs and now is Copilot Plus PC compatible. AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series Mobile Processors (Zen 5/Strix Point) The AMD Ryzen AI 300 series and Ryzen 9000 processors use AMD's latest Zen 5 microarchitecture, which improves on the previous Zen 4. These processors are made using TSMC's 4 nm N4P process, enhancing both performance and efficiency. The Strix Point SoCs feature a mix of large Zen 5 cores and smaller Zen 5c cores in a dual-core complex (CCX) setup. One CCX includes four full Zen 5 cores, and the other has eight smaller Zen 5c cores. The Zen 5c cores are 25% smaller than the Zen 5 cores and have different levels of L3 cache. The Zen 5 design aims to provide better Instructions Per Clock (IPC) than Zen 4, achieving a ~15% performance boost. Zen 5 emphasizes both high performance and power efficiency, making it suitable for mobile devices and servers. The Zen 5c cores nearly match the IPC of the full Zen 5 cores but are more compact, maintaining efficiency without losing processing power. However, the Zen 5 cores differ in mobile and desktop chips. Mobile Zen 5 cores do not have the 512-bit SIMD capability found in desktops and instead use a 256-bit SIMD, reflecting a focus on a balance between performance and power efficiency in mobile devices. The integrated graphics in AMD's Strix Point chips have been upgraded to the latest RDNA 3.5 architecture. While RDNA 3.5 doesn't introduce new features over RDNA 3, it enhances energy efficiency, which is vital for mobile devices. The updates allow for higher sustained clock speeds by reducing power use through improved memory management and other tweaks. Notably, RDNA 3.5 marks the first time an AMD SoC has a unique GPU architecture rather than a scaled-down version of its discrete GPU architecture. This approach allows AMD to optimize performance for mobile devices and could shape future designs.