AMD allegedly sells Strix Point APUs at twice the price of Hawk Point processors

Asus was the first to release AMD Strix Point products to the market, and now, we are seeing more laptops and mini PCs featuring the Zen 5 APUs getting announced. One thing that's noticeable about these next-gen options is that they are relatively more expensive than their predecessors.

Take the AOOSTAR GEM10 370 pre-order pricing in China, for example. The mini PC manufacturer is taking reservations at around $808 for a top-end configuration, which will later be possibly around $1,000 or even higher in the global market. To compare, the last-gen GEM10 with the same memory and storage configuration generally goes for $569 in the global market (curr. $489 on Amazon).

So, you can say that the Strix Point mini PC has seen about a 2x price increase. But this isn't coming from one example, though. Higher-end GPD Duo configuration, which is among the first confirmed AMD Strix Point laptops, is now available, starting at $1,650. This is quite a hefty price for a laptop without a dGPU, and the first round of Asus Zen 5 laptops wasn't any different in this regard.

Now, a representative from GPD has explained why these AMD Strix Point products aren't hitting the shelves with an affordable price tag. Per the representative, AMD is selling the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 for 2x the price of one of the top-end options available in the Hawk Point lineup.

That's quite evident in GPD Duo itself. For reference, the variant with the Ryzen 7 8840U costs $1,270, while the one with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 goes for $1,650. So, for the same laptop, you would need to pay around $400 higher to get a configuration with the top-end APU from the Strix Point series.

This price increase from the last-gen series doesn't bode well for upcoming gaming handhelds, which is likely why none of them are getting announced yet. However, it's possible that the AMD Ryzen Z2 series will make the Zen 5 APUs a little more affordable for handheld OEMs.