AMD reportedly plans to launch new Hawk Point APU with good price-to-performance ratio
AMD is set to launch Strix Point processors later this month, but it seems that the company isn't done with Hawk Point yet. Golden Pig Upgrade, a well-known Weibo leakster, reports that Ryen 7 8745HS will be out soon. It is said to have the same specs as the Ryzen 7 8845HS, but it won't have the XDNA NPU.
This wouldn't be the first time we will see AMD rebadging a chip with stripped features. It launched mobile chips with the iGPU disabled before. But yes, if released, this will be the first recently launched Ryzen processor without an NPU. Given that the specs are said to be identical to the Ryzen 7 8845HS, this NPU-less configuration wouldn't hurt the general performance.
The new chip would just be less capable of handling AI tasks. Worth mentioning that the AMD Hawk Point isn't certified for Microsoft Copilot+ PC as the first-gen XDNA NPU can't meet the 40 TOPs requirement. So, it's not like the NPU-less configuration of the new Ryzen 7 8745HS would make any difference in this regard.
Instead, it could actually make laptops and mini PCs with the chip a little more affordable than the Ryzen 7 8845HS options (Lenovo Yoga 7 curr. $649.99 on Best Buy). That said, as AMD hasn't listed the new SKU yet, it remains unclear whether it will be a region-specific launch, and there's no official word on the release date either.