HP intros monstrous 16-inch laptop with up to 192 GB RAM and 16-core Ryzen APU

Over the past few quarters, we have witnessed quite a few laptops powered by AMD's powerful Strix Halo APUs. Now that AMD's Gorgon Halo family is out, we can only expect more of the same.

In fact, it appears that HP has already taken charge, having revealed the 16-inch ZBook Ultra G3a laptop, featuring the powerful AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 495 APU. As such, the laptop can be equipped with up to a whopping 192 GB of LPDDR5X-8533 RAM. 

The Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 495 APU comes equipped with a 16-core setup consisting solely of full-fat Zen 5 cores. Compared to its "Strix Halo" predecessor, the Gorgon Halo APU features 100 MHz higher boost clocks, which should give it a slight edge in raw performance.

According to early leaked benchmarks, it appears that the Gorgon Halo APU is roughly 5% faster than its predecessor. 

The same is also likely to apply to its Radeon 8065S iGPU, which continues featuring the same 40-CU setup based on RDNA 3.5, but now comes with higher boost clocks. Considering that its predecessor, the Radeon 8060S iGPU, traded blows with the RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, we can expect a similar performance profile for the 8065S.

Given that the iGPU can access a whopping 160 GB of the system's total memory, the G3a should be able to run massive LLMs on the go. The laptop can also be equipped with a whopping 8 TB of storage.

The HP ZBook Ultra G3a laptop will be available with a 2.8K OLED display with a claimed 500 nits of peak brightness and 120 Hz refresh rate. A 4K 120 Hz panel option will also be available, as will a 400-nit FHD option with low blue light emissions.

The I/O offer is quite impressive and has been detailed below:

• Dual Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports (with Power Delivery and DisplayPort 2.1)
• USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (with Power Delivery and DisplayPort 2.1)
• USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A
• Nano SIM slot, micro SD slot
• 3.5 mm audio jack 

More specs, pricing, and availability

Other notable details include a vapor chamber cooling setup, a 55 TOPS XDNA 2 NPU, ISV certifications, 5G connectivity, swappable keyboard, and a 17.9 mm-thick chassis that weighs in at 4.2 pounds or 1.9 kilograms.

Pricing details are under wraps for now, but given the current insanity surrounding DRAM and NAND prices, the HP ZBook Ultra G3a laptop is more than likely to command a hefty price tag. According to HP, the laptop should be available sometime next month.

That said, folks who do not have several thousands of dollars to splurge on a laptop but still desire a decent gaming experience can check out the Asus Predator Helios Neo 14 gaming laptop (currently $1,808 on Amazon) equipped with a Core Ultra 9 CPU and RTX 5070 Laptop GPU.