New AMD Strix Point leak points to big gains in cache size, core count, and iGPU performance vs Zen 4 Phoenix APUs

AMD is rumored to follow the Ryzen 7040HS Phoneix APUs with the Ryzen 8000 Strix Point and Strix Halo APUs. For the uninitiated, the AMD Strix Point and Strix Halo APUs are reportedly combinations of Zen 5/5c CPU cores and RDNA 3.5 or 3+ iGPUs. Both APUs are expected to debut on laptops next year. Adding to the growing pile of the Strix Point information, leaker All_The_Watts has shared specifications of the Strix Point APUs on Twitter that seem to confirm much of what we’ve already heard.

For starters, All_The_Watts alleges that the Strix Point APUs will feature up to 4 big Zen 5 cores and 8 small Zen 5c cores for a total of 12 cores. Since the Zen 5c cores are capable of hyperthreading, the total thread count for the 12-core Strix Point APU should be 24. There will reportedly be two CCXs or core clusters.

When it comes to cache sizes, the Zen 5 CCX appears to have a 4 MB L2 and a 16 MB L3 cache. In contrast, the Zen 5c CCX will presumably carry 8 MB of L2 and L3 cache. So, the Strix Point APUs could have 24 MB of L3 and 12 MB of L2 cache in total. As a comparison, the top-of-the-line Phoenix APU, the Ryzen 9 7940HS, has 8 MB of L2 and 16 MB of L3 cache.

All_The_Watts also maintains that Strix Point will have an 8 WGP/16 CUs RDNA 3+ iGPU. In other words, Strix Point’s iGPU could feature 33.33% more CUs than the Radeon 780M inside the Phoenix APUs which has 12 CUs. If this increase results in substantially better graphics performance, next year could be a turning point for integrated graphics as Intel has also touted big improvements for Meteor Lake’s Xe LPG iGPU.

The AMD Strix Point is also said to pack 64 AI Engine tiles to greatly enhance on-chip AI capabilities. For reference, the XDNA AI accelerator inside the Phoenix APUs only has 20 tiles.

Finally, All_The_Watts claims the Strix Point to have 28-35+ W TDPs with supported memory speeds to be DDR5-6400/LPDDR5X-8533.

Long story short, the AMD Strix Point APUs appear to be a big step up from the Zen 4 Phoenix processors in core count, cache sizes, and the iGPU. However, this information is non-final and it remains to be seen how much of it ends up being accurate.

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