The AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX is a high-end notebook processor from the Fire Range series with 16 cores and hyperthreading (SMT), which means it can process up to 32 threads simultaneously. Unlike the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D, the chip does not offer a 3D V-Cache. The chip was presented at CES in early 2025 and is intended for fast and expensive gaming laptops.
Thanks to the high-clocked 16 Zen 5 cores, the performance of the CPU should be excellent and only be outperformed by the 9955HX3D thanks to the 3D V-Cache. Together with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX at the top of the mobile CPUs.
The 9955HX is intended for large and heavy gaming notebooks and is therefore configurable from 55-75 watts TDP (default 55 watts). The SoC is manufactured in the modern 4nm FinFET process at TSMC (both compute dies, I/O die in 6nm) and should therefore have very good energy efficiency.
The AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX is the top 16-core Dragon Range refresh lineup laptop processor that debuted in April 2025. The product offers 16 SMT-enabled Zen 4 cores (32 threads) running at 2.5 GHz to 5.4 GHz, along with a rather basic Radeon 610M RDNA 2 architecture iGPU. This Ryzen 9 8000 APU is essentially a rebadged Ryzen 9 7945HX.
The 8945HX is composed of three dies made on two different nodes (5 nm for CPU cores; 6 nm for other componentry). It features a very healthy 28 PCIe 5 lanes for connecting graphics cards and SSDs as fast as 15.75 GB/s. The RAM controller is limited to DDR5-5200 or slower; there is no NPU and no Thunderbolt support, the product page on amd.com indicates, but the clock multiplier is unlocked for easy overclocking.
Performance
While we have not tested a single system featuring the 8945HX as of April 2025, we have reviewed multiple systems built around the 7945HX. In Cinebench benchmarks, it has no trouble leaving the mighty Ryzen AI Max+ 395 behind by a few percentage points.
With this many cores, the APU will probably do a much better job serving content creators rather than gamers.
Power consumption
Much like the 7945HX, the 8945HX has a base TDP (long-term power limit) of 55 watts that can officially be jacked up to as high as 75 watts. However, most of the 7945HX systems tested by Notebookcheck had an even higher value of 100+ watts. To dissipate this much heat, a couple of high-RPM fans are a must.
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card * Smaller numbers mean a higher performance 1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
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