AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 375 vs Intel Core Ultra 5 236V

AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 375

The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 375 is a powerful Strix Point family processor that debuted quietly in July 2024. The APU comes equipped with 12 CPU cores running at 2.0 GHz to 5.1 GHz along with the 16 CU RDNA 3.5 Radeon 890M graphics adapter and the 55 TOPS XDNA 2 neural engine. Other noteworthy features include PCIe 4, USB 4 and LPDDR5x-7500 RAM support. Unlike it is with the non-PRO AI 9 HX 375 chip, the AMD Secure Processor (an on-package ARM co-processor) is onboard, as well as a few other higher-end features such as AMD-Vi.

Of the 12 CPU cores, 4 are full Zen 5 cores and 8 are smaller Zen 5c cores. The latter run at lower clock speeds of maximal 3.3 GHz than the former and offer less cache.

This Ryzen AI 9 series APU shares most of the specifications with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.

Architecture and Features

Strix Point family APUs are powered by Zen 5 and Zen 5c microarchitecture cores, the latter being a slightly slower, smaller and more power-efficient version of the full Zen 5 core. One of the differences between Zen 5 and Zen 5c is the cache size; Zen 5 cores have larger caches to work with. According to AMD, Zen 5 APUs deliver a 16% IPC improvement over Zen 4-powered APUs thanks to branch prediction improvements and other refinements.

Elsewhere, the HX PRO 375 supports LPDDR5x-7500 and DDR5-5600 RAM, and is also natively compatible with USB 4 (and therefore Thunderbolt). It has PCIe 4.0 support for a throughput of 1.9 GB/s per lane, just like its 8000 series predecessors did. The integrated XDNA 2 NPU is a lot more complex than the original XDNA was for up to 55 INT8 TOPS for accelerating various AI workloads.

Performance

Given the striking similarity in specs, we fully expect the HX 375 to perform about as well as the HX 370 for very decent but certainly not ground-breaking multi-thread performance that's mostly on par with the Core i5-13500HX and the Ryzen 7 7745HX.

Graphics

The Radeon 890M is the most powerful AMD iGPU, as of mid 2024. It features 16 RDNA 3.5 architecture CUs (1024 unified shaders) running at up to 2,900 MHz. Performance-wise, the graphics adapter can be as slow as the Arc 8 or as fast as the RTX 2050 Laptop depending on the benchmark or game. On average, the 890M finds itself very close to the GTX 1650 Laptop making it possible to play 2024 AAA games at 1080p with most settings set to Low.

Naturally, the AMD iGPU is capable of driving four SUHD 4320p60 monitors and it can also efficiently encode and decode the most popular video codecs including first and foremost AVC, HEVC, VP9 and AV1. The latest addition to that list, the VVC codec, is not supported unlike it is with Intel Lunar Lake chips.

Power consumption

The HX PRO 375 is supposed to have a base TDP of 28 W, with laptop makers free to crank it up to up to 54 W if needed. Which they will most likely do to maximize performance.

The TSMC N4P process that the CPU cores are built with make for decent, as of mid 2024, power efficiency.

Intel Core Ultra 5 236V

The Intel Core Ultra 5 236V is a mid-range Lunar Lake family processor. This is an SoC for use in tablets and laptops of the slimmer kind that was unveiled in Autumn 2024. It features 4 new Skymont E-cores and 4 new Lion Cove P-cores running at up to 3.5 GHz and 4.7 GHz respectively, along with the new Arc 130V iGPU and 16 GB of on-package LPDDR5x-8533 RAM. A new 40 TOPS neural engine, Thunderbolt 4 and PCIe 5 SSD support are included as well. A vPro-enabled version of the CPU became available in early 2025.

The only difference between this chip and the Ultra 5 238V is the amount of on-package, non-upgradeable RAM: 16 GB vs 32 GB respectively.

Architecture and Features

Lunar Lake is built using the Foveros technology (stacking several dies on top of each other and next to each other), just like Meteor Lake was. The new chips make use of the enormous BGA2833 socket interface. Of the 8 cores, not a single one is Hyper-Threading-enabled which is the opposite of what AMD currently does with its Zen 5/5c chips.

Intel claims Lion Cove cores bring a 14% IPC improvement over Redwood Cove. For Skymont and Crestmont, the difference is much higher at 68%. Several tweaks and improvements are present here, such as the Low Latency Fabric that is supposed to make small data transfers between cores/caches a lot faster. The 236V's level 3 cache is pretty small as compared to more expensive Ultra 7 2xxV and Ultra 9 2xxV chips at 8 MB vs 12 MB. Elsewhere, the 236V has 4 PCIe 5 and 4 PCIe 4 lanes for connecting various kinds of devices, including NVMe SSDs at up to 15.75 GB/s. Thunderbolt 4 support is onboard by default, as is support for CNVi WiFi 7 + BT 5.4 cards from Intel. The 40 TOPS "AI Boost" neural engine is present along with technologies such as Threat Detection to make AI-enabled applications such as the Windows Defender more powerful.

Intel is predicted to get short of on-package RAM in subsequent CPU generations.

Performance

Based on Geekbench 6.3 Multi test results available online in early Nov 2024, the 236V (and the 238V) delivers around 10,100 points, putting it on equal footing with chips such as AMD's Ryzen 7 7735HS and Apple's M2 which is an OK result for a thin-and-light laptop in late 2024.

Generally speaking, the 226V, 228V, 236V and 238V are slower than the 256V, 258V, 266V, 268V, 288V due to the difference in their last-level cache size (8 MB vs 12 MB) as well as clock speeds. However, the difference in performance between the slowest Lunar Lake chip, the 226V, and the fastest chip, the 288V is fairly small at around 10% to 15%. It depends on the TDP figures of the laptops being pitted against each other more than on anything else.

Graphics

The Arc Graphics 130V has 7 Xe² architecture "cores" running at up to 1,850 MHz, as well as 7 ray tracing units at its disposal. This is a direct successor to the Arc 7 iGPU; it is DirectX 12 Ultimate-enabled and able to HW-decode a long list of video codecs such as h.266 VVC, h.265 HEVC, h.264 AVC, AV1 and VP9. Three SUHD 4320p monitors can be used simultaneously with this iGPU.

Its performance can be vastly different depending on which benchmarks and games one runs. Oftentimes, it isn't much faster than its direct predecessor, the Arc 7. It is clear the 130V isn't fast enough to run most triple-A 2024 games at 1080p. However, it's still more than good enough for an occasional gaming session.

• Helldivers 2: 25 fps (Med, 1080p). The Arc 7 and the Radeon 880M deliver similar results.
• Ready or Not: 40 fps (Med, 1080p). The GeForce MX350 delivers a similar result.

Power consumption

This 2nd generation Core Ultra processor is supposed to consume 17 W when under long-term workloads. The Intel-recommended short-term power limit for the chip sits at 37 W.