AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 vs AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D

AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395

The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 is a powerful Strix Halo family processor that debuted in January 2025. The APU comes with 16 Zen 5 CPU cores running at up to 5.1 GHz, the 40 CU RDNA 3+ Radeon 8060S graphics adapter and the 50 TOPS XDNA 2 neural engine. Other noteworthy features include PCIe 4, USB 4 and LPDDR5x-8000 RAM support and a whole lot of L3 cache.

Architecture and Features

Unlike Strix Point, Strix Halo parts are powered by Zen 5 cores - no Zen 5c here. It's not clear if this is the desktop Zen 5 implementation with full AVX512 throughput or the mobile one. According to AMD, Zen 5 delivers a 16% IPC improvement over Zen 4 thanks to branch prediction improvements and other refinements.

Elsewhere, the AI Max+ chip supports RAM as fast as LPDDR5x-8000, and is 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 had. The integrated XDNA 2 NPU delivers up to 50 INT8 TOPS for accelerating various AI workloads.

Performance

From leaks, we know that the Ryzen delivers around 20,700 Geekbench 6.3 Multi points, meaning it trades blow with very powerful desktop CPUs like the Ryzen 9 9900X.

Graphics

The Radeon 8060S is the most powerful iGPU that AMD has on offer, as of Jan 2025. It features 40 RDNA 3+ architecture CUs (2560 unified shaders) that could see it outcompeting lower mid-range desktop graphics cards like the GeForce RTX 4050. This GPU will undoubtedly run any game at 1080p on Ultra, however, the ultimate question is whether or not the cooling solution of the laptop will be powerful enough to let the iGPU shine.

Naturally, the Radeon is capable of driving four SUHD 4320p60 monitors. It can also efficiently encode and decode the most popular video codecs including 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 AI Max+ 395 can eat up to 120 W depending on the system and its TDP power targets, with 45 W named as the minimum TDP.

The 4 nm TSMC process that the CPU cores are built with make for decent, as of Jan 2025, energy efficiency.

AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D

The AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D is a fast high-end laptop processor of the Dragon Range series. It offers 16 cores based on the Zen 4 architecture that supports hyperthreading (32 threads). The cores clock from 2.3 (base) up to 5.4 GHz (single core boost). Compared to the similar R9 7945HX, the 7945HX3D offers an additional 64 MB 3D V-Cache on one CCD-Cluster. This helps in some workloads that can use the additional fast cache (e.g. some games). The guaranteed base clock however was reduced from 2.5 to 2.3 GHz.

The performance of the R9 7945HX3D is similar to the R9 7945HX in workloads that wont make use of the bigger L3 cache. Most games however can use the additional memory. AMD e.g. was advertising the HX3D with 4% to 53% higher performance in 1080p high settings.

The Dragon Range series still uses a chiplet design with two CCD-clusters (each with 8 possible cores) in 5nm and an IO-die (including the memory controller and the Radeon 610M iGPU) in 6nm. The chip integrates 4x USB 3.2 Gen2 (10 Gbps) ports (no USB4), 28 PCIe 5.0 lanes (for GPU and SSDs) and a dual-channel DDR5-5200 memory controller.

The R9 7945HX3D is rated at a TDP of 55 Watt and can be configured up to 75 Watt (cTDP).