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Credit: Asus
Preliminary listings at Australian and Greek retailers (credit: Huang514613 at X) reveal that Asus’s next wave of laptop offerings—powered by AMD’s Krackan Point and Intel’s Arrow Lake-H processors—is on the horizon.
Many rumors suggest that AMD and Intel plan to unveil their next-generation mobile offerings next month at CES 2025. AMD is expected to showcase its flagship Strix Halo (Ryzen AI Max Pro 300) and budget Krackan Point (Ryzen AI 300) APUs. At the same time, Intel will introduce Arrow Lake in HX, H, and U configurations, each geared toward different power envelopes and price points.
The laptops range from Asus’ budget Vivobook to its premier Zenbook lineup, featuring the Core Ultra 9 285H, Core Ultra 5 255H, Core 7 250H, AMD Hawk Point (Ryzen 7 250), and the Krackan Point-based Ryzen AI 7 350, which we covered a few days ago.
To distinguish among the different models, on Intel’s side of the ring, each SKU with the “Ultra” moniker uses Arrow Lake silicon – the Core Ultra 5 255H and Core Ultra 9 285H, while the others are just rebadged Alder Lake/Raptor Lake chips – the Core 7 250H. Adding to the mix, not all Core Ultra 200 chips are based on Arrow Lake; leaks suggest that Intel’s Core Ultra 200U offerings will be a slightly enhanced version of Meteor Lake on Intel 3.
Arrow Lake uses a modified form of Xe-LP, termed Xe-LP+ or Alchemist+, and features XMX cores. This will allow these processors to use Intel’s upcoming XeSS Frame Generation technology, which is not supported on Meteor Lake due to the lack of XMX cores. It is no Battlemage, but most Arrow Lake-H/HX laptops will be paired with a discrete GPU—likely from Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 50 family.
On the other hand, Hawk Point (Ryzen 8040) will be refreshed next year as Ryzen AI 200 to better align with AMD’s new naming scheme. It is still based on Zen 4 and RDNA 3. Krackan Point is a budget alternative to Strix Point, maintaining all the bells and whistles of Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5. However, the GPU features eight CUs (Compute Units)—half that of Strix Point.
Krackan is said to compete directly with Intel’s Lunar Lake chips but could fall behind in efficiency and graphics performance. At the same time, AMD is also readying its Fire Range chips —using desktop silicon —to rival Intel’s Arrow Lake-HX processors.
As we inch closer to CES, laptop manufacturers are firing all cylinders to get their offerings ready beforehand – as indicated by this leak. Expect these laptops to retail a few weeks after the announcement, possibly in late January or early February.
