AMD heard you like powerful gaming portables — so here are new Strix Halo chips

AMD’s Strix Halo, aka “Ryzen AI Max,” is a hugely expensive chip that includes some of the most powerful integrated graphics ever made. Though AMD initially marketed it more to AI workloads with its tremendous complement of up to 128GB of RAM, it’s also inspired some unprecedented gaming designs — by far the most powerful handheld, the Framework Desktop, and this monster Asus tablet.

But all those machines cost around $2,000, even before today’s global RAM shortages. Maybe that’ll change now that AMD’s announcing two lower-end Ryzen AI Max Plus parts with full-fat graphics but fewer CPU cores, specifically aimed at gaming devices.

They still have 40 graphics compute units for 60 teraflops, but the Ryzen AI Max Plus 392 has 12 cores rather than 16, and the Max Plus 388 has just eight CPU cores.

“The reason we introduced the 392 and 388 chips is because those are the right products for gamers we’re bringing in,” AMD client chip boss Rahul Tikoo tells us in a press briefing. “Those two products were brought in because we had specific customer requests around gaming SKUs that we wanted to bring to market.”

It’s not 100 percent clear whether new Strix Halo devices will be more affordable than the previous ones now that the price of RAM is skyrocketing, but take this as you will: Tikoo says that AI Max systems “can be over $1,000 to $1,500 price point” compared to vanilla Ryzen AI systems that typically start as low as $500. “$1,000 to $1,500” sure sounds like it could be less expensive than $2,000, but I don’t want to read too much into what could be an offhand remark.

While we were impressed with the GPD Win 5 prototype, its rivals Ayaneo and OneXPlayer have announced Strix Halo handhelds as well.