AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 vs AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D

AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370

The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is a powerful Strix Point family processor that debuted in June 2024. The APU comes with 12 CPU cores running at 2.0 GHz to 5.1 GHz, the 16 CU RDNA 3+ Radeon 890M graphics adapter and the 50 TOPS XDNA 2 neural engine. Other noteworthy features include PCIe 4, USB 4 and LPDDR5x-7500 RAM support.

Of the 12 CPU cores, 4 are full Zen 5 cores and 8 are smaller Zen 5c cores. The latter probably run at somewhat lower clock speeds than the former.

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 energy-efficient version of the former. One of the differences between Zen 5 and Zen 5c is cache size; Zen 5 cores have larger caches to work with. According to AMD, Zen 5 delivers a 16% IPC improvement over Zen 4 thanks to branch prediction improvements and other refinements.

Elsewhere, the HX 370 supports LPDDR5x-7500 and DDR5-5600 RAM, 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 did. The integrated XDNA 2 NPU delivers up to 50 INT8 TOPS for accelerating various AI workloads.

Performance

Given the IPC improvement, we expect 4 Zen 5 cores combined with 8 Zen 5c cores to perform about as well as 16 Zen 4 cores meaning there is a real chance of the HX 370 dethroning the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D. We'll make sure to update this section once we get our hands on a laptop powered by the HX 370.

Graphics

The Radeon 890M is the most powerful iGPU that AMD has on offer right now. It features 16 RDNA 3+ architecture CUs (1024 unified shaders) running at up to 2,900 MHz. We expect the graphics adapter to deliver gaming performance good enough for playing 2023 and 2024 games in 1080p (Low detail settings).

Naturally, the 890M 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 HX 370 is supposed to have a base TDP of 28 W, with laptop makers free to crank it up to up to 54 W. Which they will most likely do to maximize performance.

The 4 nm TSMC process that the CPU cores are built with make for decent, as of mid 2024, 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).