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Credit: Asus
The first listing for Australian and Greek retailers (credit: Huang514613 on X) shows that Asus’ next wave of laptop offerings—powered by AMD’s Krackan Point and Intel’s Arrow Lake-H processors—is just around the corner.
Rumors suggest that AMD and Intel plan to unveil the next generation of mobile processors next month at CES 2025. AMD is expected to showcase its flagship Strix Halo (Ryzen AI Max Pro 300) and budget Kracken Point (Ryzen AI 300) APUs. At the same time, Intel will introduce Arrow Lake in HX, H, and U configurations, each aimed at different power envelopes and price points.
The laptops range from the budget Asus’ Vivobook to its flagship Zenbook line, with 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 talked about a few days ago has passed.
To distinguish between the different models, on the Intel 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 rest are simply returned 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 offering will be a slightly updated version of Meteor Lake on Intel 3.
Arrow Lake uses a modified form of Xe-LP, called Xe-LP+ or Alchemist+, and features XMX cores. This allows 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’s not Battlemage, but many 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 match AMD’s new name system. It is still based on Zen 4 and RDNA 3. Krackan Point is a budget version of Strix Point, keeping all the bells and whistles of Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5. However, the GPU features eight CUs (Compute Units) – half of a Strix Point.
Krackan is said to compete directly with Intel’s Lunar Lake chips but may lag behind in productivity and graphics performance. At the same time, AMD is also preparing its Moto Range chips – using desktop silicon – to compete with Intel’s Arrow Lake-HX processors.
As we get closer to CES, laptop manufacturers are firing on all cylinders to prepare their offerings ahead of time – as these leaks show. Expect these laptops to go on sale a few weeks after the announcement, probably in late January or early February.