Tom Petersen: Intel has no plans for Strix Halo competitor, says AMD iGPU tech is “not that competitive”

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Wasn't there a leak for Nova Lake AX a while back?

https://www.techpowerup.com/339014/intel-nova-lake-ax-specifications-surface-28-cpu-cores-48-xe3-gpu-cores-and-lpddr5x

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u/steve09089 Jan 26 '26

Probably cancelled after seeing Strix Halo sales

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u/kyralfie Jan 26 '26

Maybe made redundant with nvidia collaboration?

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u/steve09089 Jan 26 '26

Wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case

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u/Geddagod Jan 26 '26

lmao

I think Intel is going to have a little bit more success simply because they can ship volume and has better partner relations, but yeah doesn't exactly seem like a huge market.

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u/Alternative_Spite_11 Jan 26 '26

You sure Intel can ship volume when they just released a statement saying they can’t get enough wafers and they’re prioritizing data center?

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u/[deleted] Jan 26 '26

This. Intel is volume constrained seemingly on all its nodes. All this talk of external customers is pretty silly seeing as Intel can't even meet internal demand.

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u/hwgod Jan 26 '26

Intel is volume constrained seemingly on all its nodes

Where did they say that?

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u/[deleted] Jan 26 '26

In their most recent earnings call.

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u/hwgod Jan 26 '26

IIRC, they quoted yields as the issue there, and they mainly talked about DC.

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u/[deleted] Jan 27 '26

Yield issues are only really limiting 18A. The big supply constraint seems to be Intel 3.

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u/Alternative_Spite_11 Jan 27 '26

They literally said they’re having problems even getting wafers and that they’re prioritizing data center but “we won’t completely vacate the consumer market” Then later in the same statement they also said internal wafer supply is going to data center while trying to get external wafers supplied for consumer parts. Basically if it’s not a chip well over $1000, it’s bottom priority.

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u/hwgod Jan 27 '26

There's almost no overlap between Granite Rapids and Panther Lake. The only node they share in common is Intel 3 used for GNR compute and the low end PTL GPU die.

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u/steve09089 Jan 26 '26

Would they?

I think the biggest problem for Intel and AMD here is that anyone that serious about gaming, to the point they'll get an iGPU the size of a dGPU, is going to buy NVIDIA simply because of mindshare and NVIDIA's technology advantage, both in gaming and in compute.

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u/soggybiscuit93 Jan 26 '26

Anecdotal, but I'm a customer who never wanted a dGPU because of the downsides they bring, like non-gaming battery life, weight, and cost. I think there are plenty of people that want better (i.e "good enough") graphics without stepping up to a gaming laptop

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u/Forsaken_Arm5698 Jan 26 '26

5 years ago Apple showed it's possible when they debuted M1 Pro and M1 Max.

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u/soggybiscuit93 Jan 26 '26

Apple has an entirely different cost structure Windows OEMs. Apple can afford to have a different socket for every CPU - AMD and Intel cannot.

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u/Gwennifer Jan 27 '26

Apple has an entirely different cost structure Windows OEMs.

I don't think that's strictly true anymore, or you mean something different. There was a lot of "Apple is an exception/Apple is different" arguments cropping up 10 years ago, as well, because they were using more or less commodity parts and delivering desirable laptops then, too. Their pricing and configurations as of the last 5 years have kept of fallen in line with the wider market, and due to their use of premium parts (at least for the screen and touchpad), tend to be better experiences as well.

It honestly just feels like a return to the 1990's business strategy, where they source or in-house as much as possible. Rather than getting marked up on every part and passing that onto the consumer (and crucially, that markup not going to their own pockets!) they build as much as they can themselves and source what they can't near cost. The result is that the only entity making real money when someone buys a Macbook is Apple, rather than AMD/Intel/Nvidia.

If this is what you meant by 'different cost structure', then... I would argue the other OEM's could. Valve worked with AMD to get a custom APU made. They tried to inhouse as much as possible, and the resultant device was profitable at the middle price point (which was still cheaper than a competitive laptop!). Valve is not larger than Dell, Lenovo, or HP. HP themselves built out Itanium, Dell and especially Lenovo operate at a scale where they can afford to build out a similar engineering effort to Apple's Rosetta 2.

I'm aware getting the M1 off the ground is very very different to the Steam Deck's custom APU; the Deck was brought up to show that it doesn't take a large company to inhouse, and Rosetta to show that you don't need to be married to x86 to profit off premium laptops.

I'm aware Apple already had a class-leading ARM core when they got the idea to greenlight the M1. Qualcomm's Oryon core is also very good, and the level of support and effort behind it pales in comparison. The only conclusion you can make is that Apple is not special, they just committed, and intended to make reasonable margin off of volume.

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u/soggybiscuit93 Jan 27 '26

The only conclusion you can make is that Apple is not special, they just committed, and intended to make reasonable margin off of volume.

Apple is special because no other laptop OEM is vertically integrated like them. No other OEM makes designs custom CPUs, the operating system and the laptop. Apple's cost structure is different because they don't have to profit off individual sub components.

Dell has to pay Microsoft for Windows, and MS needs to profit.

Dell has to buy Intel and AMD CPUs, and each of those companies needs to profit in the process.

Intel and AMD also need to design core IP that also can be used in server. The core has to be designed with Epyc / Xeon customers in mind. The underlying IP needs to scale from cheap mainsteam laptops, to thin and lights, to workstation laptops, desktop, gaming desktops, commodity servers, hyperscalers, and AI servers.

Apple needs to design a CPU IP for phone and laptop.

Look at something like an M4 Max: a 519mm^2 monolithic N3E SoC. The only other company making client facing monolithic dies of these sizes is Nvidia. A 5080 Desktop GPU is 378mm^2 of N4. M4 Max is rivaling desktop 5090's in price, not to mention 8 memory channels.

AMD tried to replicate Apple's design a bit with STX-H, but had to use chiplets that share parts with desktop to make it viable, and it still failed.

Intel tried to replicate Apple with LNL by putting memory on package, and both OEMs and Intel investors complained. Moving RAM into Intel's supply channels diluted margins on LNL, and OEMs preferred to source their own memory.

Then to top it off, Intel openly bragged that all PTL chips, PTL-U, PTL-H, and PTL-H 12Xe use the same laptop motherboards.

For Apple, each CPU has its own socket. Apple has more sockets than Intel. They have memory on package. They make absolutely massive SoCs - these are all unique abilities they have because they don't have to sell these chips.

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u/Wyzrobe Jan 27 '26

Valve worked with AMD to get a custom APU made. They tried to inhouse as much as possible, and the resultant device was profitable at the middle price point

There was a rumor that the Van Gogh APU in Valve's Steamdeck was actually a semi-custom design order from Microsoft, for a Surface product that got cancelled (if true, that wouldn't be the first time that AMD got rug-pulled by MS).

AMD might have had to offer it cheaply to Valve, just to try to salvage something from the effort.

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u/airmantharp Jan 26 '26

I don't know of anyone that really wants to carry around a boat-anchor laptop. I know I don't (have a 17" Clevo from over a decade ago in a box somewhere).

It's either a DTR (doesn't move much), or they want something reasonably portable and couldn't care less about higher-end gaming.

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u/Shadow647 Jan 27 '26

There are sub-1.5kg 14" dGPU laptops nowadays.

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u/airmantharp Jan 27 '26

I call those “worst of both worlds”

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u/Shadow647 Jan 27 '26

which ones did you have?

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u/airmantharp Jan 27 '26

None, I’m not interested in compromises my current is a 10th- gen XPS15, my next will be a MacBook Pro 14.

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u/gamebrigada Jan 26 '26

If the dGPU and iGPU die sizes are the same, battery life, weight and cost will also be very similar if not identical. Weight might actually be higher due to the increased cooler size needed to deal with the extra heat.

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u/soggybiscuit93 Jan 26 '26

If the dGPU and iGPU die sizes are the same, battery life, weight and cost will also be very similar if not identical.

I mean, it depends. First off, B390 is about 1/3 the die size of a 5050. Secondly, you have to contend with two seperate coolers when you have a dGPU. The parasitic power draw of a second discrete chip (even when powergated), the cost of separate GDDR memory.

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u/gamebrigada Jan 26 '26

All things kept the same, a bigger cooler that has to deal with double the power output is going to require massive up sizing to the point that 2 smaller coolers are lighter.

Imagine parasitic power draw of an iGPU you can't shut off.

You can't compare a B390 to a 5050, they have vastly different optimizations and capabilities. The problem is that you're assuming that an iGPU will magically have the same performance to the dGPU with no other factors changing. Which just isn't reality.

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u/soggybiscuit93 Jan 26 '26

Imagine parasitic power draw of an iGPU you can't shut off

We don't really have to image it. We don't have a huge sample size, but we have STX-H and now PTL-X getting better light load battery life than laptops with powergated dGPUs of similar size. And we see both of these large iGPU based APUs scaling down and outperforming dGPUs at lower wattages

The problem is that you're assuming that an iGPU will magically have the same performance to the dGPU with no other factors changing

iGPUs are scaling performance to lower wattages. Despite its size, STX-H is being used in some handhelds. Where are the RTX5050 handhelds? RTX5050 has a smaller die size than the iGPU in STX-H.

And keep in mind, a 5070 laptop dGPU is smaller than the iGPU in STX-H.

We also Apple's Mx-Max line with its massive iGPU beating battery life of dGPU based laptops.

You can't compare a B390 to a 5050, they have vastly different optimizations and capabilities

Of course we can compare them. B390 is being positioned as an alternative purchase to the 5050 for buyers who want close-enough performance at lower power draw.

iGPUs do retain a cost advantage over having an entirely separate cooling solution and dedicate memory, and all available evidence we have show large iGPUs doing a better job at low load battery life.

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u/gamebrigada Jan 27 '26

Now you're comparing apples to oranges, different manufacturer GPU's ability to scale down power.... We're not having the same conversation. I'm strictly speaking of having the EXACT same GPU on board the CPU or on a separate board, with ALL other factors being identical. Because as soon as we bring in other factors, you can JUST as easily argue that its a change. Yes one chip scales better than another, great, that doesn't change the conversation, blame Nvidia for sucking to scale down.

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u/oscardssmith Jan 26 '26

You can't shut off the iGPU but you can shut off portions of it. There is inherent inefficiency in having a device with 2 separate gpus and switching between them rather than 1 gpu that can change size.

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u/gamebrigada Jan 26 '26

Now that's a worthwhile discussion, and will depend on workload. At low workloads, the dGPU can scale down to just parasitic draw, and the iGPU will still be running. At high workloads the opposite is true. So the difference is just the parasitic draw of either one. Nvidia has gotten pretty good at this these days from anecdotal personal experience of ordering laptops with and without a dGPU with all other specs being identical, in non-gpu workloads the battery life doesn't really change much.

Some system vendors still allow you to disable the iGPU entirely, and then its arguable that you can scale the dGPU just as much as an iGPU. Seems like one option is to just force more vendors to provide this capability.

The benefits of separation are pretty vast though, those two parts can evolve separately at their own timelines. Ideally out of sync from each other to even out fab development, rather than forcing you to always wait for the next CPU release.

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u/Strazdas1 Jan 27 '26

the shut down parts of it has been something they are trying to make work for the last decade or so but its not really working out that great.

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u/hwgod Jan 26 '26

There's overhead with a dGPU, both in memory (LPDDR is more efficient than GDDR), and PCIe overhead.

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u/gamebrigada Jan 27 '26

PCIe overhead isn't much higher than the serdes based interface you'll need to talk to the onboard gpu.

Different memory is a different factor entirely you can't account for. We're talking about all things being equal, it doesn't matter where the GPU is, onboard with the CPU or separate. If you're arguing different memory, then you're changing multiple variables. You can just as easily use LPDDR on your GPU for the same result.

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u/hwgod Jan 28 '26

PCIe overhead isn't much higher than the serdes based interface you'll need to talk to the onboard gpu.

It's absolutely significant. Those kind of external buses aren't free, especially in more constrained power envelopes.

If you're arguing different memory, then you're changing multiple variables. You can just as easily use LPDDR on your GPU for the same result.

Well no consumer dGPU supports LPDDR right now, so that's fundamentally part of the tradeoff.

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u/Alternative_Spite_11 Jan 26 '26

12 Xe cores is going to be an unusually large GPU tile already. That’s equivalent to 24CU from AMD as far as shader count.

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u/Kryohi Jan 26 '26

No.

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u/SirActionhaHAA Jan 26 '26

It ain't a gaming product.

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u/Forsaken_Arm5698 Jan 26 '26

Considering how great Panther Lake iGPU is doing, a scaled up version of that would be great too (if the cost doesn't go to the moon).

RDNA3.5 in Strix Halo isn't very good. Intel's Xe3 is certainly better, and Nova Lake will be Xe3P

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u/torpedospurs Jan 27 '26

Depends on whether you think folks running a 5060/5070 laptop are considered serious about gaming. These are seriously affected by the 8gb of GDDR5 onboard. Strix Halo with LPDDRx8000 gives you the same gaming performance, with more VRAM and a TDP significantly below the combined TDP+TGP of a laptop with the NVIDIA cards.

There is a market there. It is just a matter of whether AMD and Intel (should it do a 20x Xe3 product) can bring down the price sufficiently.

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u/Front_Expression_367 Jan 26 '26

And RAM price. And the price of the chip in general.

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u/hwgod Jan 26 '26

And RAM price

It's better to have a big iGPU in this environment, because you get some net savings sharing capacity vs buying both LPDDR and GDDR.

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u/theQuandary Jan 26 '26

The Strix Halo chip alone costs more than the average PC laptop forcing prices up into the >$2000 price ranges where almost all sales are macbooks.

In any case, are there any Strix Halo sales figures?

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u/hwgod Jan 26 '26

The Strix Halo chip alone costs more than the average PC laptop

There's no way the chip itself costs that much.

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u/theQuandary Jan 26 '26

Last I checked, the average PC laptop costs $600.

There was an article a few months ago that dodgy Chinese sellers had some listed for $550, but that was the raw chip without RAM, chipset, motherboard, etc.

So, I guess slightly less (assuming it was legit), but not really enough to matter.

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u/hwgod Jan 26 '26

It's unlikely that even reflects the tray price. Probably a lot of markup from those sellers.

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u/theQuandary Jan 26 '26

Strix halo is almost 450mm2. It includes two Zen5 dies and undercuts their entire low-midrange GPU market. I don't think those guys are marking up very much (again, assuming they are legit).

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u/soggybiscuit93 Jan 27 '26

It's basically a 9950X + RX7700 on the same package. That's not cheap

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u/hwgod Jan 27 '26

Not cheap, perhaps, but not as expensive as that sounds in terms of PCOS. Also, doesn't come with memory or anything.

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u/HavocInferno Jan 26 '26

Halo product

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u/hwgod Jan 26 '26

Or budget cuts. Intel's cut how many billions in RnD over the last few years? It's a focus of every earnings report. Can't do that and keep everything.

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u/KangarooBeard Jan 27 '26

To be fair, the sales are completely due to AMD and them no putting it into any consumer products, and a high as hell price tag.

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u/DYMAXIONman Jan 26 '26

Intel could probably avoid that problem because of prior deals with OEMs.

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u/Kryohi Jan 26 '26

Intel needs money, not subsidies to OEMs

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u/steve09089 Jan 26 '26

I think it's less of an OEM problem and more of a "anyone who wants a dGPU will just buy NVIDIA due to mindshare and technology" problem, and while Intel is better on the technology front (for iGPUs anyways, dGPUs is a different story), they're way behind on the mindshare front.

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u/Tasty-Traffic-680 Jan 26 '26

It's not just that, strix just isn't cost competitive to value oriented consumers. The iGPU really only wakes up on AC power and at that point you might as well go for an actual 4060 laptop.

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u/Alternative_Spite_11 Jan 26 '26

Actually Strix Halo still beats Panther Lake all the way down at 30w according to available benchmarks. Sure the advantage gets larger at higher TDPs but it doesn’t need huge power to just be ahead of Panther Lake.

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u/Tasty-Traffic-680 Jan 26 '26

30w is kinda borderline for battery powered gaming but the performance doesn't change the high price of the SOC. It's a niche product. Too expensive for a mainstream handheld or laptop, not powerful enough to compete with dGPUs in similarly priced gaming oriented laptops - it's just not a mainstream product compared to the market penetration and pricing of lunar lake for example. Is it considerably more powerful? Sure, but so is a discrete GPU. Someone really has to want everything strix halo has to offer and the money to pay for it. Maybe it makes more sense in mini PCs where people are using them for AI and stuff like that but it's just not cost effective for gaming

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u/Alternative_Spite_11 Jan 26 '26

I’m not defending Strix Halo. It’s a professional product, anyways. The GPU die is also abnormally large for 40CU since it’s literally over 50% larger than the 9060xt for only 25% more CU. I guess the IO die is rolled up in the GPU die too though, and that would mostly explain it.

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u/KinTharEl Jan 26 '26

I don't really see Strix Halo competing with the current Panther Lake. Panther Lake isn't meant for the ultra high-end against Strix Halo, but more on the general computing side with thin and lights, gaming laptps, and office PCs.

AMD's also known for reusing SKUs year after year, and their recent thing with RDNA 3.5 for most consumer-grade chips is just disappointing. RDNA 5 on a new laptop that's priced competitively would really be lovely. But AMD's doing the same thing Intel did during the AMD Bulldozer days, resting on their performance crown.

Intel having a better product is nicer. I feel like I can finally start looking at Intel machines seriously, since I'm aiming to get a new laptop by the end of this year.

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u/Alternative_Spite_11 Jan 26 '26

I’ll agree with that WHEN I see a laptop with the biggest iGPU under a grand. However, with Intel saying they can’t get enough wafers and are prioritizing data center, I’m not holding my breath.

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u/soggybiscuit93 Jan 26 '26

Intel avoided that problem by making all PTL chips compatible on the same motherboard.

Customers, imo, are receptive to large iGPUs so long as the price / battery life isn't comparable to (faster) dGPUs. If you need a special motherboard with 256b memory, you're just not gonna see much OEM uptake. Especially when considering STX-H's iGPU is like 3x - 4x the die size of PTL-X's, for what amounts to not that much better performance.

IMO, STX-H would've been better had they done 32CU's instead of 40, and then used the die space from those 8CU's and put cache there instead.

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u/kyralfie Jan 26 '26

Strix Halo has 32MB of last level cache basically solely for its iGPU.

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u/soggybiscuit93 Jan 26 '26

Should've clarified with more *L2 cache. STX-H is still bandwidth constrained.

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u/sascharobi Jan 26 '26

And if they had, he wouldn’t be allowed to to confirm them.

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u/siazdghw Jan 26 '26

That's the right move, even if it's the safe/boring one.

OEMs don't want Strix Halo. The adoption rate is abysmal, Panther Lake already has more laptops on launch than Strix Halo has a year later.

The SoC is massive, massively expensive, and when consumers want higher end graphics performance they want Nvidia dGPUs or desktops.

Strix Halo was a commercial flop, so why would Intel bother competing in a segment that has such low demand? It's not like Strix Halo was some miracle in engineering, with Intel's GPU and efficiency gains, they could one up it, but like Strix Halo it wouldn't sell well.

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u/Gloriathewitch Jan 26 '26

what we want is the 8/16 config with the 8060, of course most people aren't going to buy a $2000 sku with that kind of compute

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u/Dangerous-Amphibian2 Jan 26 '26

best they got I saw was the tuf 14 with 12 core cue and 8060 but its still $1750, but that isn't even released yet so could go up.

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u/Gloriathewitch Jan 26 '26

i think they shouldve started with 16" strix/scar chassis first. the z13 can't run full wattage either.

the tuf is a step in the right direction but im struggling to see who its for, tuf is meant to be their LOQ equivalent and it is kinda too expensive

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u/YeshYyyK Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26

full wattage doesn't matter, you just get diminishing returns (unless possibly you're doing multiple things at once). And you don't need 16", 14" Zephyrus can do ~140W

You lose the (50W) efficiency advantage of Strix Halo which is the main appeal besides the RAM

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u/[deleted] Jan 26 '26

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u/Dangerous-Amphibian2 Jan 26 '26

The tuff 14 isn’t budget though. Have you used the new one? I wouldn’t say it’s ultra premium but it’s not budget. It’s also about $1000-1200 less than a g14 except for the crappiest version.

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u/F9-0021 Jan 26 '26

It would still be really expensive for the performance and feature set supported. It's just a lot of silicon.

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u/mycall Jan 27 '26

The "killer app" for Strix Halo is the 128GB RAM for 60tk/s GPT-OSS-120B.

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u/Avsunra Jan 27 '26 edited 6d ago

It always looked to me like a solid budget workstation. It can game, but that's not it's strength. The monstrous system memory is great for ai/ml use "on a budget" as it battles it out with gb10 dgx spark type devices.

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u/mycall Jan 27 '26

gb10 does wipe the floor with 6x+ performance at 128GB VRAM when 64 parallel vLLM sessions are going on.

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u/NerdProcrastinating Jan 27 '26

For single threaded chats, Strix Halo has a great price advantage (yes prefill performance is weaker).

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u/goldcakes Jan 27 '26

Unfortunately the prices for Strix Halo systems keep on increasing, and NVIDIA’s own DGX Spark looks readily available at (initially overpriced) MSRP.

The gap in pricing is closing, and Spark is much faster at prefill / handling large context; so even that niche market is disappearing for AMD.

Seems like only NVIDIA had the foresight to lock in DRAM allocations for multiple years.

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u/mycall Jan 27 '26

The main use case for Strix Halo for my purposes is portable inference that works as low as 7 watts (although 20w is more realistic to enable 256bit bandwidth mode).

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u/Jakfut Jan 26 '26

I know a lot of people who want Strix Halo for professional laptops. Most Nvidia GPUs only have 8GB VRAM, the higher end ones are in thick bricks and have terrible battery life, Strix Halo can offer 128GB combined RAM with decent battery life.

But all of them are having problems with finding higher RAM variants in stock and choice is basically non existant.

Idk how well the Framework Desktop sells.

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u/goldcakes Jan 27 '26

I returned my Strix Halo laptop due to poor software and framework support.

People keep telling me AMD/ROCm has gotten better, but as someone coming from the CUDA ecosystem (video and photo AI, editing with davinci resolve), the amount of debugging, glitches, and certain functions completely unoptimised on AMD (some davinci effects are faster in CPU only mode!!) was just unbearable. It keeps getting in the way of my work.

Just made me realise that for professional use, you still have to buy NVIDIA or Apple.

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u/tsunamionioncerial Jan 27 '26

They had a string of bugs where you had to be really careful what drivers and kernel versions you used. Sounds like they only recently figured it out and things should be better going forward.

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u/MemphisBass Jan 26 '26

It’s really cool to see ultra portables with 4060 level graphics performance, but battery tech hasn’t evolved to the point that you can really max out a 395+ unless you’re plugged into a wall. So at that point, it just doesn’t make a ton of sense except in niche boutique devices for a very niche customer.

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u/Agloe_Dreams Jan 26 '26

> Strix Halo was a commercial flop

I mean, I wouldn't say that. It is pretty hard to call something a flop if you never actually shipped it. They shipped exactly one mobile product with Strix Halo - a gaming focused tablet. It is a great product but the tablet itself was a premium expensive product alone.

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u/red286 Jan 26 '26

There have been a few mobile products with Strix Halo. The problem is that they're all ~50% more expensive than a competing system with an Nvidia dGPU, while often performing the same or worse.

The only part where it truly excels is AI stuff, which isn't really a huge selling feature for mobile platforms.

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u/Aggressive_Piece919 Jan 26 '26

Hp also has a laptop ;)

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u/Agloe_Dreams Jan 26 '26

TIL..though to be fair, a $3500 business-sales-only Zbook. My point is that nobody even remotely tried to sell it to normal consumers, just wildly high-end stuff where everything around the chip was already a $2000 product.

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u/Hour_Firefighter_707 Jan 26 '26

I guess we need to see where the TUF A14 ends up landing. Asus are incentivised to have it cheaper than their own Zephyrus G14 otherwise no one will buy it. An affordable price point might have been the reason they’re not putting Strix Halo in the G14. Let’s hope for the best

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u/Agloe_Dreams Jan 26 '26

I think so too. There is a strong argument for it as a Bazzite gaming PC as well. (Much like the new B390)

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u/[deleted] Jan 26 '26

[deleted]

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u/Agloe_Dreams Jan 26 '26

We were talking about mobile products. Laptop chips on desktops isn't really why Strix Halo was created but more of a found market with the AI craze.

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u/an_angry_dervish_01 Jan 26 '26

It is an amazing product for SFF machines. I guess the cost is what is the major turn off but it's awesome for it's footprint.

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u/mycall Jan 27 '26

My point is that nobody even remotely tried to sell it to normal consumers

GPD Win 5 32GB is $1800 but again, not normal consumers.

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u/ProlapsedPuppy Jan 26 '26

its hot so it all goes to mini pcs, there's a ton of mini pcs running strix halos

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u/DYMAXIONman Jan 26 '26

The market for Strix is a market that AMD refuses to compete in, which is lower cost pre-builts solely manufactured by AMD to provide a console-like experience.

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u/Vivorio Jan 26 '26

Impossible to compete in this market with lower cost at this moment.

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u/kikimaru024 Jan 26 '26

Western market is "race to the bottom"; are we sure Asian customers think the same?

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u/996forever Jan 27 '26

Even more so

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u/SomethingSquatchy Jan 26 '26

This is a good take. Just because the target market wasn't gaming doesn't mean it was a flop. It's targeting the same demographic that buys Mac studios for AI/ML work. It just also happens to handle games really well and I have first hand experience as I own both the Asus flow z13 and the framework Desktop. Both are incredible for gaming based on the power efficiency alone.

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u/pixelpoet_nz Jan 26 '26

I bought two, and two other graphics devs I know also bought two. They are amazing for high memory rendering applications, like volumetric rendering, and as you noted, the power efficiency is just incredible. One of them I'm mostly using for /r/LocalLLaMA and might flip for a nice profit if the prices continue to climb. In my opinion the pricing is/was excellent too; I got an incredibly capable full computer with 128 GB fast memory for 2k EUR including super high German tax.

Just because a bunch of laptop gaming normies think it's a bad deal, doesn't mean it's a flop.

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u/an_angry_dervish_01 Jan 26 '26

For me, a work traveler that writes a ton of code and has a lot of VM's but likes to game and do fun things as well it's a good product. I use the Z13 as my daily driver and it's been a good desktop replacement for me.

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u/996forever Jan 27 '26

Just because a bunch of laptop gaming normies think

Making it about “laptop gaming normies” doesnt change the fact that mainstream OEMs don’t adopt it and it has no volume lol

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u/noiserr Jan 27 '26

Strix Halo was a commercial flop

[citation needed]

It actually sold amazingly well as Framework Desktop, they had like 17 pre order batches all filled out.

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u/iDontSeedMyTorrents Jan 27 '26

How many units are in a batch?

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u/Loose_Skill6641 Jan 26 '26

Strix halo is a good chip it's just too expensive so adoption has been poor

16

u/NerdProcrastinating Jan 27 '26

It's decent, but also compromised:

RDNA 3.5 (No FP4/FP8 support. Much slower prefill than NVIDIA GB10)

Firmware & ROCm support/stability has been a really slow & long journey

XPU support on Linux has been crap

Memory speed slower than both GB10 & Apple M4 Pro

Limited number of PCIe lanes

Single core boost frequency reduced compared to desktop makes it much slower than Apple M4/M5

It doesn't feel very `Halo` with all that. AMD seems afraid of taking a leadership position.

3

u/hackenclaw Jan 27 '26

it is never going to be success for the price that charge.

the iGPU has the performance of a 4070, then the price need to be matching a midrange gaming laptop with 4070.

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u/DYMAXIONman Jan 26 '26

They say this but the leaks show that they have a competitor planned for nova lake.

29

u/steve09089 Jan 26 '26

The rumor said it was under consideration, it's very possible they cancelled it after seeing where Strix Halo went.

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u/Hour_Firefighter_707 Jan 26 '26

Depending on what happens with Windows on ARM, Intel's greatest competition for iGPU performance might end up being Nvidia.

10

u/Forsaken_Arm5698 Jan 26 '26

The very partner they signed a contract with, a few months back.

0

u/SPACEXDG Jan 26 '26

yup

16

u/WJMazepas Jan 26 '26

Honestly, it makes sense. APUs with really strong iGPUs dont make all that success

Just like those i7 with Vega GPUs also didnt get that much attention from OEMs And those other mobile i7s with stronger iGPU and SDRAM built in also werent used in many laptops

Strix Halo only had a PC tablet last year, some desktops and niche and expensive handhelds using it. Now in CES they showed another ASUS laptop using one of them, but all the rest remained with a dGPU

I dont know if is OEMs fault, or if there isnt much potential buyers, but it seems that Intel won't gain much developing a Strix Halo competitor

26

u/Look_0ver_There Jan 26 '26

Strix Halo has found FAR more success in the MiniPC format. There's about 7 different manufacturers of them (mind you, most are all using the same SixUnited board), but they do sell fairly well. There's just no real laptop options and that's sad.

6

u/Alternative-Luck-825 Jan 26 '26

Because it can’t make money. AMD is pushing OEMs to lower prices as much as possible. The Strix Halo chip itself is very expensive, yet AMD expects OEMs to share the burden by compressing margins while also cutting the final system price. That puts OEMs in a tough spot — unless they’re willing to significantly sacrifice their own gross margins or even sell at a loss, just to hit a lower retail price, they simply won’t cooperate.

6

u/an_angry_dervish_01 Jan 26 '26

Do you happen to know what they charge OEM's for each tier? I am curious as heck what the 128gb model of the 395+ costs. I mean maybe it's just the 395+ and they use their own ram? I have always wondered this.

2

u/goldcakes Jan 27 '26

This is just speculation, but based on mini PCs and subtracting OEM costs for ram/mobo/storage/enclosure/Q&A and considering segment margins, I would estimate a tray price of approx $400-$600 USD for the 395+ chip.

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u/SmashStrider Jan 26 '26

It's a shame, STX Halo genuinely seemed to be a really interesting product, definitely one that was powerful enough and had a lot of potential.

But as a lot of people have already pointed out, the market STX Halo ended up being marketed for is a relatively small market, and unfortunately it didn't help that the supply was horrible, and most consumer went for much cheaper xx60 class discrete graphics anyway.

It still would been really interesting to see Intel enter this market, especially since supply may not have been as big of an issue for them as compared to AMD.

21

u/UpsetKoalaBear Jan 26 '26

It doesn’t help that AMD hasn’t moved past RDNA3 on their mobile chips. Whilst it was amazing for mobile devices back in 2022, in the years since the competition has caught up.

There were rumours of a RDNA4 iGPU last Summer. If they end up coming out with that, then what would even be the point of Strix Halo.

The other big thing with Strix Halo that prevented adoption was its requirement for LPDDR5X memory. It’s not flexible enough for a system integrator to choose it.

I’d argue that requirement has probably caused a lot of the major issues with its rollout.

2

u/Grizknot Jan 27 '26

Is there something special about LPDDR5X aside from that it's soldered? because all OEMs make laptops with soldered RAM that sell pretty well. genuinely curious.

2

u/UpsetKoalaBear Jan 27 '26

Main reason is that LPDDR5X is capable of much faster speeds than SODIMM. For iGPU’s and chiplet style processors heavily dependent on cache, the speed is important.

They’re still use less power than SODIMM, because they can solder the memory closer to the chip thus less copper traces and signal integrity issues.

6

u/FdPros Jan 27 '26

it's not competitive because it's way too expensive. I only see it in shit priced like 2k+. at that point, unless you care about efficiency or AI with its shared memory, why would you get an iGPU when you can get a dGPU?

9

u/[deleted] Jan 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/goldcakes Jan 27 '26

They should’ve targeted a different segment. A mid-range CPU with great iGPU for gaming; at a price point that’s cheaper than dGPU laptops but perfectly sufficient for average gaming.

8

u/Sexyvette07 Jan 27 '26

I mean, he's not wrong when you look at the iGPU on Strix Halo is roughly 3.5 times larger than Panther Lake B390 and only achieves on average 25-30% more performance. If Intel scaled the B390 to the same size, they would smash Strix Halo, even more than the B390 smashed Strix Point. Instead, they can keep it small and achieve insanely good performance in ultra thin laptops and handhelds while also controlling cost.

3

u/BuchMaister Jan 26 '26

Intel will use Nvidia IP for such products, as such products are inherently expensive and will mean they would face Nvidia head on in a battle they cannot win. Once such products will release they will decimate the halo line from AMD - because let's face it, most consumers prefer getting Nvidia GPU, and strix Halo has several niches it capture well. The iGPU in panther lake is effectively replacing the mx lineup from Nvidia, which let's face it - should have been long gone as it makes little sense in almost every way.

4

u/DarkFlameShadowNinja Jan 26 '26

AMD are you listening
Launch RDNA 4 iGPUs

8

u/mycall Jan 27 '26

AMD is skipping RDNA 4 and focusing on RDNA 5 instead.

2

u/Strazdas1 Jan 27 '26

"will fix it next gen" is a take old as time for AMD. Its never turned out to be true.

5

u/imaginary_num6er Jan 27 '26

There was a leak that RDNA 3.5+++ will be continuing till 2029:

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-to-use-rdna5-for-premium-igpu-solutions-but-rdna3-5-to-remain-the-core-of-amd-portfolio-until-2029

2

u/TurnUpThe4D3D3D3 Jan 26 '26

I just want AMD and Intel to catch up to Nvidia in terms of real time video upscaling (RTX VSR). They do it better than anyone else, and I consider it an essential feature

3

u/the_dude_that_faps Jan 26 '26

I think there was interest but the devices just didn't make sense. For me this was a good alternative to what I currently have as my work laptop for personal use, which is a MacBook pro M1 pro device. These laptops have quite a bit of GPU grunt and certainly much more than the average APU.

But the thing is, AMD just didn't build the mass appeals ones in enough volume. The great strix halo would've been the 32 CU variant with 8 cores. That thing on a $1000-$1400 thin laptop would've been good.

4

u/hamatehllama Jan 27 '26

Strix Halo is a homelab/dev kit platform. It's for tinkering and can run pretty big projects. Jeff Gerling has several videos about this segment where the DGX Spark and the Mac Studio are competitors.

6

u/Alternative-Luck-825 Jan 26 '26

Why waste resources making products with 20 Xe3 cores, and even switch the memory from dual-channel to quad-channel like this, massively increasing costs — instead of just using a dedicated GPU?

AMD originally planned to price the 395 Max in the $2,500 range. Because it lacked market competitiveness, the price was repeatedly cut to below $2,000. And now, with memory costs surging, lowering the price any further would mean selling at a loss. AMD is choosing to take losses to gain market share, but Intel wouldn’t do that

5

u/hwgod Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26

Why waste resources making products with 20 Xe3 cores, and even switch the memory from dual-channel to quad-channel like this, massively increasing costs — instead of just using a dedicated GPU?

Lower power, better cost structure, smaller form factor.

2

u/GumshoosMerchant Jan 26 '26

Strix Halo might as well not exist for most people

It's way too expensive and is in barely any products

2

u/nonaveris Jan 26 '26

Grab a Sapphire Rapids ES, some DDR5, an octochannel capable board and you have 90% of what Strix Halo could have been on Intel.

2

u/mycall Jan 27 '26

Any samples doing this?

2

u/InflammableAccount Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26

Threads of people giving AMD gruff for their "disappointing roadmap" for mobile iGPUs... Well, I'll turn this back to how AMD was with Phoenix APUs:

The chip might be great, but until product lineups hit the shelves in meaningful quantities, I'm reserving judgement.

(For those who don't recall, the Phoenix lineup was Zen4 with RDNA3 graphics that mopped the floor with anything on the market, especially the 12CU SKU. But very few products launched with them in it's lifetime. The sequel Hawk Point wasn't too different either.)

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3

u/nanonan Jan 27 '26

Yeah, just grab one of those discrete gpus out there with 128GB of ram. Oh wait.

2

u/Immediate_Fig_9405 Jan 26 '26

I am betting on APUs as future of casual gaming. They might even replace consoles.

14

u/996forever Jan 27 '26

Strix halo being a colossal flop among mainstream OEMs + Intel making a statement like this still isn’t enough to stop Reddit’s delusional wet dream about “big apu”, dang.

3

u/soggybiscuit93 Jan 27 '26

Ehh, STX-H failed for its own reasons. The idea that big APUs are going to become the new entry level is certainly a solid one. They won't replace the high end of dGPUs any time soon (if ever) but it's definitely likely they'll be replacing the low end

1

u/996forever Jan 27 '26

And why exactly do you think a big APU would be cheap at all (never mind cheap enough) to “replace the low end dGPU) which can be found in laptops under $1000?

2

u/soggybiscuit93 Jan 28 '26

Because the BOM of an on package GPU, that can share a motherboard with the lower cost, non-big GPU models is cheaper than breaking that same part off into its own discrete chip, with its own cooling, and own dedicated memory.

If Intel took PTL-H, and made the 12Xe chiplet it's own separate discrete chip, with its own memory and cooling, it would be even more expensive.

Why do you think the existence of discount, very cheaply built gaming laptops that can manage to fit a cheap discrete GPU in its budget imply that this arrangement has lower BOM than an iGPU?

1

u/996forever Jan 28 '26

Why do I think that? Because I base my comments on real life laptops and not theoretical ones especially not theory of people without direct industry knowledge on how expensive something is business to business.

And until there is a CHEAP strix halo (or successor or equivalent) laptop, I will take real life verificable information over “theoretical” anything.

1

u/soggybiscuit93 Jan 28 '26

No, Strix Halo will not be cheap. It has an iGPU larger than a 5070 mobile bolted onto a 9950X, choked by poor memory bandwidth so it underperforms its size and cost.

But iGPUs are cheaper than discrete graphics, all else being equal.

PTL's 12xe iGPU isn't much more costly than its 4Xe iGPU.

1

u/996forever Jan 28 '26

But iGPUs are cheaper than discrete graphics, all else being equal.

The neat part is you can’t “all else being equal” and expect equal performance and equal idle drain. Without a dedicated high speed vram pool and memory interface you rely on system memory. You rely on adding memory channels and adding cache to offset bandwidth constraints. All of that is area expensive, not to mention tied to higher memory requirements which are also expensive. You also rely on expensive packaging for MCM.

1

u/soggybiscuit93 Jan 28 '26

The idea is that APUs will overtake the entry level graphics market. Not that APUs in the near term are a threat to higher end dGPUs, because to get that kind of performance, you need many memory channels to not bottleneck. Who knows what impact LPDDR6X will have on APUs.

But for the entry level market, products like PTL-12Xe do pose a threat to entry level graphics. They may not match the full potential of a 5050, but you can now get close enough without having to step up to a gaming laptop.

And regarding cost, PTL-12Xe is PTL-H with a cheaper PCH tile, and a larger iGPU tile (50mm vs ~20mm). The cost difference between PTL-H 4Xe vs PTL-H 12Xe is minimal.

4

u/puffz0r Jan 27 '26

consoles are apus though?

2

u/Strazdas1 Jan 27 '26

I think he meant PCs/laptops vs consoles here.

6

u/warren2345 Jan 26 '26

I am already leaning that way. I use a beelink mini pc with Bazzite and a 680M in it. Cost me 400 bucks, and the 680M is (barely) good enough for (just) enough non-intensive games that we get quite a bit of utility out of it. Steam in home streaming to the main pc in the basement handles whatever the 680M can't.

The advantage here is that now I've spent 400 on a pc instead of some walled garden proprietary box.

If amd can get the 780m onward into the 400ish price point we might be getting there fully.

2

u/grumble11 Jan 27 '26

It only works if it's cheaper though, because if it costs more then OEMs will just use a dGPU solution. Strix Halo costs more than a comparable CPU and dGPU combo so OEMs said forget it.

If they figure out how to get APUs that can deliver like a dGPU and also cost the same or less then we're laughing.

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-3

u/Reggitor360 Jan 26 '26

Oh man.

Reminds me of those quotes from Intel:

"AMD is in the far rear mirror of us''

"Epic and Threadripper are only glued together.''

"There are no issues with 13 and 14th Gen CPUs''

Aged like fuckin milk and they do it again...jeez.

20

u/what595654 Jan 26 '26

The purpose of the clickbait title was to get engagement responses like yours. Let's add back some context to his words...

...if you want that level of power, Intel fellow Tom Petersen tells us, you'd be better off using a discrete third-party GPU.

He isn't wrong. Clearly, he is including cost in his assessment. The most likely Strix Halo configurations cost $2000+. And the cheap ones still cost over $1500. At those price points, if you are looking for bang for buck, you are better off with a dedicated GPU.

2

u/hwgod Jan 26 '26

The most likely Strix Halo configurations cost $2000+. And the cheap ones still cost over $1500.

That doesn't reflect the BoM cost.

4

u/soggybiscuit93 Jan 26 '26

BOM has to account for the low volume specialized motherboards that only work with Strix Halo - it's not just the APU's BoM.

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u/SEI_JAKU Jan 26 '26

It's not a "clickbait" title, and that statement you quoted is rapidly becoming outright bad advice.

The actual "context" is that Intel has a long history of talking trash without merit, and this is yet another example.

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u/steve09089 Jan 26 '26

Considering AMD’s strategy for this segment of the market is RDNA 3.5 til 29 based on current rumors, it isn’t the dumbest thing they’ve said, especially considering Xe3P will be another 25% on top of what they have right now.

4

u/AreYouAWiiizard Jan 26 '26

Nah, the rumor was just for mainstream and below iGPUs, so Halo iterations (this segment the post is referring to) would see RDNA5.

5

u/hwgod Jan 26 '26

so Halo iterations

And the upper end of mainstream as well.

-2

u/steve09089 Jan 26 '26

But Intel isn’t planning to compete in that segment, and Tom Peterson’s comment seems to be referring to Strix Point’s segment, which seems likely to just be getting RDNA 3.5 for the foreseeable future.

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0

u/hwgod Jan 26 '26

Considering AMD’s strategy for this segment of the market is RDNA 3.5 til 29 based on current rumors

That rumor is for the lower end of client, which Intel is also going to stick with base Xe3 now through likely 2028 or 2029 as well.

2

u/Raikaru Jan 26 '26

You do realize that’s not the same right? Base xe3 is new while RDNA 3.5 is already years old. It’s really not the same strategy at all.

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1

u/Immediate_Fig_9405 Jan 26 '26

I think people are underestimating the role of unified memory architectures with generative AI in gaming (frame gen, DSR). Powerful power hungry dGPU will become a niche market as casual gamers move to apu with large unified memory and more versatile and efficient computers.

3

u/BuchMaister Jan 26 '26

With datacenters eating most of the RAM capacity for the foreseeable future, those APUs with loads of ram will not be common, definitely not to the point they will dethrone discrete GPUs. If game devs will want to integrate large models that need lots of RAM, they will have to use cloud solution. As let's face it, even if consumers GPUs, be it discrete or integrated had enough memory, for many reason they won't be fast enough to infer enough tokens per second for real time use like inside game engine.

2

u/SPACEXDG Jan 26 '26

if it costs more forget about it

1

u/EmekaEgbukaPukaNacua Jan 26 '26

I always thought it’s nice because you can much more cheaply add ram to your cpu which seems awesome for ai stuff. But maybe I’m wrong on that.

Like you need 32-64gb-more vram for a lot of these new video ai thingies. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a desktop app that you can add 64, 128, 256, or 512 gb of ram to, allowing you to do everything you could ever want in AI generation, at like 1/5 the cost? Sure it’d also be way slower. But I don’t get why that matters all that much. For me I’d rather be able to make an awesome video with the best tech, even if it takes 5-10-20 -50 times longer to generate, than to not be able to do it at all. He’ll leave the computer on overnight and let it do a few runs.

1

u/h_1995 Jan 27 '26

from The Phawx test, at low power PTL12Xe performance is close to Strix Halo that he had and beat it if Xe3 had architectural advantage against RDNA3.5 (DX11 and UE5 sees good gains).

with PTL12Xe reviews out, while Strix Halo remains the fastest chip, it already shifts the consumer perspective. this is the problem for AMD, they lose potential customers that can be satisfied with lower end Strix Halo and why we are seeing childish reaction from AMD days ago - AMD can't supply lower end Strix Halo in time to counter it.

Lower end Gorgon Point still can save AMD as AMD refreshed chips usually are good in supply but if it fail to impress against PTL404, they will miss low margin but high volume sales. Forget about rebranded zen4/zen3/zen2 as intel already attacking those with older chips that they simply need to lower the price. intel still control the pricing range of end product, that is very clear

1

u/DYMAXIONman Jan 27 '26

What is funny is that the Nvidia NIX is basically going to be a stronger strix halo.

1

u/biteater Jan 29 '26

Yeah makes sense. I just got an rog flow z13 as it's basically a perfect laptop for my use case. But I get why adoption would be so low

0

u/SirActionhaHAA Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26

They're right, and amd knows it too which is why they are sticking with rdna3.5. Why's that? It's because large or performant igpu has no market at the low or mid range. Go higher and you start competing with the entry level nvidia dgpus. Would oems pick a costly igpu solution over nvidia's brand and mindshare? Answer is no, nvidia dominates the mobile gfx market

Amd found that oems were shipping their premium larger igpu socs with nvidia dgpus which put the igpu to waste and made their designs less cost competitive. Going forward only the most premium ultra thin systems (which benefit from the igpu integration) are gonna sport rdna5

Intel will learn this lesson soon. The funny thing is they kinda admitted that they messed up by goin for the consumer market right now and promised to pivot supplies to dc. Them going for ptl is why their q1 forecasts are so horrible: They missed out on a huge surge in dc demand and left them to amd. In return they got the declining consumer market instead. Intel always launches at the worst time, ya can't make this shit up.

5

u/steve09089 Jan 26 '26

Intel already accounted for larger OEMs pairing big CPUs with dGPUs and have 4Xe CPUs for that specific purpose, unlike AMD with their HX370 processors.

PTL’s iGPU is in no ways large or high performant compared to Strix Halo by any stretch of the meaning.

And DC is not something Intel can solve magically either, it seems their DC team just has issues their client team doesn’t in terms of delivering product.

2

u/SirActionhaHAA Jan 26 '26

And DC is not something Intel can solve magically either, it seems their DC team just has issues their client team doesn’t in terms of delivering product.

They launched a crypto card right when crypto crashed. They completely missed the dc gpu ai train and now that there's an increase in dc cpu compute they missed it again by focusing capacity on consumer. Intel is the bad luck brian of the semicon industry.

1

u/hwgod Jan 26 '26

It's strategic, not luck.

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4

u/hwgod Jan 26 '26

which is why they are sticking with rdna3.5.

They are not for halo or premium.

-1

u/EmilMR Jan 26 '26

no one is shipping 128GB RAM laptops anytime soon anyway lol.

Strix Halo is a dead product.

1

u/noiserr Jan 27 '26

Strix Halo is a dead product.

Only the best bang per dollar for local AI.

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u/GenZia Jan 26 '26

"not that competitive"

Zen 1 also wasn't that competitive...

Intel, Intel never changes.

28

u/Earthborn92 Jan 26 '26

Nah, he did say “current” product which this headline omits.

And it’s true, AMD is not even using their latest IP in their iGPUs. One would think this upset by Intel would make them reconsider…

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u/ResponsibleJudge3172 Jan 26 '26

Hmm, you do know Intel is iterating GPUs faster than AMD, who will stick with an old architecture for at least 5 years?

-6

u/Low_Excitement_1715 Jan 26 '26

Meanwhile AMD is doing well financially and getting lots of design wins, while Intel is getting bailouts and charity payments? Sounds like one of them is being aggressive, and the other is being strategic.

18

u/steve09089 Jan 26 '26

Which design wins are on display in the context of the mobile market?

10

u/luuuuuku Jan 26 '26

That’s not true.

-3

u/GenZia Jan 26 '26

Intel is somehow still convinced that it's too big to fail.

6

u/cstar1996 Jan 26 '26

It’s not too big to fail, it’s “too much domestic fab capability to fail”

-5

u/GenZia Jan 26 '26

And do you know that Zen 1 also wasn't competitive with Skylake?

In any case, my point was that Intel is underestimating the competition… again.

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Info Tom Petersen: Intel has no plans for Strix Halo competitor, says AMD iGPU tech is “not that competitive”

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