AMD CES 2025 Keynote Live Coverage

With CES 2025 already in full swing before the show even officially opens, today is the second day of the show’s media-only “Media Days” events, with the bulk of the show’s major keynotes being held today.

AMD CES 2025 Keynote Live Coverage Preview

In the PC space, Intel already held a small, private keynote earlier this morning. And now it is AMD’s turn, with Senior VP and General Manager of AMD’s Computing and Graphics Group, Jack Huynh, headlining the presentation. Given the consumer-focused nature of CES, the high-level description of AMD’s keynote indicates that AMD will be sticking fairly close to that market segment, with a focus on AMD’s products in PCs and gaming. Though expect the company to squeeze in a mention of its lucrative HPC and AI products as well.

The company hasn’t given any other official guidance on what to expect in terms of announcements. But looking at AMD’s consumer hardware stack, the company is overdue to deliver on their next-generation Radeon video cards, which would be based on the company’s RDNA 4 GPU architecture and associated Navi 4x GPUs. AMD’s client video card efforts have been rather muted in the last year, with their market share estimated to have dropped under 15%, so it will be interesting to see what steps the company takes to reinvigorate its video card sales – assuming it wants to do so at all. With the promise of a gaming-focus on the keynote, some kind of video card announcement is practically a given here.

Meanwhile on the CPU side of matters, AMD is already in the middle of their Zen 5 architecture launch cycle as CES 2025 kicks off, so any CPU announcements will be a bit less traditional. AMD has already launched their mainstream desktop and mobile chips – Ryzen 9000 and Ryzen AI 300 respectively – so what remains is more niche parts. Barring any new SKUs for AMD’s V-cache equipped desktop Ryzen 9000X3D parts, I expect any major CPU/APU announcements here will be mobile-focused, an always interesting realm for AMD. On the one hand, the company has a bit of history being slow to get new laptop chips out the door, and on the other hand, the company has seen a lot of success with its lower power APUs that go into handhelds like the Steam Deck. So it will be interesting to see which AMD shows up today.

We’ll find out the answer to all of this, and more, when AMD’s keynote kicks off at 11am PST / 2pm EST / 19:00 UTC. AMD says that this will be a relatively tight 45-minute keynote, so expect a flurry of announcements, and plenty of partner product promotion as part of the process. So please join us for our live blog coverage of AMD’s CES 2025.

AMD CES 2025 Keynote Coverage Live

It’s 5 minutes to go, and at this point we’re just waiting on AMD to get started. The company’s live stream is, well, live, and is running placeholder music and imagery until the actual presentation kicks off.

Cliff has already covered Intel’s keynote this morning, which outlined Intel’s impending release of new Arrow Lake chips for the mobile market. So it’ll be interesting to see if AMD does anything specifically as counter-programming. (Keeping in mind that AMD wouldn’t have seen the chips yet, so there’s only so much countering one can do)

And here we go. With AMD running the traditional (if not obligatory) intro video. And here’s Jack.

Jack is recapping the many industries that AMD’s hardware is in this day. Everything from the expected to the unexpected, such as agriculture and wildlife use cases. “Whether you know it or not, you probably interact with AMD technology every day.”

Today will be a focus on end-user devices across consumer, gaming, and enterprise.

AMD CES 2025 Gaming Announcements

Jack is recapping the Ryzen 9000X3D release.

New desktop CPU. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D!

16 CPU cores, up to 5.7GHz. “The world’s best gaming processor”. It sounds like there’s just one V-cache enabled CCD, while the other is a regular Zen 5 CCD.

Rattling off performance comparisons with Intel’s Core 285K.

Also a “new king” at content creation.

AMD will be pitching the chip as their flagship for both gamers and content creators.

Zen 5 with V-Cache is also coming to mobile devices with HX3D products. Fire Range.

Fire range will be available later this half of the year (Computex 2025, anyone?)

And now time for a break from the hardware announcements for a partner plug. Matt Booty of Microsoft.

Matt is talking about Microsoft’s close, decades-long partnership with AMD, and how critical they are to Microsoft’s products.

Back to Jack.

AMD has more to talk about with gaming, but it will be later this quarter. That will be RDNA 4 and FSR4. So no video card announcement today after all!.

AMD CES 2025 Laptop CPUs

Now on stage: AMD’s Rahul Tikoo to talk about AI PCs.

“In 2025 Ryzen AI will continue to grow, with over 150 laptop designs.”

All the usual suspects: ASUS, Acer, HP, Lenovo, etc.

New hardware announcements: Ryzen AI 7 and Ryzen AI 5 series processors. Codenamed “Krackan Point”

These are lower-tier chips to join the rest of AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 lineup, and go up against the likes of Lunar Lake and Snapdragon X Plus.

Over 24 hours of battery life with video playback.

8 and 6 core chips. Available this quarter.

New hardware announcement: Ryzen AI MAX. Codename “Strix Halo”

Up to 16 CPU cores. RDNA 3.5 iGPU with up to 40 units. And up to 256GB/second of memory bandwidth – though AMD isn’t detailing the actual technical underpinnings such as clockspeeds or memory bus width. Though as it’s clearly on-package, we’re undoubtedly looking at stacks of LPDDR5X.

AMD is promising very high performance efficiency combined with equally high performance.

Lots of comparisons against Lunar Lake, which is Intel’s latest (shipping) mobile silicon. But that is aimed at a much different market than Ryzen AI MAX, so it’s very much an apples-and-oranges comparison.

And did AMD mention AI? All of these compute and memory resources will allow the Max to be even faster at AI inference. And in the right corner case (local memory limited), AMD says it can even surpass high-end discrete video cards like the 24GB GeForce RTX 4090.

3 SKUs (ed: apparently there’s a 4th not on AMD’s slide), from 8 to 16 cores. Topping out at the Ryzen AI MAX+ 395.

And, of course, AMD’s many partners are lining up to offer laptops with the new mobile chip.

And a quick look at AMD’s mobile chip stack after these new announcements.

And that’s AMD’s laptop chip announcements.

AMD CES 2025 Enterprise

Now back to Jack to talk about Enterprise.

Jack has shifted to talking about AMD’s Ryzen Pro chips, which are AMD’s existing silicon with additional enterprise-focused features enabled.

AMD Pro’s promotional push is all about security, manageability, TCO, and, of course, performance.

A minor technical snafu, but AMD is promising Apple-like battery life with the deep software collection and manageability tools of Windows.

And now rolling another video, this time with AMD’s OEM partners talking about how Ryzen has allowed them to push the boundaries of innovation and develop better devices.

“We are excited to continue our journey with AMD”

But there was one OEM missing from AMD’s video: Dell, who is joining AMD directly on stage. Sam Bird of Dell.

Sam is here to talk about the Dell AI factory, and how AMD is being used in these products.

“Jack, when are you going to be in Dell commercial PCs?”

Now. Dell will begin offing commercial Dell Pro PCs with AMD Ryzen AI Pro processors.

Sam is showcasing a 13-inch system that will be available this spring.

Jack has asked the question of the minute: why is Dell finally doing this now?

Sam’s answer is, as you might expect, very non-specific. At a high level, Dell is (finally?) happy with the breadth of AMD’s hardware portfolio.

Meanwhile, both salesmen are eager to sell new, AI-capable PCs to the commercial market. Especially as there are still so many Windows 10 machines out there that won’t be able to run Windows 11, and will face their first roadbump with the retirement of free Windows 10 updates at the end of this year.

And that’s AMD + Dell.

Wrap-up time.

AMD is in more places than everywhere. And they will be going even farther with their new desktop and laptop chips launching this quarter. “We’re just getting started. The best is yet to come.”

Final Words

With AMD’s CES 2025 keynote, the company has managed to deliver both a curveball and a very traditional, buttoned-down keynote, depending on what market you’re looking from.

The surprise is on the GPU side – or rather the lack of one. Even with AMD being overdue to deliver new desktop video cards, it looks like gamers will be waiting a bit longer, as AMD will be revealing the RDNA 4 GPU architecture and associated products later this quarter.

Instead, this CES was all about client CPUs. Which of the two, is certainly AMD’s stronger market. Desktop builders will be able to look forward to a additional options with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D, which will be AMD’s flagship chips for gaming and productivity. The obligatory V-cache enabled parts, these chips will swap out a regular Zen 5 CCD for one of AMD’s V-cache Zen 5 CCDs, allowing for greater performance for workloads that can take advantage of the extra on-chip cache.

Meanwhile, it’s the laptop market that is taking away the bulk of the spoils of today’s announcement – something that’s very fitting for CES, given its tradition of being used as a venue for laptop announcements. AMD’s cheaper “Krackan Point” silicon will back new, lower-tier configurations of the Ryzen AI 300 series, making up the Ryzen AI 7 and AI 5 sub-series.

And on the high-end side of matters, AMD’s “Strix Halo” silicon will back their new Ryzen AI MAX series of chips for high-performance laptops. With between 6 and 16 CPU cores, the MAX chips will pair up AMD’s Zen 5 CPU cores with an extensive, 40 CU iGPU, and a faster memory interface to feed the beast. With a TDP window of 45 Watts to 120 Watts, the MAX chips seem to have quite the range, though I suspect most devices will go towards the higher-end of that range in order to take full advantage of what the silicon can do.

Finally, desktop replacement class (DTR) laptop customers will be able to look forward to the release of the Ryzen 9000 HX series chips (codenamed “Fire Range”), which will offer AMD’s desktop silicon in a laptop configuration. The HX series will be aimed at peak performance first and foremost, with one SKU – the 9955HX3D – even bringing V-cache for even higher performance.

Other than the new HX series, all of these new chip families are slated to be available this quarter.