AMD is rumored to be discontinuing driver support for the Windows 10 operating system for its next-generation mobile processors, starting with the upcoming Ryzen 9000 "Strix Point" (and possibly "Strix Halo" and other chips from the generation). This would mean a lack of official drivers for the XDNA 2 NPU, SoC components, and possibly even the iGPU. This who know their way around manual driver installation might have some luck getting the Windows 11 drivers to work on Windows 10, but for the most part, notebooks and pre-built SFF desktops powered by these chips will not come with Windows 10 preinstalled, since there won't be any official drivers from AMD.

The CPU of Ryzen 9000 "Strix Point" processors should still very much work with Windows 10. This however doesn't cover the upcoming Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" desktop processors, which have minimal hardware that need drivers, except for the basic iGPU they pack. Microsoft is discontinuing Windows 10 from regular updates on October 14, 2025. Those who want to hold on to the operating system need to pay for extended security update plans that get progressively pricier with each year.

AMD's next-generation Ryzen 9000 "Strix Point" mobile processor, which succeeds the current Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" and Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix," is confirmed to feature a CPU core-configuration of 12-core/24-thread, according to a specs-leak by HKEPC citing sources among notebook OEMs. It appears like Computex 2024 will be big for AMD, with the company preparing next-gen processor announcements across the desktop and notebook lines. Both the "Strix Point" mobile processor and "Granite Ridge" desktop processor debut the company's next "Zen 5" microarchitecture.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from "Zen 5" is that AMD has increased the number of CPU cores per CCX from 8 in "Zen 3" and "Zen 4," to 12 in "Zen 5." While this doesn't affect the core-counts of its CCD chiplets (which are still expected to be 8-core), the "Strix Point" processor appears to use one giant CCX with 12 cores. Each of the "Zen 5" cores has a 1 MB dedicated L2 cache, while the 12 cores share a 24 MB L3 cache. The 12-core/24-thread CPU, besides the generational IPC gains introduced by "Zen 5," marks a 50% increase in CPU muscle over "Hawk Point." It's not just the CPU complex, even the iGPU sees a hardware update.

Enthusiasts on the ChipHell forum scored an alleged image of AMD's upcoming "Strix Halo" mobile processor, and set out to create some highly plausible schematic slides. These are speculative. While "Strix Point" is the mobile processor that succeeds the current "Hawk Point" and "Phoenix" processors; "Strix Halo" is in a category of its own—to offer gaming experiences comparable to discrete GPUs in the ultraportable form-factor where powerful discrete GPUs are generally not possible. "Strix Halo" also goes head on against Apple's M3 Max and M3 Pro processors powering the latest crop of MacBook Pros. It has the same advantages as a single-chip solution, as the M3 Max.

The "Strix Halo" silicon is a chiplet-based processor, although very different from "Fire Range". The "Fire Range" processor is essentially a BGA version of the desktop "Granite Ridge" processor—it's the same combination of one or two "Zen 5" CCDs that talk to a client I/O die, and is meant for performance-thru-enthusiast segment notebooks. "Strix Halo," on the other hand, use the same one or two "Zen 5" CCDs, but with a large SoC die featuring an oversized iGPU, and 256-bit LPDDR5X memory controllers not found on the cIOD. This is key to what AMD is trying to achieve—CPU and graphics performance in the league of the M3 Pro and M3 Max at comparable PCB and power footprints.

Two of AMD's upcoming mobile processors that implement the "Zen 5" microarchitecture, "Strix Point" and "Fire Range," were spotted in shipping manifests. These are prototypes moving between AMD and its OEM partners. The manifest explicitly mentions a "Fire Range" 16-core processor sample with 55 W TDP, another "Fire Range" chip with an 8-core configuration and the same 55 W power; and a trio of "Strix Point" processors with a 28 W power design. Two of these are Ryzen 9 SKUs, and one of them is a Ryzen 7.

VideoCardz has the OPN codes for the samples being moved. The Ryzen 7 "Strix Point" sample bears 100-0000001335. One of the two Ryzen 9 "Strix Point" chips bears 100-000000994. The 16-core "Fire Range" is marked 100-000001028, while the 8-core "Fire Range" is 100-000001029. "Strix Point" will be AMD's most imporant mobile processor silicon, as this will be the one with a "Zen 5" CPU core count relevant to the notebook market, pack an RDNA 3+ iGPU, and that alleged 40 TOPS+ XDNA 2 NPU that can run Microsoft Copilot locally. A step up from this will be "Strix Halo," with a higher CPU core count, a much larger iGPU designed for performance-segment gaming. "Fire Range" is essentially a low Z-height BGA version of the "Granite Ridge" chiplet processor that has up to two "Zen 5" CCDs and an I/O die.

Microsoft, Intel, and AMD are attempting to jumpstart demand in the PC industry again, under the aegis of the AI PC—devices with native acceleration for AI workloads. Both Intel and AMD have mobile processors with on-silicon NPUs (neural processing units), which are designed to accelerate the first wave of AI-enhanced client experiences on Windows 11 23H2. Microsoft's bulwark with democratizing AI has been Copilot, as a licensee of Open AI GPT-4, GPT-4 Turbo, Dali, and other generative AI tools from the Open AI stable. Copilot is currently Microsoft's most heavily invested application, with its most capital and best minds mobilized to making it the most popular AI assistant. Microsoft even pushed for the AI PC designator to PC OEMs, which requires them to have a dedicated Copilot key akin to the Start key (we'll see how anti-competition regulators deal with that).

The problem with Microsoft's tango with Intel and AMD to push AI PCs, is that Copilot doesn't really use an NPU, not even at the edge—you input a query or a prompt, and Copilot hands it over to a cloud-based AI service. This is about to change, with Microsoft announcing that Copilot will be able to run locally on AI PCs. Microsoft identified several kinds of Copilot use-cases that an NPU can handle on-device, which should speed up response times to Copilot queries, but this requires the NPU to have at least 40 TOPS of performance. This is a problem for the current crop of processors with NPUs. Intel's Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" has an AI Boost NPU with 10 TOPS on tap, while the Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" is only slightly faster, with a 16 TOPS Ryzen AI NPU. AMD has already revealed that the XDNA 2-based 2nd Generation Ryzen AI NPU in its upcoming "Strix Point" processors will come with over 40 TOPS of performance, and it stands to reason that the NPUs in Intel's "Arrow Lake" or "Lunar Lake" processors are comparable in performance; which should enable on-device Copilot.

AMD in its Ryzen 8040 series "Hawk Point" mobile processors announcement made the first mention of XDNA 2, its next-generation on-chip neural processing unit (NPU) architecture. Above all, the XDNA 2 NPU is expected to introduce an over 3 times improvement in performance over the first generation XDNA NPU powering the Ryzen 7040 series "Phoenix" processor. XDNA 2 is making its debut with AMD's next-generation Ryzen "Strix Point" mobile processor that the company looks to launch in 2024. While "Phoenix" offers 10 TOPS of NPU performance, AMD mentions an "over 3 times" performance improvement, which probably puts this figure at 32 TOPS for "Strix Point."

The "Strix Point" mobile processor is rumored to debut faster "Zen 5" CPU cores, a possible CPU core count increase to 12, and a much more powerful iGPU based on the updated RDNA 3.5 graphics architecture, with some SKUs expected to feature CU counts as high as 32, and designed to square off against the iGPU of the Apple M3 Max processor. Besides "Zen 5" CPU cores and RDNA 3.5 iGPU, we now know that even the NPU gets an overhaul with this XDNA 2 announcement, and a possible 32 TOPS NPU performance.