AMD Launches ‘Fire Range’ HX3D mobile processor with game-boosting 3D V-Cache, other HX Series SKUs built on Zen 5 desktop CPU silicon

AMD announced its Ryzen 9000HX series of laptop chips here at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, including its flagship model that it bills as the world’s best mobile processor for gaming and content creation. The flagship ‘Fire Range’ Ryzen 9 9955HX3D chip comes armed with the Zen 5 architecture paired with the company’s game-boosting 3D V-Cache technology, and AMD also announced two new non-X3D chips that come with standard designs, with all three models being comprised of the same silicon that the company uses for its potent Ryzen 9000 series desktop processors. AMD says all three chips will come to market in the first half of 2025, but didn’t share any notable design wins or benchmarks. These processors will compete directly with Intel’s desktop-replacement Core Ultra 200HX series laptop chips.

(Image credit: AMD)

(Image credit: AMD)

The Ryzen 9000HX series desktop processors are geared as desktop and workstation replacements, so they come with the same chiplet-based design and silicon as found in the desktop chips instead of the monolithic die the company uses for the rest of its laptop chips. The desktop CPU design, ported from the socketed chip to a smaller BGA-mounted package, provides far more computational horsepower than standard laptop chips, but this results in higher power consumption, and thus lower battery life. AMD rates all three of its new chips with a 54W TDP, which is markedly lower than the prior-gen’s 75W+ peak. All three chips use the same central I/O die as the desktop CPUs, so they will also have the basic RDNA 2 iGPU with 2 CUs that don’t provide enough performance for gaming. That doesn’t matter, though, as 9000HX series laptops will come with discrete gaming GPUs.

The flagship Ryzen 9955HX3D is forged from the same silicon as the desktop Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor that AMD also announced today. These chips wield the Zen 5 architecture with 16 cores and 32 threads coupled with an additional 96MB L3 cache chiplet that is stacked underneath one of the two chiplets that contain the CPU cores. This extra slab of cache provides explosive performance gains in most games, but it doesn’t accelerate all titles equally. The 9955HX3D’s CPU cores can boost up to 5.4 GHz, the same as the prior gen Ryzen 9 7945HX3D model.

The prior-gen model was limited to one series of expensive laptops from Asus, the ROG Strix Scar lineup, and they suffered from poor availability. AMD said the new HX3D chip is coming to laptops soon but hasn’t specified if these will be available in a wider selection of notebooks.

AMD also has two other standard HX models that come without 3D V-Cache technology. These Fire Range models replace the previous-gen Dragon Range chips, but AMD has winnowed down the standard HX product stack to only two models, whereas the prior generation had six models that stretched all the way down to a six-core 12-thread model. In contrast, the new HX series comes with either 12 or 16 cores. It’s possible that AMD could release more HX models in the future; we’ll dig for more details.

As you can see above, the Ryzen 9 9955HX and Ryzen 9 9850HX have the same boost clocks and cache capacities as their predecessors, but come with a 55W TDP, a marked decrease from the prior-gen’s peak of 75W+.

AMD hasn’t shared benchmarks for these processors yet, but we’ll track down more details when we meet with the company this week. AMD says the Ryzen 9000HX series chips will be available in the first half of this year.