It appears that AMD’s revolutionary 3D V-Cache tech might be on its way to laptops, and the laptop that gets the 3D treatment might be one beastly computer.
A Ryzen 9 7950HX3D chip has been spotted inside an Asus ROG Strix laptop. Will the 3D V-Cache make this device top every ranking of the best laptops, or will it just become a power-hungry desktop in a smaller package?
X3D Laptop🥰https://t.co/6zWQWS52Im pic.twitter.com/aBrqn7UfpH
— HXL (@9550pro) July 24, 2023
Some of AMD’s greatest CPUs have massive amounts of cache, all thanks to the 3D V-Cache tech. While successful in desktops, the technology still hasn’t made its way to laptops, but signs point to that being about to change — if the rumors check out. So far, neither AMD nor Asus made any move to confirm this, so keep the excitement at bay until we have an official statement.
For now, let’s indulge in some delightful speculation. The chip first emerged on Weibo, a Chinese platform, and has since been taken down — but a screenshot of it was preserved by @9550pro on Twitter. We’re looking at the AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D, a chip with 16 cores, 32 threads, and 128MB of L3 cache.
The screenshot is one thing, but Tom’s Hardware also dug up an actual product listing for the yet-unreleased Asus ROG Strix. It’s a 17-inch 1440p laptop that also comes with Nvidia’s top GPU, the RTX 4090, as well as 32GB of DDR5 RAM. The CPU cache is listed as 64MB in the spec sheet, which is likely a mistake, as the 7950X3D comes with 128MB of combined cache.
To no one’s surprise, this laptop is going to be expensive. It’s priced at 3,904 British pounds, which translates to around $5,000. Of course, there’s no telling how much it’ll cost in the U.S. if, and when, it makes its way across the pond.
This is a Dragon Range chip, and as Tom’s Hardware notes, it’ll be a standard desktop CPU placed inside a much smaller laptop chassis. This could make the laptop heat up a fair bit, and depending on the final power consumption of the processor, the device could be more of a portable desktop than a laptop — its battery life is likely to be quite limited.
There’s no doubt that the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D, in combination with an RTX 4090, will deliver unmatched performance in laptops. However, it’s hard to say whether the limited space combined with such powerful components could translate to some thermal throttling. Asus has likely thought of this and made the laptop pretty bulky, given that it’s a 17-inch model that’s said to weigh just under 7 pounds.
If the rumors check out, this laptop is likely to make it to the market this year, so we may learn more in the near future.
