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Intel And Qualcomm both come to CES 2026beating the drum hard for their next-generation lightweight laptop processors. Meanwhile, AMD is slipping into the party through the backdoor with its usual laid-back air, showcasing a range of new processors for laptops, desktops and gaming-specific devices. First on the list is the AMD Ryzen AI 400 series which you’ll find in a ton of laptops at this year’s showcase.
The AI 400 series, like The 300 series of 2024is designed to power this generation of Copilot+ PCs. They run on the Zen 5 CPU microarchitecture and are complemented by a Ryzen AI 9 HX 475 with a 12-core, 24-thread configuration. The processor hits a boost clock of 5.2 GHz, and AMD has promised that this processor should be slightly better at multitasking than the previous generation. The new chip’s GPU does not feature any of the newer RDNA 4 GPU architectures (meaning no official access to AMD Redstone upscaler), but instead includes 16 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores with a boost clock of 3.1 GHz.
The highest-end processor also comes with an NPU that reaches 60 TOPS, which represents billions of operations per second. This is a derived value that only vaguely approximates AI processing capabilities, so you really shouldn’t spend too much time comparing it to the 80 TOPS NPU of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2. Most chips you’ll see in laptops will max out with the Ryzen AI 7 450, an 8-core processor with a clock speed of 5.1 GHz and 24 MB cache with just a 50 TOPS NPU.
Overall, this is a moderate update to one of AMD’s most popular processors. AMD promises that these latest x86 chips will deliver “multi-day” battery life, although the exact numbers depend on each laptop’s specifications. We can already guess that a majority of these chips will feature in this year’s lineup of lightweight laptops. However, the real dark horse of 2026 could be the Ryzen AI+ Max series. There are even more the company’s high-end APUs (accelerated processing units) that emphasize GPU performance beyond what you normally expect from a single chip.
AMD’s latest Ryzen AI Max chips are dark horse gaming powerhouses
This includes the new Ryzen AI Max+ 392 and Max+ 388. The low-end chip is an eight-core, 16-thread chip that also manages to integrate the 40 graphics compute units (AMD’s version of base clusters) found in the high-end Ryzen AI Max+ 395. We have a lot of experience with this APU thanks to Executive office and other devices like the Asus ROG Flow Z13. The graphics capabilities of this chip have proven to be very attractive. That’s why I asked AMD if the 388 was designed for gaming.
“The 388 is an eight-core chip that’s really aimed at gamers,” Rahul Tikoo, AMD’s senior vice president of customer business, told Gizmodo during a virtual briefing. AMD has hinted that there will indeed be more gaming-related products featuring these (hopefully) cheaper Max chips throughout 2026. The APU could be an attractive prospect for portable gaming PCs or other lightweight designs. We can’t help but imagine some sort of Steam engine-similar device working with these specs for 1440p and 4K gaming.
When it comes to high-end gaming PCs, AMD is also offering an update to what we previously called the best processor of 2025. Just as previous leaks have been suggestedAMD is offering an update to the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D with a Ryzen 7 9850X3D. The new chip uses the same layered 3D cache and eight-core Zen 5 processor architecture, but it also has an improved boost clock of 5.6 GHz compared to 5.2 GHz. It might not be that big of an upgrade, although in any case it’ll probably be better than any other gaming alternative made by Intel or AMD.
AMD promises that the 9850X3D delivers better performance in gaming by up to 32% or 27% in titles like Cyberpunk 2077 And Indiana Jones and the Great Circlerespectively. Is it so much better than the 9800X3D? Probably not, but if you’re looking for the best possible processor for your gaming rig, this will probably be it.
Gizmodo is on the ground in Las Vegas all week bringing you everything you need to know about the technology revealed at CES 2026. You can follow our CES live blog here And find all our coverage here.
