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CES 2026 has officially begun and AMD is rolling out a number of new products to mark the occasion. As expected, AMD's primary focus is now shifting towards AI performance, although there are gaming-related product launches to look forward to as well.
According to AMD's data, over 80 percent of the PC market will utilise NPUs by 2029. Currently, AMD has over 250 Ryzen AI PC models in circulation from various OEMs. Some of this AI-centric focus will benefit gamers, thanks to technologies like FSR 4 (Redstone), which is the new ML-enabled version of the FSR upscaler, enabling greater visual and performance gains on Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards and newer. According to AMD, FSR Redstone can improve performance by up to 4.7x at 4K resolution with ray tracing enabled. A number of big 2025 titles have already been upgraded with this new version, including The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, Silent Hill 2, Mafia: The Old Country and of course, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.
On the desktop PC front, AMD is unveiling its new Ryzen 7 9850X3D CPU today. This chip packs an 8C/16T Zen 5 CPU configuration, along with a massive 104MB of cache. It is a step above the previous 9800X3D, with a higher 5.6GHz boost clock speed. According to AMD, this chip offers as much as 60% more performance compared to the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K desktop processor in games like Baldur's Gate 3. This chip will soon be at the heart of Alienware's flagship Area 51 gaming PC, and many other OEMs are also expected to adopt it, alongside the chip's release to the DIY market.
On the laptop side of things, AMD also has the new Ryzen AI 400 series processors. These CPUs aim to bring AMD into a leadership position for full stack CPU, GPU + NPU performance. These CPUs will offer up to 12C/24T with Zen 5 architecture, up to 5.2GHz boost clock and 60 AI TOPS via the XDNA 2 NPU, a 1.2X increase over the previous generation. For the integrated GPU, you'll get up to 16 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores.
In content creation applications, AMD claims these chips will offer up to 1.7x more performance, as well as a 1.3x boost in multi-tasking. The big addition the line-up here is the Ryzen AI 9 HX 475, which will offer the highest possible specification, but there are also new Ryzen AI 7 and Ryzen AI 5 SKUs on the way as well. OEMs like Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Gigabyte and more will offer laptops (or potentially mini PCs) using Ryzen AI 400 series processors in 2026.
Ryzen AI Max CPUs will offer performance for AAA gaming, as well as perf needed for ‘workstation-level creation'. Systems will support up to 128GB of unified memory for AI powerhouse systems. Ryzen AI Max+ CPUs will offer up to 16C/32T, 40 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores and up to 60TOPS AI perf with XDNA 2 NPU.
Against a MacBook Pro M5, the new Ryzen AI Max CPUs offer up to 1.4x better AI performance, up to 1.8x better content creation performance and up to 1.6x better in gaming. The Ryzen AI Max+ 392 and 388 CPUs are new to the line-up, launching in Q1 2026.
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KitGuru Says: As is often the case, AMD is using CES to focus primarily on its laptop segment, with minor updates on the desktop CPU and GPU side. We should get more news on what's next for AMD in the desktop segment later in the year, likely around Computex time.
