First Look at AMD Zen 5: ASUS Zenbook S 16 with Ryzen AI 9 HX 370

The launch of AMD’s new generation of processors has taken an interesting turn, with the debut of the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series laptops preceding the desktop processors by a few weeks. This Sunday marks the embargo lift for the Ryzen AI 300 series, allowing for the first AMD Zen 5 Linux benchmark results to be presented. The ASUS Zenbook S 16, equipped with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 SoC, is the first Zen 5 chip to be tested in the lab, offering a comprehensive look at its performance compared to various AMD and Intel laptop models. The focus is on both raw performance and power efficiency, with a diverse range of workloads explored to cater to different Linux users and potential applications in thin client, edge, and IoT devices. This initial glimpse of AMD Zen 5 has generated excitement about the performance potential of the upcoming Ryzen 9000 series and EPYC Turin processors.

AMD provided an ASUS Zenbook S 16 with Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 SoC for launch-day Linux testing at Phoronix. The review and comparison with a nearly identical laptop but with a slightly different SoC will be forthcoming. The ASUS Zenbook arrived last Tuesday, allowing for a week of testing, with more follow-ups expected in the coming days and weeks. The Linux expectations for the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series were largely met, with good CPU support requiring a recent kernel and GCC 14.1+ for Znver5 targeting. However, there are caveats around the GPU and Ryzen AI NPU.

For the GPU, Linux 6.10+ and Mesa 24.2+ are needed for the best support of the RDNA3.5 integrated graphics. Installing Ubuntu 24.04 LTS out-of-the-box will result in running LLVMpipe without accelerated graphics, but the kernel and Mesa upgrade are straightforward. The necessary firmware is already in linux-firmware.git, although newer PSP and DMCUB firmware provided by AMD engineers resolved kernel errors and system hangs encountered during testing. These updated firmware files will be made public soon.

On the NPU side, the mainline Linux kernel support is still in progress, with a late 2024 or spring 2025 timeline expected for out-of-the-box support on distributions like Ubuntu. The benchmarks in this article focus solely on the CPU side.

Another issue encountered was the lack of RAPL/PowerCap CPU package power information reporting under Linux 6.10, which required a patch to enable CPU power reporting with Zen 5 processors. Additionally, heterogeneous core topology handling is still being worked on, with patches expected to be merged into the mainline Linux kernel in the future.

In preparation for the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series Linux testing, various laptops were re-tested with a wide range of benchmarks, providing a teaser of what to expect with Ryzen 9000 series and EPYC Turin later in the year. The results excite for the possibilities of the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series in other form factors, such as thin clients, embedded systems, and IoT devices.

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