AMD’s budget Krackan Point APU with Zen 5 cores spotted on Geekbench

Something to look forward to: AMD has long been rumored to be working on Zen 5-based Krackan Point APUs for budget PCs. Despite persistent rumors about them in recent months, there isn’t much concrete information about their specifications. However, a new leak now seemingly offers insight into the core configuration of one of the SKUs in the upcoming lineup.

Recently, a Krackan Point APU surfaced on Geekbench, but not for the standard Geekbench 6 test for CPU benchmarking. Instead, it’s for the Geekbench AI test, which measures the chip’s NPU performance. The list, which was spotted by tipster @Olrak29_, shows that the processor scores 2019 points in the Single Precision test, 1276 points in Half Precision and 3773 points in Quantization.

The scores appear to confirm rumors that Krackan Point will be a budget offering for the mainstream market rather than a high-end lineup designed for enthusiasts. The listing also shows that this particular CPU contains six cores and twelve threads, including three Zen 5 cores and three Zen 5c cores. The System Information on the Geekbench page further reveals that the chip is a technical one, housed in an Asus laptop.

The listing doesn’t reveal the identity of the chip, but online speculation suggests it could be marketed as the Ryzen AI 5 340. The integrated NPU is believed to be an XDNA 2 unit rated at 50 TOPS on AI performance, which should make it eligible for Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs. The chip is also said to have a Radeon 840M integrated GPU with four RDNA 3.5 compute units.

The Kracken Point series is also expected to include the Ryzen AI 7 350 with four Zen 5 cores and four Zen 5c cores. It could house eight RDNA 3.5 computing units, making it faster than the 340. Still, Krackan Point will be less powerful than Strix Point, which launched earlier this year with Zen 5 CPU cores, a new XDNA 2 NPU and RDNA 3 + graphics .

Rumor has it that AMD will announce Krackan Point in early 2025. The lineup is tipped to also include the Ryzen Z2 Extreme, designed for the next generation of portable gaming consoles. Online speculation suggests it could offer faster performance and better battery life than the Z1 Extreme, which powers devices like the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go.