Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and Nvidia announce new chips at CES 2025

At CES 2025 we’re seeing a lot of the latest new devices, appliances and more. Underneath the surface of these new gadgets, there’s a lot of new silicon running the show – so we’re going to take a quick look at what Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and Nvidia have announced. 

Intel

At CES, Intel are showing off the latest in their new Chip line-up, announcing their highly anticipated “Arrow Lake” CPUs. 

The announcement this morning saw a new range of mobile processors including the Core Ultra 200H and Core Ultra 200HX for creators and gaming enthusiasts and Core Ultra 200U processors for thin and light mobile, while the Core Ultra 200S is aimed at desktops.

The new range of Intel Arrow Lake processors will be offered in a range of power offerings from Core Ultra 5 through to Core Ultra 9 across the range. 

The Intel Core Ultra 200HX will include options up to 24 cores (8 performance/16 efficiency), while the Core Ultra 200H will include up to 16 cores (six performance/8efficiency/2 low power). 

The new processors include AI enhancements, with the Core Ultra 200HX including a built-in NPU providing 13 TOPS, while the Core Ultra 200H will pair with ARC GPU to offer a platform wide 99 TOPS (trillion operations per second).

The mobile focused Core Ultra 200U will launch with Intel X^e graphics, and include skus with up to two performance and eight efficiency cores, with a total of 24 TOPS across the system. 

The Core Ultra 200S desktop processor will launch with 12 new 65-watt and 35-watt skus. The Core Ultra 200S will include up to eight performance cores and 16 efficiency cores offering scalable power for enthusiasts.

All processors due to hit the market in Q1, though we’re seeing devices being announced here at CES. 

There’s also a new Core Ultra 200V series processor under the previous Lunar Lake architecture. 

At this stage, Intel is aiming their Core Ultra 200V processors at the more commercial end of the market, though we could see these in higher end devices thanks to performance improvements.

AMD

At their CES 2025 presser, AMD have shown off their latest Ryzen processors, as well as the new Radeon RX 9070 graphics cards and lastly, for mobile gamers, the second-generation handheld gaming PC processor – the Ryzen Z2.

Ryzen

The new Ryzen processors will cover the gamut with new Ryzen 9 desktop processors, as well as the Ryzen AI Max, Ryzen AI 300 and Ryzen 200 processors. There’s also the new Ryzen 9000HX series mobile processors

The new high-end Ryzen 9 desktop processors include the 9900X3D processor will include 12 Cores and 24 Threads at 120W TDP, while the 9950X3D will include 16 Cores and 32 Threads at 170W TDP. 

AMD are pushing the 9950X3D as the ‘world’s best 16-core processor for gamers and content creators featuring 16 “Zen 5” CPU cores and AMD RDNA 2 graphics’.

On the rest of the range, the Ryzen Ryzen AI Max processors offer up to 16 “Zen 5” CPU cores, as well as up to 40 AMD RDNA 3.5 graphics compute units. The Ryzen AI Max will also offer an NPU with the AMD XDNA 2 capable of up to 50 TOPS of AI processing ability.

AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 will offer up to 8 “Zen 5” CPU cores and the latest RDNA 3.5 graphics architecture with an XDNA 2 based NPU as well. The AI 300 Pro will include an NPU capable of up to 50 TOPS. 

Lastly, AMD’s Ryzen 200 will include up to eight CPU cores and 16 threads, AMD RDNA 3 graphics and up to 16 NPU TOPS.

For the mobile processors, the Ryzen 9000HX Series of Mobile processors will deliver ‘best in-class mobile gaming performance’ says AMD. The flagship of the Ryzen 9000HX is the Ryzen 9955 HX3D which includes 16 cores and 32 threads, which AMD says makes it ‘one of the fastest mobile processors ever built for gamers and creators’ – so we can’t wait to see it in devices

Radeon

For those wanting to stick with AMD for their GPUs, the Radeon RX 9070 XT and Radeon RX 9070 will be hitting manufacturers later this quarter. 

The new GPUs are built on a 4nm process and are based on RDNA 4 with gen 3 Ray Tracing. The cards will include AMD’s FSR 4 machine learning for upscaling and frame generation. 

Ryzen Z2

Powering the majority of the Windows powered handheld gaming devices including the ROG ALLY (X) and Lenovo Legion Go, the Ryzen Z1 processor was capable and showed a lot of promise -but now AMD are moving forward with the new Ryzen Z2. 

There’s not a lot of info on the new Ryzen Z2, but it includes up to 8 “Zen 5” CPU cores and RDNA 3.5 architecture-powered graphics according to AMD. The Ryzen Z2 will be offered in three different flavours based on performance and cost:

NVIDIA

At CES, NVIDIA has unveiled their new Blackwell GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, ramping up the power of the system with new features and of course AI.

At launch, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 series includes the RTX 5090, RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070, with the features and pricing as bananas as you’d expect.

The flagship in the series, the RTX 5090 includes a mind blowing 2 billion transistors, providing over 3,352 trillion AI operations per second (TOPS). NVIDIA says that the RTX 5090 can outperform the RTX 4090 by up to 2x. 

The RTX 50 series will include an upgrade to NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) tech. DLSS 4 will include features such as Multi Frame Generation, allowing AI to boost frame rates by generating up to three frames per rendered frame allowing for smoother video.

As far as availability goes, NVIDIA says the GeForce RTX 5090 GPU with 3,352 AI TOPS and the GeForce RTX 5080 GPU with 1,801 AI TOPS will be available on Jan. 30 at $1,999USD and $999 USD, respectively.

The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GPU with 1,406 AI TOPS and GeForce RTX 5070 GPU with 988 AI TOPS will be available starting in February at $749 USD and $549 USD, respectively.

Qualcomm

Also throwing a new chip onto the table in 2025 is Qualcomm, expanding their Snapdragon X series, with the Snapdragon X platform. 

The new Snapdragon X processor joins the Snapdragon X Plus and X Elite, with a new lower cost offering that Qualcomm says could lower prices of Copilot+ PCs to around the $600USD mark – that’s sub-$1,000 AUD copilot+ PCs.

The Snapdragon X may be aimed at more budget friendly devices, but it still packs a punch with 45 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) being generated by the NPU, more than enough to power the Microsoft Copilot+ experience. 

Qualcomm are spruiking ‘multi-day’ battery life as part of the feature set for the Snapdragon X, making this a good one to keep your eye on for school.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon X is expected to launch in a variety of devices from laptop makers including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo in the coming months.