Intel processors have always powered NUCs. However, things changed when Asus took over the NUC line from the chipmaker in 2023. The manufacturer is seemingly experimenting with AMD chips after customs filing discovered by ComputerBase (machine translated) showed an entry for a “Personal Computer mini-PC (NUC14LNS) Asus AMD Ryzen AI Max-395/W 8060S,

AMD has just shared gaming benchmark results for its Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" chip (via Wccftech ). Based on the company’s internal testing, its upcoming APU outclasses Nvidia’s RTX 4070 laptop GPU in gaming performance. If accurate, the best gaming laptops with Nvidia GPUs could face serious competition from Team Red.

AMD has revealed new gaming benchmarks for the Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" APU via Wccftech, implying the integrated Radeon 8060S GPU is more powerful than the Nvidia RTX 4070 discrete mobile GPU.

This chip cojoins existing AMD CPU and GPU architectures, along with a high speed memory interface, in an unprecedented way, compared to traditional X86 chip designs.

Since taking over the NUC line of mini PCs from Intel in 2023, Asus has continued to offer small desktops with Intel and AMD processor options. But so far the company has only used the NUC brand for models with Intel processors, while marketing AMD-powered systems as ExpertCenter systems.

At CES, AMD unveiled its Ryzen AI 300 flagship lineup codenamed Strix Halo with a beastly configuration of 16 cores, 40 Compute Units, and 128GB of unified memory. New first-party benchmarks assert that the top-end Ryzen AI Max+ 395 - that's a mouthful - is up to 68% faster than Nvidia's RTX 4070 mobile graphics in gaming.

AMD might lose out to Nvidia in the desktop GPU department, but it's set to put up a fight within the laptop GPU region.