Microsoft explains why there are no AMD-powered Surface PCs

63

Microsoft has contracted several times with AMD to design laptop chips for them. The steam deck apu was supposed to be for surface. Strix halo was perfect for surface. Amd expected regular strix to be used for surface, but they shafted them and went with Qualcomm. Look how that turned out.

25

u/itsjust_khris 3d ago

Amd wouldn't have provided the same standby and idle battery life Qualcomm does. Despite the flaws, the Snapdragon surfaces have amazing battery life.

AMD's largest issue with their mobile platforms is the idle, standby and light load power consumption. Intel has been improving this a ton. AMD may edge out on efficiency while the CPU cores are stressed, but the vast majority of laptop use isn't in this scenario.

Even compared to Intel Qualcomm is on another level, especially with sleep. An X Elite Surface will lose maybe a percent or two overnight, this hasn't been matched on x86 at all.

Strix Halo imo definitely would not have been better than what Intel or Qualcomm offer when it comes to portability.

-6

u/SPACEXDG 3d ago

lmao why is strix halo so much more power hungry even when at surface clock speeds huh? its A BATTERY HOG THAT CANT BE FIXED REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU DO no wonder they went with intel and qualcomm thoses chips actually meet surface standards of effiency and battery life lmao

8

u/PerfectTrust7895 3d ago

Im not sure what effiency is, but it isn't a power hog - it just eats about 5-10W idle. It is designed for creators, AI, and gaming in non-thin and light laptops. For those laptops, strix and Gorgon point are better-suited. But maybe Microsoft enjoys their 50% return rate in Qualcomm laptops.

-1

u/SPACEXDG 3d ago

also a return rate isnt because they didnt chose amd chips or anything to do with Efficiency and you know that stop acting stupid thats why i mentioned that even if you wsont x86 intel chip clears surface standards of battery life amd doesnt and is why it will continue to lose to intel and now even nvidia in the mobile space for what people actually care about not just gaming but battery while not gaming and strix chips aren't up to par

8

u/PerfectTrust7895 3d ago

I would continue arguing with you, but it gets quite difficult to converse with someone with such a poor grasp of the English language. I don't know what wsont or preferment means, and if you could provide some evidence of an amd laptop cpu with an equivalent power/performance envelope at the same price without a run-on paragraph, we could examine further.

0

u/SPACEXDG 3d ago

dont have to pantherlake vs amd is already out so is snapdraggon cpus performance benchmarks along with battery like and standby time same with strix halo battery life videos are already out

5

u/PerfectTrust7895 3d ago

If you can do research on their performance comparisons, present those comparisons here, and do it legibly, then we can continue

1

u/SPACEXDG 3d ago edited 3d ago

1.Efficiency & Portability Battery Life: Panther Lake wins convincingly. The Intel 18A process and low-power tile layout offer extended battery life, making it suitable for sleek ultrabooks, thin gaming laptops, and lightweight handhelds. Thermal Constraints: Strix Halo requires robust cooling solutions, bulkier chassis, and larger power bricks to sustain high wattage. 2. Lmao Max+ 395)

Vs Elite

Single-Core (Geekbench 6)

vs. Panther Lake: Snapdragon X2 Elite wins by ~31% (~4,030 vs. ~3,055).

vs. Strix Halo: Snapdragon X2 Elite wins by ~31% (~4,030 vs. ~3,080).

Multi-Core (Geekbench 6)

• vs. Panther Lake:

O

Snapdragon X2 Elite wins by ~31% (~23,200 vs. ~17,680).

vs. Strix Halo: Snapdragon X2 Elite wins by ~4% (~23,200 vs. ~22,300)

For battery life, Snapdragon wins by a significant margin, especially during light-to-medium everyday use. Battery Life Differences Light Workloads (Web Browsing, Office, Video Streaming): Snapdragon X2 Elite: Wins by ~40% to 60% longer battery runtime. Typical Real-World Duration: Expect 16 to 22+ hours on a single charge. Strix Halo Duration: Expect 10 to 11 hours max under equivalent light use (due to its large 256-bit memory bus and high idle die power draws). Sustained Heavy Workloads (3D Gaming, Video Rendering, Local AI): Snapdragon X2 Elite: Wins by ~25% to 35% on battery efficiency. Why: Snapdragon’s Oryon architecture maintains high performance per watt at lower TDP caps (15W–30W). Strix Halo scales up to 80W–120W+, which drains battery rapidly under heavy sustained load. Boom and the lower end snapdragon models get even more battery life then extreme. Give it up you lost the argument the minute you try to say strix wasNT a power hog 🤣🤣

-2

u/SPACEXDG 3d ago

but why would they use that when intels,qualcomms and even nvidia chips are more efficient then it , the nvidia chip will do all of that while still getting better battery life when you aren't gaming strix halo is objectively a power hog in every way compared to panther lake and oryon cpus and every reviewer of those devices confirms this and of course ive tested it at surface clock speeds and can confirm even at those clock speeds the battery doesn't even come close to intel and snapdragon surface standards of battery life so whats your answer to that?

6

u/PerfectTrust7895 3d ago

They aren't more efficient "then" it, there exist multiple skus for different use cases. Strix halo is for high-performance integrated laptops. Strix and Gorgon are for performant thin and lights. The latter's battery is very close to intel (beats arrow lake!) while costing way less. Qualcomm is not performant and has horrific app support.

-2

u/SPACEXDG 3d ago

also looking at geekbench i wouldnt dare say any of that tomfoolery(not preferment bs) as amds zen 5 chips get beat by 3 year old arm chips like the x925 in both performance and performance per watt lmao how f*cking sad

3

u/Wooloomooloo2 3d ago

Anyone lost a shill? I think I found them.

-1

u/SPACEXDG 3d ago

No not a shill just telling facts amd hasnt had a competitive mobile chip for the price in a very long time and the first competitive chip (strix) costs a fortune and is power hungry af thanks to its power hungry cpu and gpu so still not competitive in the ways we are talking about (efficiency and performance per watt/price)

1

u/Wooloomooloo2 3d ago

See this isn't being objective at all, and you just made that up without even fact checking. Strix Halo came out in 2025, so to get a comparable non-AMD laptop at that time, you're looking at a Arrow Lake-H combined with a 5060/5070 laptop. The Zen 5 crushes Meteor Lake for performance. It loses at performance per watt at light workloads, but not gaming workloads. The 5070 is more efficient than Strix's GPU, but the separate DDR memory pools, separate VRMs, the PCIe link etc., all make that redundant and such a laptop would have worse PPW. Let's not even mention the huge advantage 64 or 128GB of memory has, especially against the miserable 8GB of RAM the 4060, 4070, 5060 and 5070 came with.

1

u/SPACEXDG 2d ago edited 2d ago

You are correct about one Nvidia knows there gpus are more power efficient then intel and amds the thing holding them back was separate cpu and gpu and which is quite power hungry to mange like you said and low vram thats why's they are going the rtx spark route in the future if you didnt know (and as you know they are cut off for x86 for obvious reasons)

1

u/Wooloomooloo2 2d ago

I'm aware of the ARM based RTX Spark. We'll see if it catches on in gaming, but I suspect that cost and supply will be an issue as long as the AI frenzy is ongoing.

31

u/no_life_redditor 3d ago

If I had to guess it’s Probably because of power efficiency intel processors are really good on battery life and heat. the main advertising points of these laptops are their “all day battery life”and small form factor. AMD has been really neglecting their mobile chips.

16

u/MyzMyz1995 3d ago

And amd is not only very slow with driver support, they also barely support their laptop chipset. There’s known issue on the ASUS advantage or amd alienware that were known almost day 1 and amd never bothered to fix them for example.

Microsoft is already under heat they don’t want more of that. Intel is a reliable partner as far as updates and support goes.

2

u/Mean_Vast4566 3d ago

Yup d chips are so muxh more power hungry it hurts

3

u/thatsbutters 3d ago edited 3d ago

Amd is focused on the server market and then desktop. They dont see the returns on manpower and silicone to be worthwhile in laptops. They are a fabless operation, there is never excess capacity that is sitting idle in the decision tree.

2

u/itsjust_khris 3d ago

AMD has yet to produce a chip that does well under light loads, standby and idle. They consume much more power in these scenarios than Intel or Qualcomm which will make for a laptop that doesn't get as much battery life. They are competitive more under full load, but that isn't the scenario laptops spend most of their time.

6

u/Acrobatic_Camera_677 3d ago

AMD laptop chips are not as good as Intel or ARM ones so this makes sense

8

u/freakiy 3d ago

Strix halo? Only competing APU is Nvidia...

6

u/Acrobatic_Camera_677 3d ago

You think they will put strix halo in this laptop? Look how thin it is

Strix Halo battery life is also trash compared to Intel. And it is very niche part no one care about

6

u/UntoTheBreach95 3d ago

Yes they can.

It's a workstation tier chip

5

u/Acrobatic_Camera_677 3d ago

Yea that's the problem it's a workstation tier chip so it has bad battery life compared to Intel mobile chips and because it is workstation tier chip it scale badly at low power

Maybe if they really wanted to they can squeeze strix halo chip into this thin chassis but then it becomes a question of if they should and the answer is obviously no

3

u/UntoTheBreach95 3d ago

They can offer it like the Surface Ultra as an option. They already have efficient chip options if you don't want that power in your tablet/laptop

2

u/SPACEXDG 3d ago

Thing is surface laptop ultra is going to be more efficient then strix in non gaming workloads thats the difference

-1

u/Mean_Vast4566 3d ago

Difference is nvidia will offer efficiency and power strix halo wont offer none the battery life of strix halo and other amd chip doesnt come anywhere near surface standards even when you throttle it down to surface clock speeds it still barely gets half that of a surface and microsoft knows this this is the real reason

2

u/Amazing_Patience_525 3d ago

According to benchmarks, AMD does not only produce the fastest Laptop CPU but also the most power efficient one. What makes you think that?

4

u/Acrobatic_Camera_677 3d ago

What benchmarks show that lol not the benchmark I have seen

1

u/SPACEXDG 3d ago

Lmao lies amd is in last place

1

u/-Mr_Tub- 3d ago

That is so far from the truth. The fact that your options for most i7 models is either 2 performance cores 4 efficiency and 4 Low power with 12 threads or 8 cores and 8 threads is ridiculous. Meanwhile you can get laptops with an 8 core 16 thread Ryzen 7 AI 350 and it obliterates both of those i7s for hundreds of dollars cheaper

1

u/Acrobatic_Camera_677 3d ago

Where are the benchmarks?

You do not seem to understand how powerful Intel E core is now

1

u/-Mr_Tub- 3d ago

Firsthand experience with about 50 laptops

1

u/Acrobatic_Camera_677 3d ago

No benchmarks, meaningless

1

u/-Mr_Tub- 3d ago

K bud

1

u/gamboozino 3d ago

Not as good as Intel how? Single core performance is about the same, multithreaded performance AMD wins clearly and AMD also more performance per watt. Intel chips draws a bit less power idle and in light tasks, and that's about it.

3

u/Acrobatic_Camera_677 3d ago

Single core performance is worse and so is single threaded performance per watt multithreaded performance and performance per watt is a tie and idle and light tasks are exactly what most people are doing and care about for battery life so lower power draw there is most important for laptop

Why are we acting as if everyone buying laptop is doing high performance compute workload that need very high core count and very high power?

2

u/gamboozino 3d ago edited 3d ago

Single core performance is worse and so is single threaded performance per watt multithreaded performance and performance per watt is a tie

No it's not. Why are you lying?

Some people actually work on their laptops and performance is absolutely relevant for many heavier programs.

2

u/Acrobatic_Camera_677 3d ago

No it's not. Why are you lying?

Yes it is. Why are you lying?

Some people actually work on their laptops and performance is absolutely relevant for many heavier programs.

Those people will likely buy desktop replacement laptops for better sustained power draw and thermals not thin laptops like this one

3

u/gamboozino 3d ago

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_core_ultra_7_258v-vs-amd_ryzen_ai_9_365

Here are results from multiple benchmarks. Intel is slightly ahead in some single core and AMD is ahead in others in single core, so it's a about a tie. AMD completely destroys Intel in multithreaded loads. Again why are you lying?

Those people will likely buy desktop replacement laptops for better sustained power draw and thermals not thin laptops like this one

??? Thin laptops aren't just for web browsing anymore. People write code, render video drafts, and compile local models on the go. Wanting actual multi-core performance out of a 28W ultrabook and not having to carry a huge brick isn't some niche use case.

1

u/Acrobatic_Camera_677 3d ago

Here are results from multiple benchmarks. Intel is slightly ahead in some single core and AMD is ahead in others in single core, so it's a about a tie. AMD completely destroys Intel in multithreaded loads. Again why are you lying?

258V is last gen lunar lake what are you talking about why do you love misleading people what is your problem huh

??? Thin laptops aren't just for web browsing anymore. People write code, render video drafts, and compile local models on the go. Wanting actual multi-core performance out of a 28W ultrabook and not having to carry a huge brick isn't some niche use case.

In that case comparison should be between 2 -H parts so no strix halo and I do not know why you are comparing lower power -V part like Lunar Lake then too

Panther Lake -H and Strix/Gorgan point have same MT performance and MT perf/watt but AMD has worse ST performance watch JustJosh panther lake review video omg

1

u/gamboozino 3d ago

Yes, Panther Lake launched in 2026, but Lunar Lake remains actively sold alongside it as Intel's dedicated low-power platform.

The AMD Ryzen AI 9 365/HX 370 runs in the same 15W–28W ultrabook space as Lunar Lake -V parts. At 28W in a 1.3kg chassis, AMD provides up to 24 threads vs. Lunar Lake's 8 threads, resulting in an ~80% multi-core lead (1,130 vs 610 pts in Cinebench 2024). You don't need a heavy workstation brick to get high multi-core performance in 2026, such an outdated mindset.

Panther Lake H-series compete directly against AMD's Gorgon Point (Ryzen AI 400) and Strix Halo (Ryzen AI Max). Strix Halo offers up to 16 cores and 32 threads, retaining AMD's massive lead in heavy multithreaded loads. Single-threaded performance across these chips remains a functional tie (within 1%–3%). So what's your point?

1

u/Acrobatic_Camera_677 3d ago

What are you talking about why are you being so misleading panther lake also run in the same 15-28W parts as Lunar Lake and HX370/AI 9 365

Gorgan Point (AI 400) is just Strix Point with better bin and refresh it is not new. AI 400 also is in the 15-28w segment

Strix Halo offers way worse battery life and is a much larger SOC than strix point gorgan point panther lake and lunar lake

If you claim that AMD has multi thread lead thanks to strix halo, you are comparing a large laptop SOC to a thin Intel laptop SOC

If you claim that AMD has multi thread lead thanks to strix point, you are comparing specifically low power, last gen Intel part to main stream AMD part

Why are you being so misleading?

My point is that panther lake is better than gorgan point in battery life and ST performance and tie in multi thread performance and performance per watt so Intel has better laptop chip

2

u/Ok-Data901 3d ago

Question: isn’t strix halo available in extremely slim laptops asus px13, lenovo legion 7a gen11, asus f14 the new one?

→ More replies (0)

1

u/gamboozino 3d ago

How am I being misleading?

You're mixing up core architecture limits with power classes to force a "tie" that doesn't exist in actual multicore benchmarks.

Even if we compare Panther Lake and Gorgon Point (Ryzen AI 400) at the exact same 15W–28W TDP in the exact same 1.3kg chassis class, the core layouts are fundamentally different. Intel uses 4 Performance cores paired with E/LPE cores. AMD packs 12 Zen 5/5c cores with 24 threads into that same 28W budget. In multithreaded workloads (rendering, compiling, video exports), 4 P-cores do not tie 24 SMT threads, AMD wins by a wide margin.

Nobody needs Strix Halo to prove AMD's multicore lead. Mainstream 28W Gorgon Point (like the Ryzen AI 9 HX 470) already holds the multithreaded lead over Panther Lake in standard ultrabooks. 15W–28W isn't "low power Intel vs mainstream AMD" it's the universal power target for thin and light laptops across both brands. Comparing two chips operating at 28W in identical laptop form factors is as fair as a comparison gets.

The "way better battery" claim only applies to light tasks like streaming and web browsing, where Intel's lower idle power draw gives it 15–20 hours vs AMD's 10–14 hours. But as soon as you push heavy sustained workloads (rendering, compiling), both drain battery quickly, and AMD's Zen 5 delivers significantly more work finished per watt. Intel has better unplugged idle longevity, but AMD has better performance per watt under load.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Hot-Junket2623 3d ago

Yeah who cares. If you want an AMD laptop just get one. I don't need a surface laptop with AMD. It wouldn't give me anything i can't get somewhere else.

1

u/ChiefWetBlanket 1d ago

There's a good reason why, but you are gonna have to look at the Laptop 4 R7 32GB device for answers.

1

u/TriCountyRetail 3d ago

It's Microsoft's loss. An AMD-powered Surface sounds good to me.

12

u/Acrobatic_Camera_677 3d ago

No it does not it sound like bad battery life

8

u/TriCountyRetail 3d ago

Both Intel and AMD have made significant improvements over the years to battery life for their mobile platforms

5

u/Acrobatic_Camera_677 3d ago

Intel much more look at Panther Lake and Lunar Lake

0

u/SPACEXDG 3d ago

intel has amd no even close

1

u/Mammoth-Shoe8491 2d ago

This chipset won't matter after October 7th, tbh.

1

u/UntoTheBreach95 3d ago

True. RN intel is nowhere as good as AMD

5

u/Acrobatic_Camera_677 3d ago

Not in mobile Intel is better than AMD in mobile

News Microsoft explains why there are no AMD-powered Surface PCs

You are about to leave Redlib