Next-gen laptops may have a weird mix of components

By Monica J. White Published October 28, 2024

Many gamers are awaiting CES 2025 with a great deal of excitement. Not only are we said to be getting Nvidia’s RTX 50-series, but we should also see some of the next-gen top gaming laptops make their debut during the event. However, according to a new leak, these next-gen laptops may not be so next-gen across the board. With a lot of processors to choose from, we might end up with configurations that focus on new GPUs while sticking to older CPUs.

Given that Intel is said to be launching the laptop versions of Arrow Lake in early 2025, and AMD is working on the Ryzen AI 300 Max, one would expect some beastly laptops to be unveiled at CES 2025, but Golden Pig Upgrade Pack on Weibo begs to differ. This news was first shared by VideoCardz. While this user has been a fairly reliable source of hardware leaks up until now, it’s important to take it all with a bit of skepticism.

According to the leaker, we might primarily see laptops that use Nvidia’s RTX 50-series, but even the high-end variants might choose to stick to previous-gen laptop CPUs. This includes chips like Intel’s Raptor Lake refresh or AMD’s Zen 4 under the Ryzen 8000 moniker. More specifically, the leaker refers to the Core i7-14650HX and AMD’s Zen 4.

That would certainly be an unexpected configuration. Both AMD and Intel are said to be revealing their next-gen laptop chips during CES 2025, so it would make sense to see laptop manufacturers put those chips together with Nvidia’s best graphics cards. There could be a few reasons for such design choices.

For starters, the current generation of desktop CPUs is largely seen as fairly disappointing, and if the laptop counterparts are going to achieve similar gen-on-gen gains, laptop makers might not feel the need to offer these upgrades in any large capacity. The latest chips are bound to be pricier, so that’s also a factor.

There are also just too many recent laptop CPU generations to choose from, between the many chips AMD has released in the last couple of years, as well as Intel’s Lunar Lake, Meteor Lake, and Raptor Lake refresh. If there’s not much of a difference, manufacturers might focus on bringing performance improvements through next-gen GPUs while cutting costs and using last-gen CPUs.

The timing could play the biggest part, though. If some of the hardware releases don’t line up with each other, we might miss out on seeing next-gen CPUs paired with next-gen graphics cards and only see those laptops pop up later in the year. CES 2025 in January should bring all the answers.