The AI PC competition is about to heat up.
An Asus representative tells Laptop Mag that a July 17 event will be "a China local event" discussing some of the laptops Asus revealed at Computex 2024 earlier this summer. They also noted that there are no immediate livestreams planned, so it looks like the July 17 event will be exclusively for audiences in China.
The event may showcase some upcoming laptops featuring AMD's Ryzen AI 300-series APUs. These powerful new chips could be major rivals for Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus chips, which are running the current line-up of Copilot+ PCs.
ASUS launched a Copilot+ PC, the ASUS Vivobook S15, in May, but it looks like it's not the only AI PC in ASUS's 2024 line-up.
An upcoming July 17 event in China is expected to showcase several new laptops running ASUS's own AI platform using AMD chips.
Here's a look at what we could see at the event, what we know about it so far, and how AMD's Ryzen AI 300 chips could compete with Qualcomm's Snapdragon offerings.
ASUS July 17 event to feature Ryzen AI 300 laptops
On Tuesday, Asus posted on its official Weibo account announcing a "Next Gen AI PC" event slated for July 17 at 20:00/8:00 pm (Weibo is a Chinese social media site similar to X).
According to details provided by representatives from Asus, it will be a local, China-only event. It follows a June 3 announcement unveiling Asus's upcoming AI PC line-up for Computex 2024. The presentation at the July 17 event will focus on some of the models from Asus's Computex announcements.
Over the past few weeks, the AI PC world has focused on the first Copilot+ PC launches in May and June. However, Asus is preparing to shake things up with its own AI tools and several new laptops running AMD's Ryzen AI 300-series chipsets.
Asus published a press release on Wednesday detailing its plans for enterprise and consumer AI apps and services, which could be a build-up to a hardware-focused presentation at the July 17 event.
This event could be a big one, too, despite being a local, China-only event. It could give us more details about the Ryzen-powered laptops Asus announced at Computex 2024, which feature processors that may rival Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite.
Can AMD's Ryzen AI 300 APUs compete with Snapdragon X Elite?
Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite/Plus chipsets kicked off the AI PC race but may not dominate the market for long. Other AI-powered chipsets are in development or gearing up for launch at Intel and AMD, Qualcomm's biggest rivals.
AMD's Ryzen AI 300-series chips are expected to power this next wave of Asus AI laptops, so we could soon see how these chipsets compare to Qualcomm's in actual benchmarks.
Early benchmarks hint that the Ryzen AI 300 chips could offer graphics performance similar to some low-end discrete GPUs, which is impressive for integrated graphics.
If AMD's AI chips can deliver strong graphics performance, it could give them a significant edge over Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips, which have struggled with gaming thus far.
If AMD's AI chips can deliver strong graphics performance, it could give them a significant edge over Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips, which have struggled thus far with gaming.
This is partly because Qualcomm chips use Arm architecture, which most games are not designed to run natively on. So, the Ryzen AI 300 chipsets could offer an alternative to Qualcomm's chips for gamers looking to switch to an AI PC.
The Ryzen AI 300-series chips also support up to 50 TOPS (trillion operations per second), outpacing the current variants of the Snapdragon X Elite, which max out at 45 TOPS. That means the Ryzen AI 300-series chips offer stronger performance for AI applications than the Snapdragon X Elite.
We will have to wait until we can run Laptop Mag's thorough lab tests to determine whether AMD's AI chips deliver in real-world use.
However, these early specs and benchmarks indicate that the Ryzen AI 300-series chips could seriously challenge Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipsets.
What's next?
The July 17 Asus will be a local, China-only presentation, so unfortunately audiences in other parts of the world will not be able to watch along. However, we do know the presentation will focus on some of the Asus laptops unveiled at Computex 2024, most likely those powered by the Ryzen AI 300-series APUs, which could spark an exciting rivalry with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite line-up.
Until then, we're looking closely for additional news and rumors surrounding Asus's next wave of new releases and AMD's Ryzen AI 300-series chips.
AI PCs are the next wave of innovation in the laptop space, so it's exciting to see some new laptops on the horizon to contend with the current line-up of Copilot+ PCs.
Laptop Mag will cover the latest news on Asus's upcoming laptops and share our full reviews soon, so stay tuned for more expert insights, deals, and details.
This article has been updated to incorporate comments from Asus.
