AMD’s Ryzen AI Max 400 chip offers 192GB of memory, but getting your hands on one is another story
AMD's Gorgon Halo chips raise the memory ceiling to 192GB and make a compelling case for local AI compute.
JimMin
AMD's most memory-dense x86 chip ever arrives at the worst possible moment for DRAM supply.
AMD
AMD announced the Ryzen AI Max 400 series, and the headline number is genuinely staggering: 192GB of unified memory in a chip small enough to fit inside a mini PC.
Not much has changed from the last generation chip, but even so, if you’re all for running large AI models locally, the AI Max 400 is definitely worth checking out.
✨ Personal AI is the next computing platform.
AI is shifting from something you access to something you build with, locally, at the edge, and across systems.
We’re unlocking new possibilities for developers:
• @AMD Ryzen AI Halo, a local-first developer system, preorder… pic.twitter.com/iHf2NloDHv
What has actually changed from the last generation?
The Ryzen AI Max 400, codenamed Gorgon Halo, carries forward the same Zen 5 CPU architecture, RDNA 3.5 graphics, and XDNA 2 neural engine from the previous generation chips.
However, the flagship Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 squeezes out a clock speed bump of 100 MHz over its predecessor, pushing the boost ceiling to 5.2 GHz. The mid and lower-tier variants, including the Pro 490 and Pro 485, clock in at 5 GHz; they don’t get any upgrades in the area.
To me, it sounds like AMD has simply increased the 192GB memory ceiling on the Gorgon Halo, versus the 128GB cap on the Strix Halo chips, as both of them are quite similar in every other way.
So, does the 192GB unified memory matter?
Yes, but for a relatively small number of users, who are running LLMs locally on their devices, perhaps for a small business or research, where memory could be the real bottleneck for an otherwise capable system.
AMD claims the Gorgon Halo is the first x86 chip capable of handling an LLM with up to 300B+ parameters, entirely on-device, and to make sure that the claim holds up, it can allocate 160GB of the total 192GB as VRAM.
That is enough headroom to run AI models that otherwise require cloud compute or plenty of powerful GPUs. Naturally, AMD is positioning the Ryzen AI Halo box as something around the “token economy” argument, claiming that one unit can save up to $750 per month on equivalent cloud API costs.
The catch here is timing. OEM systems from brands like Asus, HP, and Lenovo land in Q3 2026. Pre-orders for the Ryzen AI Halo box, which ships with last-gen Strix Halo at $3,999, open in June.
Meanwhile, Gorgon Halo systems have no confirmed date yet. And with the global memory crisis already forcing Apple to pull high-memory Mac Studio configurations, AMD’s 192GB aspirations may be harder to ship at scale.
For more than five years, Shikhar has consistently simplified developments in the field of consumer tech and presented them…
AI is turbocharging “wizards” on 4Chan who take orders to nudify images of women
A new ISD analysis and WIRED reporting show how 4chan users request, produce, praise, and spread nonconsensual AI nudes of women
4chan has become a staging ground for AI image abuse, with anonymous users asking editors to turn ordinary photos of women into synthetic sexual images without consent.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue reviewed 7,616 English-language posts from December 2025 to March 2026 and found that 2,927 included language tied to nudification or image manipulation. WIRED adds the human detail, describing a request-and-reward culture where people making the fakes are treated as skilled operators.
Thousands of Windows machines are being replaced in schools with MacBook Neo and iPads
Kansas City Public Schools is standardizing on Apple hardware, with MacBook Neo laptops and iPads set to replace a mixed fleet of Windows PCs and Chromebooks
The classroom laptop fight just got a real-world stress test. Kansas City Public Schools has already bought more than 4,500 MacBook Neo units for students in 8th grade and up, putting Apple’s new low-cost Mac into schools at a scale that goes well beyond a pilot program.
The district plans to retire more than 30,000 existing devices over time. That gives Apple a visible education-sector win as cheaper classroom laptops become more competitive, and it gives school IT teams another reason to rethink the old Windows, Chromebook, and Mac divide.
The Vivaldi 8.0 update makes it harder than ever to go back to Chrome
Your Vivaldi browser just got a whole new look, and you are going to love it.
If not for my love for Arc Browser, which has sadly become an abandonware, I would have used Vivaldi. No other browser comes even close to the customization and features it offers. And with its latest version 8.0 update, Vivaldi is making an even stronger case to ditch other browsers in its favor.
I like that while browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge have been busy packing AI into every corner, Vivaldi has been quietly delivering features users actually want.
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