AMD Radeon 8050S "Strix Halo" Linux Graphics Performance Review

Last month I began the much anticipated AMD Strix Halo Linux benchmarking at Phoronix by testing the top-end Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 that features 16 cores / 32 threads and the very impressive Radeon 8060S integrated graphics. Coming in one step below that flagship Strix Halo SoC is the Ryzen AI Max (PRO) 390 with Radeon 8050S graphics. Coming out today on Phoronix - coincidentally timed for the 21st birthday of Phoronix.com - is the first benchmarks of the Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 along with the Radeon 8050S graphics.

This article is focused on providing an initial look at the Radeon 8050S Strix Halo graphics performance under Linux while a separate article is looking at the Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 CPU performance found within the HP ZBook Ultra G1a, the same laptop series as used for the Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 testing the past few weeks.

The Radeon 8050S Graphics found with the Ryzen AI Max 390 and Ryzen AI Max 385 is slightly cut-down from the flagship 395 tier with the Radeon 8060S. The Radeon 8050S Graphics feature 32 graphics cores and a 2.8GHz frequency while the Radeon 8060S Graphics have 40 graphics cores with a 2.9GHz clock speed. While having a 100MHz lower graphics clock and just 80% the CUs, the Radeon 8050S is still a large step-up from the Radeon 890M graphics found with the Ryzen AI 300 "Strix Point" SoCs that feature just 16 graphics cores. Basically the Radeon 8050S has double the graphics cores as the Radeon 890M.

Like the Radeon 8060S, the Radeon 8050S is capable of driving up to 8K @ 60 displays, 4K @ 240Hz, 1080p @ 600Hz, and supports DisplayPort 2.1 and can handle up to four displays simultaneously. Adaptive-Sync and HDR support, of course, remain available too.

So with the Radeon 8050S Graphics on the Ryzen AI Max 385/390 you are a step below the Radeon 8060S but still much more capable than what is found with the likes of the Radeon 880M/890M integrated graphics or from the Intel Xe/Xe2 integrated graphics competition from Intel.

The AMD Radeon 8050S Graphics were working out-of-the-box on Ubuntu 25.04 and Fedora 42 just like with the Radeon 8060S Graphics. Of course, moving to Mesa 25.1 or even Mesa 25.2-devel can yield more performance and especially additional Vulkan features, but Mesa 25.0 is good enough for out-of-the-box on the likes of Ubuntu 25.04. With both the Radeon 8050S and 8060S graphics I haven't encountered any display issues, GPU hangs, anything along those lines. It's rather pleasant how well the open-source AMD graphics experience is now at launch or shortly thereafter.

For this AMD Radeon 8050S Graphics benchmarking article, there are tests of the Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 up against the Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 (Radeon 8060S), Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (Radeon 890M), and Core Ultra 7 256V (Lunar Lake Xe2) for the current top-end integrated graphics experiences from both Intel and AMD. Following that is a more diverse set of integrated graphics Linux benchmarks from a broader range of laptops/SoCs for seeing a more comprehensive look at the Radeon 8050S Graphics but due to going to the older/slower hardware that set of tests is more refined and less taxing than the benchmarks looking just at the current-gen top-end offerings.

The complete set of laptops and CPUs/iGPUs tested included:

- Core i7 8550U - Dell XPS 9370
- Core i7 8565U - Dell XPS 9380
- Core i7 1065G7 - Dell XPS 7390
- Core i7 1165G7 - Dell XPS 9310
- Core i7 1185G7 - Dell XPS 9310
- Core i7 1280P - MSI Prestige 14Evo
- Core Ultra 7 155H - Acer Swift Go 14
- Core Ultra 7 256V - ASUS Zenbook S14
- Core Ultra 7 258V - X1 Carbon G13
- Ryzen 7 4700U - Lenovo IdeaPad 5
- Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U - ThinkPad T14s G2a
- Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U - ThinkPad X13 G3
- Ryzen 7 7840U - Framework 13
- Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U - ThinkPad P14s G4
- Ryzen 7 7840U - Acer Swift Edge 16
- Ryzen 7 7840HS - Framework 16
- Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 - ThinkPad T14s G6
- Ryzen AI 9 365 - ASUS Zenbook S16
- Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 - ASUS Zenbook S16
- Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 - Framework 13
- Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 - HP ZBook Ultra G1a
- Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 - HP ZBook Ultra G1a
- Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 - HP ZBook Ultra G1a - low-power
- Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 - HP ZBook Ultra G1a - performance

All of these Linux laptop integrated graphics benchmarks were done out-of-the-box on Ubuntu 25.04 with the Linux 6.14 kernel and Mesa 25.0.

With the Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 / Radeon 8050S Graphics testing today, it was done in the default (balanced) platform profile state as well as the low-power and performance profiles. Thus you can see the Radeon 8050S Graphics out-of-the-box as well as what happens if going for the "performance" platform profile or reverting to the "low-power" platform profile. More details on ACPI Platform Profiles can be found in the prior Maximizing The Performance & Power Efficiency Of AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 With Platform Profiles. The other laptops were in their default/out-of-the-box platform profile state.