AMD Ryzen 8000 Hawk Point APU Appears Headed To Next-Gen Minisforum Gaming Tablet
If you read that headline and balked at the idea of a gaming tablet, let us remind you that besides the Nintendo Switch, the recent spate of PC-based gaming handhelds are basically tablets. The device itself isn't really the interesting part of this story, though. Instead, the really interesting part is the SoC that they'll be based on: AMD's next-generation "Hawk Point" SoCs that will apparently bear "Ryzen 8000" branding.
Minisforum V3 gaming tablet pre-release concept
We say "apparently" because we haven't heard this directly from AMD, and we don't think anyone has. Instead, this news comes from the press release for Minisforum's upcoming gaming tablet simply called the "V3". The V3 will apparently sport Ryzen 8000-series APUs in a TDP between 22 and 28 watts. We're not sure if they haven't nailed down the specification or if it will have a configurable range, but we're betting on "both".
What exactly "Hawk Point" will be isn't completely clear, but occasionally-controversial leaker Moore's Law is Dead claims that Hawk Point is "a slight tweak to ... Phoenix," and that it was formerly known as "Phoenix+", not to be confused with the Phoenix 2 APUs that just launched. The name change may have come about because Hawk Ridge (née Phoenix+) is an evolution of the Phoenix APU design, where Phoenix 2 is actually a significantly different design overall with a hybrid core configuration.
So if MLiD is correct, Hawk Point will be a refresh of the existing Phoenix silicon, but that doesn't mean that no changes are coming. The GPU is apparently being upgraded to RDNA 3.5—whatever that actually means—and supposedly, the XDNA NPU is seeing some sort of upgrade or update. Otherwise, these will be fundamentally the same chips that we know and love already as the Ryzen 7040 series. Up to eight Zen 4 CPU cores, twelve GPU compute units, and dual-channel DDR5 memory.
MLiD claimed that Hawk Point is scheduled to make an appearance in the first half of next year. Tellingly, Minisforum doesn't say when the V3 tablet is expected to drop. The company does list some ambitious specifications for the machine, though: a pair of USB4 ports, a UHS-II microSD card slot, a USB Type-C port with DisplayPort In (presumably to use the V3 as a monitor), and most impressively, a 2560×1600 display refreshing at 165 Hz.
That display is exactly four times the resolution of the one on the Steam Deck, which means that games with Steam Deck graphics presets should run very well indeed on the Minisforum V3. No word on pricing yet, of course, but we wouldn't expect such a system to run cheap, so save your dollars if you want one.
Tablet images and Minisforum V3 info in this post from WCCFTech.
