Back on March 17, AMD finally launched its much-anticipated Ryzen AI Max 300 Series flagship – that is, the Ryzen AI MAX+ 395. ASUS quickly picked it up and put it into the ROG Flow Z13, a compact and lightweight laptop aimed at gamers. What really caught my eye is that even though this is technically an APU, the RX 8060S GPU inside comes with 40 compute units that outperforms an RTX 4060 mobile GPU, and even dominates an RTX 4070 mobile under certain mid-to-low power conditions. Right now, this makes the 8060S the strongest iGPU in the world.
The unit I tested is the 128GB version. One notable change from past setups is the use of LPDDR5X-8000 memory in a quad-channel config. This massively boosts bandwidth, which really matters for AI-focused workloads, that’s exactly what the AI Max+ 395 is built for. On top of that, the system lets you flexibly allocate memory between CPU and GPU. With this setup, the ROG Flow Z13’s RX 8060S can manipulate up to a mammoth 96GB of VRAM. In other words, that’s 4x more than an RTX 4090’s 24GB and 3x more than an RTX 5090’s 32GB.
In terms of raw performance, the RX 8060S hits around 10,285 in the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark. For comparison, an RTX 4070 Laptop scores about 11,600. That’s truly incredible as an APU and more than enough for dealing with any AAA game without the usual power draw of a discrete GPU.
Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 Turns the ROG Flow Z13 into a Portable Gaming and AI Powerhouse
Now on the AI side, the current trend is running small language models (SLMs), which normally need a proper GPU. The ROG Flow Z13 lets you adjust VRAM via AMD’s Adrenalin software or directly in BIOS. With 8-bit quantization, it can handle models up to 70B in size. By NVIDIA standards, you’d need something like an RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell to manage that. Of course, the performance isn’t on the same level, but the Z13 costs less than a third of that kind of setup. Plus, it’s portable — you can easily load a few 13B to 15B models and have a capable offline GPT with you anywhere.
NVIDIA still leads when it comes to pure AI performance. But AMD’s AI MAX+ 395, paired with what ASUS is doing with the ROG Flow Z13, brings something fresh to the market. That brings the Z13 from “just a 13-inch gaming ultraportable” into something way more interesting.
For gamers who also dabble in AI or content creation, the Z13 + Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 combo offers an intriguing mix. It’s compact, surprisingly powerful, and flexible enough to run AI models on the go which is worth a try.
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