AMD is planning to launch refreshed "Ryzen 200" series APUs based on the Hawk Point lineup to target the entry-level laptop segment.

Team Red is quite fond of introducing a refresh of its existing CPU lineup in an attempt to offer more "appealing" SKUs to the markets and fill in the performance gap present within the budget segment. For those unaware, AMD's Phoenix lineup, which was probably one of the most popular ones, saw a refresh: the Ryzen 8000 series "Hawk Point" APUs. The most notable change in this refresh was the upgraded NPU, offering up to 16 TOPS.

Now, as revealed earlier and now according to a leak by Golden Pig Upgrade Pack on Weibo (via Olrak_29), AMD plans to introduce a Hawk Point refresh APU lineup under the Ryzen 200 naming scheme, based on the same Zen 4 architecture, with minimal changes expected.

The leak doesn't disclose much about potential features or performance, apart from the fact that one of the variants in the lineup is the "Ryzen 7 255H", which is likely a refresh of the existing "Hawk Point" Ryzen 7 8745HS APU. It is an SKU that launched a few months ago that came with no NPU onboard, The leak claims that the rumored Ryzen 7 255H is set to compete directly with Intel's Core Ultra 7 255H, hence not might AMD make the overall naming scheme confusing, but identical to Intel at the same time.

In terms of what we can expect with the Hawk Point refresh, there won't be a "significant" difference to call it a generational upgrade, but a likely improvement area would be in the AI performance, given that the Hawk Point lineup isn't that well-equipped with "AI TOPS," compared to its superior Ryzen AI 300 series. We expect overall core counts and iGPU configurations to remain consistent, given that AMD sticks to what it has been doing with APU refreshes.

AMD's Ryzen 200 APU lineup will certainly fill a void in devices targeting low-to-medium-end workloads, notably handhelds and mini-PCs.

Team Red is still unable to replicate the hype it saw with "Phoenix" APUs when it comes to the adoption of the handheld segment; hence, the Ryzen 200 APUs might work out here perfectly. In terms of release date, we can expect the Ryzen 200 SKUs to drop by later this year, right around when Intel launches its Core 200 "Raptor Lake Refresh".