This Laptop Runs LLMs Better Than Most Desktops

The Asus Flow Z13 2025 with AMD's Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 APU can run 110 billion parameter LLMs thanks to its 128GB of unified memory, outperforming many desktop setups. The APU combines CPU and GPU on a single chip, allowing the GPU to access large amounts of shared memory. However, unlike Apple's true unified memory architecture, AMD's implementation requires pre-allocating memory between CPU and GPU at boot time. Performance testing shows that manual memory allocation settings significantly outperform auto settings, with 16GB GPU allocation often providing optimal results. The system's 235 GB/s memory bandwidth enables competitive performance against Apple Silicon, though the memory copying process during model loading reveals architectural limitations compared to true unified memory systems.