Work is properly underway on the AMD Ryzen Z2 Excessive chip, which appears to be like set to energy the following technology of Asus ROG Ally handhelds and lots of others. It is going to compete with Intel’s Lunar Lake chips and relies on the Strix Level structure.
AMD already powers a few of the greatest handheld gaming PCs, together with Valve’s Steam Deck and the Asus ROG Ally X, however this new chip appears to be like to enhance upon a number of aspects of efficiency together with higher reminiscence optimization and energy administration.
The largest improve of be aware within the Ryzen Z2 will likely be a bigger iGPU, coming with 16 compute items, as a substitute of the 12 within the earlier Phoenix Level cell processors. That’s a a 33% uplift that we might typically count on to lead to the same degree of efficiency gaming enchancment.
When it comes to graphical structure, the Ryzen Z2 will use RDNA 3.5, which improves upon the RDNA 3 within the Ryzen Z1 Excessive, although notably isn’t as a lot of a step up because the model new RDNA 4 structure we’re anticipating to energy AMD’s subsequent technology of desktop GPUs. Nonetheless, the newer chip structure as a complete allows improved battery effectivity when gaming in addition to higher optimization with LPDDR5 reminiscence.
In line with Digital Tendencies, designers of the following ROG Ally handheld have prompt that demanding video games like Black Fable: Wukong will run for properly over an hour, one thing not attainable on the Ally X, regardless of its 80Wh battery.
In the identical report, it’s mentioned that AMD is focusing on early 2025 for a launch. That is seemingly after we can count on to see the primary AMD Ryzen Z2 Excessive handheld, and whereas indicators level to Asus because the main candidate, its current Ally X launch may sign that it’s too quickly for one more handheld.
As an alternative, we could possibly be an replace to the Lenovo Legion Go, or extra surprisingly, AMD could possibly be working with Valve on the Steam Deck 2. Given how underpowered its current handhelds are, it wouldn’t be a shock to see a brand new superpowered Steam Deck beat its rivals to the punch and launch with AMD’s latest chip powering it.
For extra handheld updates, take a look at our hands-on previews for each the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and Acer Nitro Blaze 7. Each units have completely different challenges to beat and we acquired our arms on each at IFA 2024.
