AMD has pushed out a new series of chips called the Ryzen Z2 series APUs designed for gaming handhelds to take performance and feature sets to the next level.
Available in a total of 5 different SKUs (Some of them are yet to be “commercially available”), the cream of the crop for this new lineup is the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme that comes with its native NPU providing up to 50 TOPS of performance which can help running some of the Team Red gaming technologies like FSR/FMF and whatnot. This also matches the Microsoft Copilot+ requirements for Windows-based AI features, so if one plans to “video out” towards a monitor and use it like a desktop for some quick work, they can do that with a similar experience to a Copilot+ laptop, too.
With up to 8C16T configuration in the CPU and up to 16 GPU cores based on RDNA 3.5 architecture, this provides even more performance than ever before, and if one really doesn’t care about AI things, the standard Ryzen Z2 Extreme should do the trick.
There’s also the standard Ryzen Z2 with slightly fewer GPU cores and running on older architecture, and it occupies the “mid-range” section, therefore if priced right, it can still be quite competitive. And towards the budget end, we have the “Go” and “A” models running as low as 6W of TDP, potentially opening up yet another section of “emulation powerhouse” with extremely long battery life. They are fitted with 4 CPU cores, 8 RDNA 2 GPU cores, and LPDDR5-6400 support, it’s clearly designed for lightweight gaming or basic use cases.
Currently, there are no official benchmark references or ready-for-sale commercial products running these chips. However, brands have already announced their upcoming products like Lenovo’s Legion Go S and Legion Go 2 as well as the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X, and they are slated for release this year.
All in all, this feels like AMD doubling down on handheld gaming, especially with AI becoming a bigger part of the equation.
