If there’s one thing that gets me out of bed every morning, it's definitely handheld gaming. And today, we’ve got some spicy news for you guys. In a stunning turn of events, AMD has revealed its dedicated handheld processors called the Ryzen Z1 series. There are two processors in the series, namely, the Ryzen Z1 and the Ryzen Z1 Extreme. These are 4nm processors that have been built from the ground up to cater to handheld devices. If you’re confused as to what we’re talking about, handheld devices include consoles such as the GameBoy, Nintendo Switch and the Steam Deck. These devices are incredibly popular with people who need a portable gaming system.
From what we can see with regards to specs, the AMD Z1 Extreme comes with eight of AMD’s Zen 4 CPU cores along with 16 threads and 24MB of cache. It also comes with an insane 12 RDNA 3 GU cores as well. As per the official announcement, it also comes with an insane 8.6 teraflops! As far as comparisons go, it’s actually closer in power to the PS5 rather than something like a Steam Deck.
If anything, it looks like AMD is taking the fight to Valve and its hugely popular Steam Deck. Just for comparison, the PS5 has about 10.28 teraflops while the Steam Deck has just about 1.6 teraflops. So, as far as that is concerned, the Ryzen Z1 extreme is closer to the PS5 than it is to its contemporaries. The Ryzen Z1 comes with 6 CPU cores and 12 threads along with 4 GPU cores. It also comes with 22MB of cache.
As far as real-world performance goes, we won’t know how these chips perform under testing. But just from the specs alone, it looks like these chips are going to give Valve’s RDNA2 Aerith chip a real run for its money. So what exactly does this mean for handheld gaming? Well, for one, you should be able to bump up the resolution on games without sacrificing frame rate and such. Graphically, you should be able to increase the settings to somewhat resemble a PC. We should be seeing these new chips on handled systems like the Asus ROG Ally, which is being billed as a competitor to the Steam Deck.