The Ryzen Z1 and Z1 Extreme, Powering The Next Gen Of Handheld Gaming Devices?

The Asus ROG Ally Will Be First

It turns out that neither the Asus ROG Ally nor the Ryzen Z1 were April Fools’ jokes and both are real products we will start to see soon.  The ROG Ally will be the first device to use the new Zen 4 and RDNA 3 based chip, with more coming soon to challenge the Steam Deck.   If AMD’s PR is correct and they run anywhere near the touted 55% faster than the current generation they will indeed sell well.  The hardware suggests it is possible, the Ryzen Z1 has six CPU cores and four RDNA 3 while the Z1 Extreme has eight Zen 4 based CPU cores and 12 RDNA 3-based GPU cores.

The performance difference between the Z1 and Z1 Extreme will not be quite as large as those specification suggest, as the pool of DDR5 used for VRAM will put a an upper limit on the devices powered by the Z1 Extreme.   Hardware isn’t everything, so there will need to be some serious work done on the OS and drivers on Steam Deck competitors if they do hope to unseat the current king of mobile gaming.