It looks as if the Steam Deck has dominated the PC gaming house for the final yr, regardless of operating on comparatively previous Zen 2 {hardware}. The truth that this brick-sized gadget can run the most recent 3D PC video games in any respect is fairly exceptional and a testomony to the stunning versatility of AMD’s APU designs. However what if the corporate constructed a brand new collection of chips designed from the bottom up for this new, super-compact transportable kind issue? It has. Say good day to the Ryzen Z1, which can make its retail product debut within the Asus ROG Ally.
The Z1 and Z1 Excessive are designed with the distinctive necessities of super-portable gaming in thoughts, optimizing each graphical functionality and battery life over multitasking or CPU-focused duties. Each are primarily based on the Zen 4 structure of AMD’s newest desktop and laptop computer chips with the RDNA 3 graphics system. The Z1 boasts six main cores and 12 threads, with 4 RDNA 3 compute models. The Z1 excessive will get a modest bump to eight cores and 16 threads, however triples the RDNA 3 models to 12 to actually pump out these polygons. Cache is 22MB and 24MB, respectively, and each processors help AMD’s Radeon Tremendous Decision, Picture Sharpening, AMD Hyperlink streaming, and Radeon Chill energy saving options.
However the actual numbers that avid gamers care about are the in-game benchmarks. In keeping with a promotional slide from AMD, the Z1 can deal with 138 frames-per-second in Counter-Strike: GO at 1080p—about the identical stage as a price range or mid-range gaming desktop, relying on the settings. The Z1 Excessive can pump out 162 frames. A extra demanding single-player sport like Crimson Lifeless Redemption 2 goes to hit the {hardware} quite a bit tougher, however it’s nonetheless very playable at 25 and 48 frames, respectively. Forza Horizon 4, a comparatively well-optimized sport that nonetheless advantages from larger framerates, is clocked at 83 FPS for the Z1 and a formidable 122 FPS for the Z1 Excessive.
AMD
What in regards to the different aspect of the equation, energy consumption? That’s tougher to pin down. In keeping with our hands-on with the Asus ROG Ally, it’s getting about the identical two hours of heavy 3D gaming battery life because the Steam Deck on its a lot older chips…however we don’t know the relative dimension of the batteries in play. The ROG Ally can be using some relatively fancy engineering in its twin fan cooling system. Based mostly on these preliminary numbers, I’d estimate that even when the Z1 and Z1 Excessive are an enormous step up in graphical functionality, they gained’t be fixing the battery life weaknesses of those handheld PCs any time quickly.
The ROG Ally will get a full public debut on Could eleventh, although exact retail launch and pricing shouldn’t be out there in the mean time. Since Zen 2-based handheld PCs got here out of the woodwork after the Steam Deck’s launch final yr, you may anticipate an identical glut of Z1-powered devices from a wide range of distributors within the latter half of 2023.
