Summary:
AMD today announced its new Ryzen Z1 Series processors, a line of chips designed specifically for handheld PC gaming consoles.
“At AMD, we’re continually advancing the next generation of gaming experiences, from consoles to desktops to on-the-go handheld devices,” said Jason Banta, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Client OEM at AMD.
“Ryzen Z1 processors deliver gamers an elite gaming experience and extreme portability in exciting gaming form factors.”
The Ryzen Z1 Series brings high-performance computing to handheld gaming consoles while also maximizing battery life. It features AMD’s “Zen 4” architecture, which is the same as the company’s Ryzen 7000 series desktop and mobile CPUs.
Ryzen Z1 also comes equipped with integrated RDNA 3 graphics to handle even graphically intensive modern games. RDNA 3 is the same graphics architecture as AMD’s dedicated Radeon 7000 series desktop and laptop GPUs.
AMD is launching the Ryzen Z1 Series with two processors: the Ryzen Z1 — a 6-core, 12-thread chip with 4 RDNA 3 graphics compute units and 22 MB of cache, and the Ryzen Z1 Extreme — an 8-core, 16-thread chip with 12 RDNA 3 graphics compute units and 24 MB of cache. Both chips have a 15-30W TDP.
The first handheld gaming console to be powered by AMD’s new Ryzen Z1 Series processors will be the Asus ROG Ally, availability and pricing which will be announced by Asus on May 11.
AMD has plenty of experience and presence in the gaming console market, having built custom chips for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and even the more portable Steam Deck. What’s more, other handheld gaming consoles like those from AYANEO and ONEXPLAYER also use mobile-class processors from AMD.
However, Ryzen Z1 represents AMD’s first crack at developing a dedicated chip for handheld devices. According to AMD, Ryzen Z1 Series chips are compatible with Windows 11 and other operating systems.
