AMD’s new Ryzen Z2 CPUs boost gaming handhelds, if you buy the best one
Nearly two years ago, AMD announced its first Ryzen Z1 processors. These were essentially the same silicon that AMD was putting in high-end thin-and-light laptops but tuned specifically for handheld gaming PCs like the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally X. As part of its CES announcements today, AMD is refreshing that lineup with three processors, all slated for an undisclosed date in the first quarter of 2025.
Although they’re all part of the “Ryzen Z2” family, each of these three chips is actually much different under the hood, and some of them are newer than others.
The Ryzen Z2 Extreme is what you’d expect from a refresh: a straightforward upgrade to both the CPU and GPU architectures of the Ryzen Z1 Extreme. Based on the same “Strix Point” architecture as the Ryzen AI 300 laptop processors, the Z2 Extreme includes eight CPU cores (three high-performance Zen 5 cores, five smaller and efficiency-optimized Zen 5C cores) and an unnamed RDNA 3.5 GPU with 16 of AMD’s compute units (CUs). These should both provide small bumps to CPU and GPU performance relative to the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, which used eight Zen 4 CPU cores and 12 RDNA 3 GPU cores.
AMD’s full Ryzen Z2 lineup, which obfuscates the fact that these three chips are all using different CPU and GPU architectures.
Credit:
AMD
The Ryzen Z2, on the other hand, appears to be exactly the same chip as the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, but with a different name. Like the Z1 Extreme, it has eight Zen 4 cores with a 5.1 GHz maximum clock speed and an RDNA 3 GPU with 12 cores.
