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What simply occurred? AMD has expanded its Ryzen Z2 household of processors for gaming handhelds by saying two new APUs: the Ryzen AI Z2 Excessive and Ryzen Z2 A. These chips energy the newly launched Xbox-branded gaming handhelds – the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X.
Designed for flagship gadgets, the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme is the extra premium of the 2. In response to AMD’s official spec sheet, it’s just about equivalent to the Strix Level-based Ryzen Z2 Excessive, which powers handhelds just like the MSI Claw A8, however with the addition of an NPU providing 50 TOPS of AI compute energy.
Different specs embrace an 8-core, 16-thread CPU, comprising 5 Zen 5 cores and three Zen 5C cores. The chip additionally options 16 RDNA 3.5 graphics compute models, 24MB of cache, and assist for LPDDR5X-8000 reminiscence.
AMD has not printed the clock speeds, however the present Z2 Excessive contains a 2GHz base clock for all cores, a lift clock as much as 3.3GHz for the Zen 5C cores, and as much as 5GHz enhance clock for the Zen 5 cores. The brand new chip retains the identical 15W to 35W TDP vary because the non-AI Z2 Excessive.
Explaining the rationale behind including an NPU to a processor designed for gaming handhelds, AMD told PC Gamer that it might deliver “low-power, on-device AI capabilities” to handheld gaming for the primary time – enabling upscaling, adaptive gameplay, and smarter NPCs.
Past enabling new options, the NPU can be anticipated to enhance efficiency and battery life by offloading AI processing, permitting the CPU and GPU to concentrate on core recreation duties. AMD added that the neural processor will assist AI-enabled gaming with “real-time personalization and smarter, extra interactive gameplay.”
Along with the Ryzen AI Z2 Excessive, AMD additionally introduced the Ryzen Z2 A, designed for entry-level gaming handhelds. It contains a 4-core, 8-thread CPU primarily based on the older Zen 2 structure, eight RDNA 2 graphics cores, 6MB of cache, and assist for LPDDR5-6400 reminiscence. It has a configurable TDP starting from 6W to 20W.
The brand new chips energy the newest “Xbox” gaming handhelds introduced this week by Microsoft and Asus. Whereas the top-end ROG Xbox Ally X makes use of the Ryzen AI Z2 Excessive, the extra inexpensive ROG Xbox Ally is supplied with the Ryzen Z2 A. Each gadgets are anticipated to launch in time for the vacation purchasing season.
