Amd’s Z2 Handheld Gaming Chips Are Official — And Not Coming To A Steam Deck Near You

AMD has conscionable officially announced its afloat lineup of Ryzen Z2 chips for handheld gaming PCs for illustration nan Steam Deck, aft a little tease this autumn — but arsenic of today, it’s beautiful muddy who they’re for aliases what they’re going to do for handheld PC gaming.

First off, though AMD told journalists successful a pre-recorded briefing that Valve’s Steam Deck, Lenovo Legion Go, and Asus ROG Ally lineups would each characteristic nan caller chips, it’s not clear that’s really true.

While we’re expecting Lenovo handhelds later this week that could recreation pinch Z2, Valve has categorically denied that a caller Steam Deck will spot one. “There is and will beryllium nary Z2 Steam Deck,” Valve designer Pierre-Loup Griffais posted connected Bluesky today, correcting nan grounds aft VideoCardz leaked a accusation of AMD’s briefing.

While that denial seems beautiful clear, AMD strangely wouldn’t correct nan grounds connected Steam Deck (or ROG Ally) erstwhile we asked. The institution would only opportunity that its descent was “designed to point our existent handheld creation wins,” and that it’s not “preannouncing immoderate partner handheld devices.” That’s not a denial. Asus won't denote a Z2 ROG Ally coming astatine CES, rep Anthony Spence confirms to me, but couldn't remark connected Asus' early plans.

It’s too not clear what nan caller Z2 chips tin do. While AMD is promising “more capacity and capabilities than anterior generations” pinch “hours and hours of artillery life,” nan 3 chips are each built differently.

The Z2 Extreme is an intriguing cognition of Zen 3 and Zen 5c CPU cores pinch RDNA 3.5 graphics, 4 overmuch GPU cores than last-gen, and tin boost 5 watts higher for a mixed afloat of what should almost surely beryllium overmuch capacity than earlier — though AMD hasn’t provided immoderate benches this clip around.

But stepping distant from nan Extreme, nan vanilla Z2 has nan aforesaid number of cores arsenic today’s existing Z1 Extreme pinch nan aforesaid RDNA 3 and perchance nan aforesaid CPU cores, and AMD hasn’t mentioned immoderate improvements complete that spot yet. The Z2 Go has little CPU cores than moreover a vanilla Z1, and is connected older RDNA 2 for illustration nan Steam Deck’s spot — but it does personification 12 graphics cores, triple that of nan Z1 and 4 overmuch GPU cores than nan Deck.

And, each of these caller chips has a higher minimum TDP than nan erstwhile procreation (a quoted 15 watts, up from a quoted 9 watts), which could perchance mean small artillery life erstwhile you crank down nan CPU’s powerfulness mode for small intensive games. (Not everyone changes powerfulness modes, though, truthful nan TDP manufacturers alloy it astatine whitethorn matter more; nan Z1 Extreme’s saccharine spot was astir 15-17W TDP, while nan Steam Deck’s spot nominally runs astatine 15W but tin dip arsenic debased arsenic 4W.)

Anyhow: it’s weird! But perchance nan AMD-Lenovo-Valve-Microsoft handheld gaming arena tomorrow will make things clearer.