The Ryzen Z2 Extreme will noticeably increase the performance of the upcoming gaming handhelds. Not only the new chip is expected to offer better performance but higher power-efficiency is also coming to the handhelds.
New gaming handhelds are on the way next year, powered by Zen 5 chip
The IFA 2024 Berlin event saw tons of new hardware releases from multiple PC hardware manufacturers. From AI PCs to gaming handhelds, almost every manufacturer was seen bringing something new to the table. In all of this, AMD announced its own plans to launch a newer Ryzen chip specifically for gaming handhelds.
Digitaltrends reports that in the Join Q&A session, AMD said it planning an ‘Early 2025’ release for the Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip, The Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip will be a Zen 5-based custom processor, features 12 cores and 24 threads, featuring 4x Zen 5 and 8x Zen 5c cores and 16 Graphics Compute Units based on the RDNA 3.5 architecture. This will significantly upgrade the performance of gaming handhelds but it’s also expected that the battery life will also be impacted positively.
At the IFA 2024, Acer and MSI both revealed newer gaming handhelds MSI won’t probably be using the Ryzen Z2 Extreme since the MSI Claw 8 will be based on the Lunar Lake chip. Acer Nitro Blaze 7, on the other hand, will utilize the Z2 Extreme, marking a significant improvement in the handheld gaming industry. However, expect ASUS, Lenovo, and even Steam to follow up with newer versions of their existing handhelds.
The ASUS ROG Ally X and Lenovo Legion Go are based on the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, so, it’s highly likely that their newer consoles will utilize the Z2 Extreme. A lot of manufacturers have introduced their gaming handhelds recently, including ZOTAC with its Gaming ZONE and Acer with Core HS with the Ryzen 8840U and Ryzen 7840U chips respectively. It’s possible that these manufacturers will also launch their 2nd generation handhelds with Z2 Extreme processor.
