AMD Ryzen Z1 Officially Announced – Steam Deck Is in Trouble!

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AMD has just announced the Ryzen Z1 series chipsets. As the previous rumors stated, the brand-new AMD Ryzen Z1 SoCs will power the next generation of handheld gaming consoles.

Inside the lineup, there are two powerful SoCs, which go by Z1 and Z1 Extreme. Both the AMD Ryzen Z1 chipsets are based on 4nm Ryzen Zen 4 architecture. And they both feature RDNA 3 GPUs. However, for the time being, the two chipsets will be exclusive to Asus, which has already debuted the ROG Ally to go against the Steam Deck.

Performance of AMD Ryzen Z1 Chipsets

As mentioned earlier, there are two chipsets in the AMD Ryzen Z1 series. And they are specced a little differently. Firstly, you have the standard Ryzen Z1 that boasts six cores and twelve threads. The GPU of the Zen 4 CPU packs four RDNA 3 cores, while the total onboard cache is at 22MB. According to AMD, this chipset can offer 2.8 teraflops of graphics performance.

AMD Z1 GPU Performance

Secondly, there’s the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, which features an eight-core Zen 4 CPU and sixteen threads. On the GPU side, the AMD Z1 Extreme has twelve RDNA 3 GPU cores with a total of 24MB onboard cache. AMD says that the Z1 Extreme is rated for 8.6 teraflops of graphics performance.

Benchmark results

AMD has also shared actual benchmark numbers from the Ryzen Z1 and Z1 Extreme engineering samples. And the great part is that both chipsets can smoothly run popular gaming titles at 1080p resolution with low settings.

Asus Rog Ally

Aside from that, the new Ryzen Z1 chipsets have support for USB 4 connectivity, along with LPPD5 and LPDD5X memory. The chipsets also bring AMD Radeon Super Resolution upscaling tech, Radeon Image Sharpening, Radeon Chill, and AMD Link. And according to the press release, both chipsets will be brought out to the world by Asus ROG Ally on May 11.