The Z2 chips are not coming to a Steam Deck near you
The Ryzen Z2 Extreme and Fire Range: New Parts of a Powerful, Low-End, High-Performance Handheld PC
The Z2 Extreme chips for handheld gaming PC competitors to the Steam Deck, which, strangely, raise the low-end TDP up to 15W from just 9W with previous-gen parts and each contain a different generation ofGPU, is one of the last and possibly least.
The Z2 Extreme is an intriguing mix of Zen 3 and Zen 5c CPU cores with RDNA 3.5 graphics, four more GPU cores than last-gen, and can boost 5 watts higher for a combined total of what should almost certainly be more performance than before — though AMD hasn’t provided any benches this time around.
You can see in the chart above that not all parts are equal, but they all consume up to 120W of power, making them the most appropriate for machines that will be plugged in and / or docked. HP will offer a Z2 Mini G1a desktop, and ZBook Ultra G1a laptop, while Asus will offer a ROG Flow Z13 gaming tablets with new parts.
Fire Range, meanwhile, is AMD’s codename for its new HX- and X3D-series laptop parts, which don’t come with their own groundbreaking integrated GPUs but are designed to be paired with discrete ones. The new version of the flagship gaming laptop chip with the 3D V-Cache is so popular that it was found in both desktop and notebook chips. There are lower-end parts for the 9955HX3D, but it has the same amount of cache as the 7945HX3D.
Today, they are announcing two new X3D desktop chips that they claim are the best processor for gaming and creators. You can read more about the new Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D here.
It has yet to give a concrete idea of performance from the Fire Range or Z2 chips or of their battery life, though it did promise the Z2 will offer more performance and capabilities than prior generations.
AMD has just officially announced its full lineup of Ryzen Z2 chips for handheld gaming PCs like the Steam Deck, after a brief tease this fall — but as of today, it’s pretty muddy who they’re for or what they’re going to do for handheld PC gaming.
But stepping away from the Extreme, the vanilla Z2 has the same number of cores as today’s existing Z1 Extreme with the same RDNA 3 and possibly the same CPU cores, and AMD hasn’t mentioned any improvements over that chip yet. The Z2 Go has fewer CPU cores than even a vanilla Z1, and is on older RDNA 2 like the Steam Deck’s chip — but it does have 12 graphics cores, triple that of the Z1 and four more GPU cores than the Deck.
The new chips have a higher minimum battery life than the previous generation and it could possibly mean less battery life when you use the power mode for less intensive games. (Not everyone changes power modes, though, so the TDP manufacturers ship it at may matter more; the Z1 Extreme’s sweet spot was around 15-17W TDP, while the Steam Deck’s chip nominally runs at 15W but can dip as low as 4W.)
