AMD has officially announced the new Ryzen Z2 chips for handheld gaming PCs at CES 2025. These new chips will be powering future handhelds, similar to how we saw the Ryzen Z1 and Ryzen Z1 Extreme powering devices like the ASUS ROG Ally X, Steam Deck, and others.
During its press conference today, AMD announced three chips that are part of this new family. The AMD Ryzen Z2, the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme, and the AMD Ryzen Z2 Go. AMD hasn’t officially announced any handhelds coming with these new chips. That shouldn’t be surprising though, as it would be letting companies do their own announcements on that.
Lenovo is however rumored to have upcoming handhelds that will run on these new APUs. Specifically, the Legion Go S that’s been rumored for the past couple of months.
AMD Ryzen Z2 chips have a TDP of up to 35W
As with the first generation of chips, the new ones will be slightly different in terms of performance and TDP output. The Ryzen Z2 Extreme will be the big boy, offering 8 cores and 16 threads, with a maximum TDP of 35W, and a minimum of 15W. It also has 16 graphics cores with the GPU being based on AMD RDNA 3.5 architecture.
Additionally, it has a boost frequency of 5.0GHz and a base frequency of 2.0GHz. Both the Ryzen Z2 and the Ryzen Z2 Go will come with half the core and thread counts of the Ryzen Z2 Extreme. The TDP output is slightly lower as well at a maximum of 30W. The minimum is the same though.
There are a few other differences here to speak of. Notably, the graphics cores on both the other chips are set at 12 as opposed to 16. The graphics models are different as well. The Ryzen Z2 is based on the RDNA 3 architecture, while the Ryzen Z2 Go is based on RDNA 2.
Handhelds with the Z2 chips are expected to launch in Q1
There aren’t any specific dates yet, but handhelds with these new chips are expected to launch something within the next few months. AMD has stated that it expects devices to be available in Q1. While it doesn’t mention any devices by name, we do know that a Steam Deck device with this chip isn’t included. It’s been rumored in the past that Valve would be launching a new Steam Deck with this chip. However, Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais (via The Verge) has denied this claim and stated that “there will be no Z2 Steam Deck.”
As of now, there are no confirmations on what upcoming handhelds will use these chips. But that may change pretty soon.
