AMD's been making laptop processors for years that have integrated graphics powerful enough to let you play many recent games without a discrete GPU. And in 2023 the company released its first Ryzen Z series processors designed specifically for handheld gaming PCs like the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go.

Recently AMD officials confirmed plans to launch 2nd-gen Ryzen Z series chips in 2025, and now a leak gives us a rough idea of what to expect from the Ryzen Z2 family.

AMD Ryzen Z1

According to a post on Bilbili from reliable leaker Golden Pig Upgrade Pack, AMD plans to launch at least three Ryzen Z2 chips.

The new flagship is said to be the Ryzen Z2 Extreme, which is expected to combine an octa-core CPU (with three Zen 5 CPU cores and five Zen 5c CPU cores and 16MB of L3 cache) with 16 RDNA 3.5 GPU compute units. In other words, it'll have the same Radeon 890M GPU as AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Strix Point processor.

But there will also be two other chips: a Ryzen Z2 with 12 RDNA 3 GPU cores, and a Ryzen Z2G with 12 RDNA 2 cores.

Name GPU Compute Units Ryzen Z2 family (2025, leaked) Ryzen Z2 Extreme RDNA 3.5 16 Ryzen 2 RDNA 3 12 Ryzen Z2G RDNA 2 12 Ryzen Z1 family (2023) Ryzen Z1 Extreme RDNA 3 12 Ryzen Z1 RDNA 3 4

While it's too early to say how the new handheld chips stack up, it sure sounds like the mid-range Ryzen Z2 chip is set to at least match the performance of the previous-gen Ryzen Z1 Extreme, while the new entry-level Ryzen Z2G is a bit more of a mixed bag: while it has three times more GPU cores than the entry-level Ryzen Z1, it uses RDNA 2 architecture rather than RDNA 3. So expect the kind of performance you'd get from an older laptop or mini PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U or similar processor.

According to Golden Pig Upgrade Pack, AMD had been hoping to launch a Z2 Extreme X with 16 RDNA 3.5 compute units, matching what you see in the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Strix Point processor, but the chip maker has allegedly scrapped that model.

Update: Golden Pig Upgrade had first claimed that a planned Z2 Extreme X model with 16 RDNA 3.5 GPU compute units had been canceled, but later clarified that it looks like AMD does plan to offer a model with those features… but it'll be branded as the Z2 Extreme.

via Tom's Hardware and VideoCardz

This article was first published October 22, 2024 and most recently updated October 23, 2024 with updated information about the Ryzen Z2 Extreme. 

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