AMD’s Ryzen Z1 collection chips, designed for gaming handhelds just like the Asus ROG Ally, and its Ryzen 7040U chips, which the corporate introduced for ultraportables earlier this week, could also be much more comparable than anybody anticipated.
Within the desk under, I’ve in contrast the Z1 Excessive to the brand new top-of-the-line Ryzen 7 7840U with Radeon 780M, whereas the common Z1 sits subsequent to the Ryzen 5 7540U with Radeon 740M.
| Header Cell – Column 0 | AMD Ryzen 7 7840U | AMD Ryzen Z1 Excessive | AMD Ryzen 5 7540U | AMD Ryzen Z1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD XDNA Structure | Sure | No | No | No |
| Cores/Threads | 8/16 | 8/16 | 6/12 | 6/12 |
| Base clock | 3.3 GHz | Not specified | 3.2 GHz | Not specified |
| Enhance clock (as much as) | 5.1 GHz | Not specified | 4.9 GHz | Not specified |
| Cache | 24MB | 24MB | 22MB | 22MB |
| TDP | 15-30W | 15-30W | 15-30W | 15-30W |
| RDNA 3 Compute Items | 12 (Radeon 780M) | 12 | 4 (Radeon 740M) | 4 |
Whereas AMD hasn’t listed clock speeds for the Z1 and Z1 Excessive (perhaps these shall be launched with the ROG Ally, or maybe they will be totally different relying on the system utilizing them), every thing else is similar, at the very least on paper, to what’s being supplied in upcoming ultraportable laptops. They’ve the identical variety of cores and threads, the identical variety of RDNA 3 compute items, similar configurable TDPs, and even the identical cache.
After we requested AMD concerning the similarities, the corporate was fast to say that it has executed a bit of additional work on the Z1 fashions, however did not low cost the likenesses between the 2 units of chips.
“The Ryzen Z1 collection are purpose-built with handheld gaming in thoughts,” Matthew Hurwitz, a consumer PR supervisor at AMD, wrote to Tom’s {Hardware}. “To perform this, AMD engineers needed to validate totally new energy ranges and optimize the voltage curves particularly for this use case – this optimization and validation work shouldn’t be trivialized. So whereas the know-how constructing blocks (like ‘Zen4’ and RDNA 3) are comparable between the 7040 and Z1 collection, the ensuing fashions have very distinct traits custom-made for his or her use instances. As well as, the AMD Ryzen AI engine shouldn’t be out there on AMD Ryzen Z1 collection processors.”
We adopted up with AMD to ask if the XDNA AI engine is eliminated totally or disabled, and the corporate responded that it’s disabled. Which means the chips are doubtless similar on the silicon stage. Ultimately, there’ll solely be one option to really suss out the variations: benchmarking them as they hit our labs. For certain, making a chip work in a handheld the dimensions of a Steam Deck (within the case of the upcoming Asus ROG Ally, it is truly smaller) goes to take some work, as you do not get the quantity of house or cooling that you simply do in a laptop computer.
We have additionally but to see what the Ryzen AI engine from the XDNA structure is able to. Which will give the laptops an edge, although it is unlikely present video games would make the most of it, which makes a case for eradicating it from Z1 and Z1 Excessive.
The Asus ROG Ally can have a launch occasion on Might 11 (opens in new tab) that includes Frank Azor, AMD’s chief architect of gaming options and advertising, so maybe we’ll study extra then. And whereas Hurwitz emphasizes that the design work on the Z1 collection should not be underplayed, we’ll see the variations as folks truly get their fingers on each collection of chips.