Basically, AMD has optimized its new Ryzen Z1 chips so much that, thanks to them, it is possible to manufacture portable consoles of 9W. Last month, AMD already officially presented these new low-power APUs, which include a standard variant and an “extreme” variant, both with an architecture Zen 4 for the processor part and RDNA3 for the GPU part.
AMD Ryzen Z1, designed for your next portable console
During its official presentation, AMD pointed out that there will be some additional optimizations and a specific power management system in these Ryzen Z1 chips compared to the previous Ryzen 7040U, and that is that the two chips are essentially identical with the specific exception of how they handle power. and consumption, which makes these Z1s slightly better and optimized for portable consoles.
Many of you will be wondering: what are these “small” changes? Well, AMD has already answered this question: it seems that AMD engineers went all the way and tested completely new power ranges and voltage curves specific to these Ryzen Z1s. The biggest change of all is that AMD has completely disabled the engine XADN “Ryzen AI” in these APUs, which means that although the block is inside the chip, it is disabled and cannot be used, saving a good portion of the energy consumed.
It may seem that in the age we live in where everything seems to be based on artificial intelligence, disabling this chip might be a strange decision. It’s possible that AMD’s FSR 3 technology could use this engine, as RDNA 3 also has built-in AI accelerators, but none of this has been confirmed with certainty as of yet. AMD has claimed that AI accelerators can be used for more than just scaling technologies like Intel or NVIDIA do.
Additionally, AMD has also confirmed that the Ryzen Z1 APUs will have a TDP range of between 9 and 30 watts; the upper limit of 30W was already known, but the lower limit of 9W means that these chips can work much more efficiently in a handheld console, where the battery life
Ryzen Z1 APUs are about to arrive
We must remember that we are not talking about something that will happen “in the future”, but that they are practically already here: without going any further, the recently announced portable console Asus ROG ally It is equipped with one of these APUs (by the way, you can see our particular analysis of this console at the time of its official launch).
Unsurprisingly, with all the effort AMD has put into these new chips, hopefully the ROG Ally won’t be the only handheld console to feature them, and we’ll most likely start to see a lot more contenders in this.” console war” equipped with them with the same chip very soon.
