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## AMD-Powered Gaming Handhelds Pose a Challenge to Steam Deck
You may have heard about the Steam Deck and the upcoming ROG Ally by Asus, which are set to be gaming handhelds powered by AMD. But there are at least four more AMD-powered handhelds in development that haven’t been announced yet.
Asus hinted that the ROG Ally might be the first handheld since the Steam Deck to offer a custom part specifically engineered for portables. Leaks suggest that this collaboration with AMD is called the Ryzen Z1, and Geekbench leaks further suggest that Asus may actually be using two chips: a six-core, 12-thread Ryzen Z1 with two RDNA 3 graphics compute units (CUs), and an eight-core, 16-thread Ryzen Z1 Extreme with six RNDA3 CUs, which could have higher performance and power consumption.
Furthermore, a shipping manifest spotted by VideoCardz shows an ROG Ally with another unannounced name: the Ryzen 7 7840U, a 3.3GHz chip with Radeon 780M graphics that could be almost identical to that of the Z1 Extreme.
Boutique portable PC makers attempted to challenge the Steam Deck with the off-the-shelf AMD 6800U laptop chip, but it wasn’t efficient enough for a competent portable.
However, Aokzoe seems confident that their A1 Pro with a 7840U can match the Steam Deck in performance, even running the same game at the same processor wattage and similar battery drain, but notably faster. With Zen 4 and RDNA 3 instead of the Zen 2 and RDNA 2 found in the Steam Deck’s Aerith chip, it’s heartening news.
It remains to be seen whether any of these companies can hit the right price with these chips or get Microsoft’s help to develop Windows into something easy and comfortable to use with gaming handhelds. That being said, the fact that AMD was able to connect a reporter with a specific person who can help with handheld gaming PCs is promising.
Sources: The Verge, VideoCardz.
