Asus has introduced it’ll be transport the ROG Ally Z1 version handheld PC ranging from October 3 for the painfully excessive value of $599 (£599). This new system will ship with primarily the identical base {hardware} because the top-spec ROG Ally, which sports activities the total AMD Z1 Excessive APU, so in a approach you’ll be able to see why it is solely $100 cheaper.
In spite of everything, you are still getting the identical pretty 500cd/m2 120Hz 1080p show, the identical 512GB SSD, 16GB LPDDR5-6400, and a UHS-II microSD slot that will or might not soften the contents of which into a lot silicon slag.
The problem is that, whereas the AMD Z1 is a supremely fascinating chip, it is very underpowered in gaming phrases in contrast with the Z1 Excessive as a result of it is utilizing the 740M iGPU versus the highly effective 780M choice. The highest chip then has the total complement of 12 compute items (CUs)—the identical because the Ryzen 7 7840U that is powering all one of the best handheld gaming PCs proper now—however the plain Z1 is rocking solely a 3rd of that.
With simply 4 CUs you are getting 256 shaders in contrast with the 768 of the total Z1 Excessive chip. And that successfully places it at half the GPU silicon of the Aerith APU on the coronary heart of the Steam Deck. Yeah, a theoretical halving of the gaming efficiency of the Deck, however with a $599 price ticket. Ouch.
Contemplating Valve’s inaugural handheld gaming PC continues to be up on the market as a part of Steam’s twentieth Anniversary sale, I am struggling to see why anybody would both not save themselves a ton of money and go for the Steam Deck, or spend one other $100 and purchase the total spec ROG Ally.
I’ll admit, I’ve not examined the Z1 version of the ROG Ally as but, so I can not say whether or not there may be some particular sauce contained in the silicon that may give it some edge, however trying on the uncooked specs it does not appear seemingly. AMD has revealed some comparative graphs, which appear extra promising, nevertheless.
However it’s an fascinating chip, nevertheless, given that it is the first of AMD’s efficient hybrid processors because it’s reportedly a Phoenix 2 APU, which suggests it sports activities each Zen 4 and Zen 4c cores at its coronary heart, and is not simply the rebadged Ryzen 5 7540U we thought it will be.
Nominally, the hybrid design brings to thoughts Intel’s Alder Lake and Raptor Lake chips, however reasonably than the identical type of Efficiency and Environment friendly cores, AMD’s Zen 4c cores are virtually equivalent to the Zen 4 cores besides are supposed to have much less cache and run at a decrease clock velocity. They’re simply smaller so you’ll be able to squeeze extra of them right into a bundle if you’d like.
That is not what’s occurred right here particularly, the AMD Z1 is a six-core APU, with 12 threads of processing attainable, nevertheless it’s solely received two of the total Zen 4 cores with 4 slower Zen 4c cores. However the photos within the leaked screenshots present an equivalent cache construction for each the completely different cores, and that runs counter to what we might beforehand heard about AMD’s rearchitecting of the Zen 4c cores to deal with half the L3 cache in an effort to slot in a smaller house.
Nonetheless, they do reportedly run slower, so whereas it’d promote a lift clock of 4.9GHz (towards the 5.1GHz of Z1 Excessive) that is more likely to solely be for the large cores, with the Zen 4c cores most likely working a lot slower on the 3.5GHz mark.
Truthfully, none of that CPU facet stuff could be a difficulty with the ROG Ally the place it not backing up a correspondingly weak built-in GPU. The precise octa-core APU, with a full 16 threads, is overkill for a handheld gaming PC, and a extra environment friendly APU however with compromised processor energy, would not be an issue in gaming phrases. However with a 3rd of the GPU silicon it’ll really feel actually underpowered.
Fortunately it will nonetheless be bundled with three months of Xbox Recreation Go Final, so you’ll a minimum of be capable of stream some video games at a good body fee, however native efficiency might be an actual concern. However we’ll have to attend to see the way it actually performs in the actual world as soon as we get remaining silicon in our labs.
