It’s CES time, people. This 12 months’s iteration of the present has effectively and really kicked off with new {hardware} reveals – a lot of which you gained’t have the ability to afford, new gimmicks, flashy shows, and much too many mentions of AI. CES can also be a time for brand spanking new chip reveals, and AMD tends to deliver the products every year.
The chipmaker is just about the one one which issues within the gaming handheld house in the meanwhile, so there’s lots of pleasure in regards to the new Z2 processor and the units it’s going to be powering very quickly. Sadly, regardless that AMD mentioned so, that gained’t really embody a brand new Steam Deck.
AMD unveiled the brand new Ryzen Z2 collection of APUs, designed for low-power units, equivalent to gaming handhelds. The Z1 and Z1 Excessive could be present in loads of first-generation handhelds, and this subsequent iteration already has a number of of them lined up for an improve.
As a part of a CES name asserting the brand new collection (by way of PC Gamer), AMD mentioned that Z2-equipped handhelds are on the best way “from quite a lot of companions, the Legion Go, the ROG Ally, the Valve Steam Deck.” That is clearly huge information, however solely as a result of that final one is surprising. It’s additionally, apparently, not correct.
Valve engineer and Steam Deck developer Pierre-Loup Griffais in a short time took to Bluesky to make clear that “There may be and will probably be no Z2 Steam Deck.” He additionally added what most of us have been in all probability considering, that the slide was seemingly meant to say “meant for merchandise like that, not asserting something particular.”
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Valve has lengthy mentioned it’s not enthusiastic about designing a brand new Steam Deck until it may supply a significant generational improve over the present mannequin, however the firm additionally mentioned final 12 months that we gained’t see a Steam Deck 2 till at the least late 2025, so there’s an opportunity – assuming a brand new one launches later this 12 months – it’s going to be utilizing know-how that’s simply been introduced, or maybe a modified model of that. Manufacturing takes time, in spite of everything.
Like its predecessor, the Z2 structure features a CPU and GPU on the identical chip. There will probably be three obtainable fashions, the Z2 Excessive, customary Z2, and Z2 Go. The 2 upper-end choices are almost similar, apart from the Excessive’s extra highly effective GPU because of having 4 further GPU cores. The Excessive makes use of RDNA 3.5 structure, and none of Z2s will utilise the just-announced RDNA 4.