AMD’s Ryzen Z2 chips could bring Strix Point graphics to handhelds in 2025

AMD’s been making laptop processors for years that have integrated graphics powerful enough to let you play many recent games without a discrete GPU. And in 2023 the company released its first Ryzen Z series processors designed specifically for handheld gaming PCs like the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go.

Recently AMD officials confirmed plans to launch 2nd-gen Ryzen Z series chips in 2025, and now a leak gives us a rough idea of what to expect from the Ryzen Z2 family.

According to a post on Bilbili from reliable leaker Golden Pig Upgrade Pack, AMD plans to launch at least three Ryzen Z2 chips.

The new flagship is said to be the Ryzen Z2E (which I assume stands for Ryzen 2 Extreme), which will have 12 RDNA 3.5 GPU compute units. In other words, it’ll have the same Radeon 880M GPU as AMD’s Ryzen 9 365 Strix Point processor.

But there will also be two other chips: a Ryzen Z2 with 12 RDNA 3 GPU cores, and a Ryzen Z2G with 12 RDNA 2 cores.

While it’s too early to say how the new handheld chips stack up, it sure sounds like the mid-range Ryzen Z2 chip is set to at least match the performance of the previous-gen Ryzen Z1 Extreme, while the new entry-level Ryzen Z2G is a bit more of a mixed bag: while it has three times more GPU cores than the entry-level Ryzen Z1, it uses RDNA 2 architecture rather than RDNA 3. So expect the kind of performance you’d get from an older laptop or mini PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U or similar processor.

According to Golden Pig Upgrade Pack, AMD had been hoping to launch a Z2 Extreme X with 16 RDNA 3.5 compute units, matching what you see in the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Strix Point processor, but the chip maker has allegedly scrapped that model.

via Tom’s Hardware