You've obviously heard of the Steam Deck, and perhaps Asus has tipped you off about the upcoming ROG Ally in an April Fool's joke.
One of the things that got me excited about the Asus ROG Ally was that Asus hinted that it could be the first handheld to offer parts specifically for laptops since the Steam Deck. It is called Ryzen Z1.
And today's Geekbench leak (which should always be taken with a grain of salt) suggests that Asus may actually be using two such chips. - Core, 16 threads Ryzen Z1 Extreme with 6 CU RNDA3 for higher performance and consumption.
But get this. The shipping manifest spotted by VideoCardz also shows the ROG Ally under another undisclosed name. The Ryzen 7 7840U is a 3.3GHz chip with Radeon 780M graphics and is thought to be roughly the same as the Z1 Extreme.
Also, it seems the Ryzen 7 7840U isn't just for Asus. Rumors and leaks have led to the Aokzoe A1 Pro, the unannounced Ayaneo 2S, and the foldable GPD Win Mini.
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This isn't the first time a boutique laptop maker has tried the Steam Deck. A year ago I wrote about how everyone was getting ready for the mainstream AMD 6800U laptop chip, but unfortunately it wasn't efficient enough for capable laptops. (Read my Ayaneo 2 review for more details.)
But at least Aokzoe seems pretty confident that it can match the Steam Deck to the 7840U. He continues to post videos of his A1 Pro in action on YouTube. This includes the A1 Pro, which runs the same games with the same CPU power and battery drain as the Steam Deck, but is still significantly faster.
If the 7840U can do that, it's encouraging. (Not too surprising considering we're looking at Zen 4 and RDNA 3, not Zen 2 and RDNA 2 in Aerith's chips in the Steam Deck.)
But that's just an example right now, and I'm not sure if any of these companies can get a decent price with these chips, or Microsoft's help in making it easier and more convenient to use Windows on a gaming machine. I am not sure if it is possible to do this. Also, AMD did not immediately respond to requests for this article.
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However, one more thing that makes me happy: Last July, when I contacted AMD's PR representative about their handheld gaming PC, they said they didn't even have the time to process such a request.
There are currently no details to share about AMD chips in handheld gaming PCs. We will certainly be in touch with AMD related news and opportunities in the future, but unfortunately we cannot contact them directly at this time.
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