A leaker on the Chinese language dialogue discussion board Zhihu has revealed an in depth efficiency evaluation of AMD’s Ryzen Z1 processor – the little brother of the Z1 Excessive chip revealed earlier this 12 months and seen in motion in PC gaming handhelds such because the upcoming Lenovo Legion Go.
David Huang posted his findings on Zhihu, giving us an excessive amount of perception into how this chip will carry out in relation to at the moment obtainable gaming handhelds just like the Valve Steam Deck, which runs on an older customized Zen 2 APU from AMD. He supplied detailed specs and efficiency stats, together with a number of recreation benchmarks, though we must always warning that we won’t confirm that these are real outcomes from the CPU.
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Though Huang didn’t have a Z1 Excessive at hand for direct comparisons, he did examine efficiency to AMD’s Ryzen 7 7840U laptop computer CPU that was revealed earlier this 12 months. The 7840U was presumably chosen since it’s broadly analogous to the Z1 Excessive chip by way of total specs (though precise efficiency varies, because the Z1 APUs are particularly designed for use in handheld gaming units).
As for the outcomes? Nicely, they seem to be a little bit of a blended bag. The usual Z1 clearly lags behind its Excessive counterpart in gaming efficiency, nevertheless it’s additionally much more power-efficient – providing a playable expertise at 720p with simply 15W of energy consumption. Dialing up the obtainable energy draw to the chip’s most of 30W truly solely supplied a modest efficiency enhance of lower than 20% on common.
Naturally, the Z1 is predicted to be a good bit cheaper than the Z1 Excessive – though it will not be in the stores immediately, so pricing will in the end be decided by the third-party producers utilizing the chip.
An iPhone 15 Professional characteristic
Final 12 months, my colleague John Loeffler revealed a bit about the potential of Apple’s M-series silicon for gaming in built-in graphics. Whereas I respectfully disagreed together with his stance about macOS turning into a gaming haven (OK, advantageous, I stated I’d reasonably die than turn into a Mac gamer), John was completely proper that processor-integrated graphics would be the method most of us play video games sooner or later.
Think about, for a second, the RTX 4090. Nvidia’s flagship desktop graphics card is an absolute monster, costing greater than three PS5s and guzzling down as much as 450W of energy (with out overclocking). That’s 30 occasions the utmost energy consumption of the AMD Z1 operating at 15W – and also you’ll want some equally power-hungry parts in your PC to forestall your 4090 from bottlenecking, too.
In an period the place electrical energy payments could be brutal (particularly if, like me, you reside within the UK proper now), low-power gaming is straight away preferable. The push for gaming-capable iGPUs is simply simply starting; now, each new era from main gamers together with AMD, Intel, and Apple brings spectacular efficiency leaps. The opposite benefits are measurement and thermal efficiency; these chips could be comfortably squeezed into compact units like gaming handhelds and the greatest ultrabooks.
Though there are not any official particulars proper now about units that may use the Z1 chip, it’s very doubtless that at the moment obtainable handhelds utilizing the Z1 Excessive will see a less expensive variant pop up within the not-too-distant future. After I met with Lenovo in Berlin at IFA 2023, the workers have been coy in regards to the potential of a extra reasonably priced Legion Go, however all however confirmed {that a} Z1 mannequin would arrive ultimately.
Personally, I can’t wait – and I hope that AMD is planning a Z2 sequence to ship even higher gaming efficiency with the identical low, low energy draw. If solely Microsoft may get their act collectively and provides Home windows 11 a correct handheld mode…
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