AMD unveils Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme and Z2 A chips powering Xbox gaming handhelds

[DragonSlayer101]

What just happened? AMD has expanded its Ryzen Z2 family of processors for gaming handhelds by announcing two new APUs: the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme and Ryzen Z2 A. These chips power the newly launched Xbox-branded gaming handhelds – the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X.

Designed for flagship devices, the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme is the more premium of the two. According to AMD's official spec sheet, it is virtually identical to the Strix Point-based Ryzen Z2 Extreme, which powers handhelds like the MSI Claw A8, but with the addition of an NPU offering 50 TOPS of AI compute power.

Other specs include an 8-core, 16-thread CPU, comprising five Zen 5 cores and three Zen 5C cores. The chip also features 16 RDNA 3.5 graphics compute units, 24MB of cache, and support for LPDDR5X-8000 memory.

AMD has not published the clock speeds, but the existing Z2 Extreme features a 2GHz base clock for all cores, a boost clock up to 3.3GHz for the Zen 5C cores, and up to 5GHz boost clock for the Zen 5 cores. The new chip retains the same 15W to 35W TDP range as the non-AI Z2 Extreme.

Explaining the rationale behind adding an NPU to a processor designed for gaming handhelds, AMD told PC Gamer that it would bring "low-power, on-device AI capabilities" to handheld gaming for the first time – enabling upscaling, adaptive gameplay, and smarter NPCs.

Beyond enabling new features, the NPU is also expected to improve performance and battery life by offloading AI processing, allowing the CPU and GPU to focus on core game tasks. AMD added that the neural processor will support AI-enabled gaming with "real-time personalization and smarter, more interactive gameplay."

In addition to the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme, AMD also announced the Ryzen Z2 A, designed for entry-level gaming handhelds. It features a 4-core, 8-thread CPU based on the older Zen 2 architecture, eight RDNA 2 graphics cores, 6MB of cache, and support for LPDDR5-6400 memory. It has a configurable TDP ranging from 6W to 20W.

The new chips power the latest "Xbox" gaming handhelds announced this week by Microsoft and Asus. While the top-end ROG Xbox Ally X uses the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme, the more affordable ROG Xbox Ally is equipped with the Ryzen Z2 A. Both devices are expected to launch in time for the holiday shopping season.

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AMD unveils Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme and Z2 A chips powering Xbox gaming handhelds

 

[Kirby1]

Seems odd. So can it do FSR4? Kinda doubt it. Why include AI at this stage if it can't even do AI upscaling?

 

[Dreadcthulhu]

Seems odd. So can it do FSR4? Kinda doubt it. Why include AI at this stage if it can't even do AI upscaling?

Because Microsoft really wants it included for their Copilot stuff - see the "Xbox Ally X" where when you push the Xbox button it brings up a bar that includes among more useful settings a link to "Gaming Copilot". Yes, "Gaming Copilot", I wish I was making this stuff up.

 

[yRaz]

Seems odd. So can it do FSR4? Kinda doubt it. Why include AI at this stage if it can't even do AI upscaling?

It likely can, I believe RDNA 3.5 is just the APU version of RDNA3 with the RDNA4 instruction sets built in that allow for FSR4 to run. I know *SOME* FSR4 features run on RDNA3, but the more advanced features(and arguably more important) only ran on RDNA at first. Since these features are more a necessity than "nice to have" on low end graphics hardware like APUs, they made the 3.5 revision to run the full suite of FSR4 features, but the 7000 series dedicated GPUS will never be able to run FSR4 to the fullest.

 

[Kirby1]

It likely can, I believe RDNA 3.5 is just the APU version of RDNA3 with the RDNA4 instruction sets built in that allow for FSR4 to run. I know *SOME* FSR4 features run on RDNA3, but the more advanced features(and arguably more important) only ran on RDNA at first. Since these features are more a necessity than "nice to have" on low end graphics hardware like APUs, they made the 3.5 revision to run the full suite of FSR4 features, but the 7000 series dedicated GPUS will never be able to run FSR4 to the fullest.

That's incorrect. No FSR4 features currently run on RDNA3/3.5.

50 Tops of NPU performance is not enough to run FSR4.