AMD Shows Off Next Generation of Handheld Gaming PCs at CES 2025
IN CES 2025, AMD has finally unveiled the next generation chipset portable gaming pcs, AMD Zen 2 Extreme.
The AMD Zen 2 Extreme, as well as its cheaper Z2 and Z2 Go counterparts, feature Zen 5 processor cores. While the Zen 2 Extreme uses an RDNA 3.5-based GPU, the Z2 and Z2 Go still use RDNA 3 and RDNA 2, respectively. This creates an entire family of APUs (Advanced Processing Units) for portable gaming PCs, which should hopefully lead to some reduction in laptop prices.
With the Z2 Extreme, AMD hopes to significantly improve battery life while also delivering console-like gaming performance for devices such as Lenovo Legion Go. By and large, the biggest limiting factor of these portable devices, especially high-end ones, is how quickly their batteries drain when playing demanding games away from a wall outlet.
Graphics cores
16 RDNA 3.5
Mobile gaming is more than just portable gaming PCs, and AMD has also launched a new line of Zen 5-based processors for gaming laptopswhat he calls HX3D’s “Fire Range”. These processors, like chips just announced by Intelwill nourish best gaming laptops next year or so. However, unlike Intel, AMD is bringing the successful 3D V-cache design at the heart of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D to gaming laptops.
This technology allows AMD to place much more cache memory on its processor by printing it on top of the actual CPU cores. This simultaneously improves gaming performance and lowers temperatures, further enhancing gaming performance. I’ll have to wait to get it into the lab to see exactly how these new processors perform, but if they’re anything like their desktop counterparts, it’ll be an exciting time for gaming laptops.
All of these mobile chipsets, from the “Fire Range” HX3D to the AMD Z2 Extreme, will appear in gaming laptops and PDAs in the next few months.
Jackie Thomas is the editor of IGN’s hardware and buying guides and the queen of PC components. You can follow her @Jackicobra
2025-01-06 19:45:00