AMD announces more powerful Ryzen Z2 Series processors for future PC handhelds, but Valve says 'there is and will be no Z2 Steam Deck'
Update: In a press briefing before CES, AMD claimed that its new Ryzen Z2 series chips would feature in future PC handhelds, including using a new version of Valve's Steam Deck as an example. Valve has since disputed this, stating «There is and will be no Z2 Steam Deck.» This story has been updated to reflect that detail.
AMD has confirmed that Valve will be using one of its new handheld gaming PC processors, the Ryzen Z2 Series, inside a future model of Steam Deck.
During a CES 2025 call, an AMD spokesperson said: «You'll see this [Z2 Series] coming to market from a number of partners, the Legion Go, the ROG Ally, the Valve Steam Deck.»
«This really allows us to tap into what we see as an exciting and fast growing portion of the market where many of our OEM partners are bringing some really cool and high powered handheld solutions to market and delivering great battery life and performance. And an overall fantastic handheld gaming experience on the AMD Z2 series processors.»
However, Valve has flatly denied that there is a Z2 Steam Deck in development. In a post on Bluesky, Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais wrote «There is and will be no Z2 Steam Deck. Guessing the slide was meant to say the series is meant for products like that, not announcing anything specific.»
The Z2 Series is a new lineup of APUs—processors with both CPU and GPU components included. It includes three chips:
The Extreme version will be using RDNA 3 graphics, likely RDNA 3.5, and none will use the latest RDNA 4 architecture also announced at CES. The Extreme chip will also likely use the modern Zen 5 architecture, while at least the lowest tier chip is likely based on older architectures (boo), but neither of these was confirmed at the show.
This isn't a dissimilar approach to one taken by AMD with the Z1 series, which offered up both the Z1 Extreme and the Z1. The Z1 ultimately proved to be the much more popular chip in handhelds such as the ROG Ally, at least by our reckoning, as the Z1
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