ASUS ROG Ally Handheld Official: Steam Deck Rival Powered By AMD Ryzen Z1, Starting At $599 On 16th June
ASUS has officially announced its ROG Ally handheld gaming console featuring the AMD Ryzen Z1 series and starting at just $599 US.
The ASUS ROG Ally is definitely the closest contender to Valve's Steam Deck. The latter starts at $399 US and goes up to $649 US for the 512 GB variant. The ASUS ROG Ally starts at $599 US for the 256 GB Ryzen Z1 and $699 US for the Ryzen Z1 Extreme variant while the performance is on a whole different level.
The First AMD Ryzen Z1 Powered Handheld
ASUS has officially worked with AMD on the Ryzen Z1 series processors. These chips are designed first and foremost for handheld gaming consoles and come in two flavors, the standard Z1, and the higher-end Z1 extreme. Both chips feature the Zen 4 CPU and RDNA 3 GPU. Specifications include 8 cores, 16 threads, 12 RDNA 3 cores, 24 MB cache for the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, & 6 cores, 12 threads, 4 RDNA 3 cores, and 22 MB cache for the Ryzen Z1.
While the specs might look a bit similar to the AMD Ryzen 7040U "Phoenix" APUs, the Ryzen Z1 chips get better power management and have a TDP rating between 9W and up to 30W. These new APUs are said to deliver 50% higher performance than the Steam Deck at 15W and 2x the uplift when running at its peak 35W performance mode. There's also the added advantage of FSR & RSR support which can drive performance even further. You can see some raytracing and FSR benches of the RDNA 3 iGPU here.
One big advantage of having a low TDP range like the one offered by the ASUS ROG Ally is that you can switch to silent mode for light-weight activity such as watching YouTube or streaming Netflix & get far better battery times than what the standard 15W mode offers.
Handheld Design In A Lightweight Body
The overall design choices of the ASUS
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