ASUS ROG Ally Handheld Official: Steam Deck Rival Powered By AMD Ryzen Z1, Starting At $699 On 16th June

wccftech.com:

ASUS has officially announced its ROG Ally handheld gaming console featuring the AMD Ryzen Z1 series and starting at just $699 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.

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.

The overall design choices of the ASUS ROG Ally handheld gaming console mirror similar designs we currently see in the handheld industry, from chunky handles to ergonomic grips, & looks very similar to Valve's Steam Deck, One-Netbook's OneXPlayer, and others. It also appears that the company researched detachable gamepads, which only a few have dabbled into using for their designs.