AMD unveils new budget, high-end SoCs: enter the Ryzen AI Z2 A and Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chips

AMD has officially expanded its family of Ryzen Z2 SoCs with the introduction of the new Ryzen Z2 A and higher-end Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme handheld chips.

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A few months ago, AMD unveiled its new custom Ryzen Z2 chips for gaming handhelds with the Ryzen Z2 Extreme, Ryzen Z2, and Ryzen Z2 Go. The first two -- the Ryzen Z2 Extreme and Ryzen Z2 -- are based on the Zen 5 and Zen 4 architectures, while the Ryzen Z2 Go is a Lenovo gaming handheld exclusive, and based on the Zen 3+ architecture.

But now, AMD has expanded the family of gaming handheld SoCs with the new Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme virtually identical to the Ryzen Z2 Extreme, but the new Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme has a dedicated NPU for AI workloads on a gaming handheld (because we all want and need that).

Inside, the new Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme SOC has 8 cores and 16 threads based on the new Zen 5 architecture, with an RDNA 3.5-based GPU with 16 cores at the ready. We should see performance that is close to the Radeon 890M integrated GPU, which also has 16 cores based on the RDNA 3.5 GPU architecture. We have a 15-25W configurable TDP and Copilot+ PC ready on the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chip.

The lower-end Ryzen Z2 A drops the integrated NPU, and lowers the CPU core and thread count down to 4 CPU cores and 8 threads based on the Zen 2 architecture. It also has a far less powerful integrated GPU which is based on the older-gen RDNA 2 architecture, with just 8 GPU cores in total and a 6-20W TDP.

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AMD notes that it has its Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme SoC inside of the just-announced ASUS ROG Ally X gaming handheld, the Ryzen Z2 Extreme inside of the MSI Claw 8, and the Ryzen Z2 inside of the ASUS ROG Ally (non-X) and the Lenovo Legion Go S gaming handhelds.