ASUS ROG Ally console with AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme and non-Extreme APUs
The upcoming gaming console from ASUS is now confirmed to feature two different APUs.
The good news is that finally have confirmation that both Ryzen Z1 custom APUs for ROG Ally are based on AMD Phoenix with Zen4 and RDNA3 architectures. These APUs are also to feature similar configurations to the original Ryzen series. The Extreme variant is now confirmed to feature 8 cores and 16 threads, whereas the new leak points towards a cheaper option of AMD Ryzen Z1 chip with 6 cores and 12 threads.
According to the leak from Geekbench, there is also a small difference in terms of clock speeds, the non-Extreme variants appear to be 100-200 MHz slower with a base clock of 3.2 GHz and boost up to 4.939 GHz (Extreme is up to 5.1 GHz):
ASUS ROG ALLY SPECS, Source: Geekbench
One important aspect of this leak is the built-in RDNA3 GPU. The console’s primary goal will be gaming, so the more GPU cores the higher the performance. It appears that the Z1 non-Extreme chip could feature even fewer cores than expected.
The built-in graphics are listed with 2 Compute Units, not 6 like the Ryzen Z1 Extreme (please note that Geekbench shows CU count divided by 2). It was expected that a 6-core Ryzen 7040U series should feature at least 3 Compute Units (6 CU RDNA3) going up to 384 Stream Processors (786 FP32 cores) or 256 SP cores (512 FP32) like this leak suggests. The Ryzen Z1 Extreme is already confirmed to feature 6 Compute Units (12 RDNA3 CU) to give a total number of 768 Stream Processors or 1536 FP32 cores.
That said, the Ryzen Z1 would have 3 times fewer GPU cores, which should have a noticeable impact on performance. However, there is a chance that the listing shows incorrect information, although it may seem unlikely.
ASUS ROG Ally with Ryzen Z1 would almost certainly be the console that was rumored to cost $650, with the Extreme variant going for a higher price. Just bear in mind that pricing rumors are rarely fully correct.
| Handheld Gaming Consoles | ||
|---|---|---|
| VideoCardz | ASUS ROG Ally | Steam Deck |
| Picture |  |  |
| Architecture | AMD Zen4 & RDNA3 | AMD Zen2 & RDNA2 |
| APU | AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme 8C/16T up to 5.1 GHz AMD Ryzen Z1 6C/12T up to 5.0 GHz | AMD Van Gogh 4C/8T up to 3.5 GHz |
| SoC GPU | AMD RDNA3 12CU AMD RDNA3 4CU (?) | AMD RDNA2 8CU @ 1.6 GHz |
| External GPU | ROG XG Mobile (up to RTX 4090) | Not officially |
| Memory | 16GB LPDDR5 | 16GB LPDDR5-5500 |
| Storage | 512GB PCIe Gen4x4 | 64GB eMMC (PCIe Gen2x1) 256GB/512GB NVMe (PCIe Gen3x4) |
| Display | 7″ 1920×1080 120Hz | 7″ 1280×800 60Hz |
| Connectivity | TBC | Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5 |
| Battery | TBC | 40 Whr |
| Weight | 608 g | 669 g |
| Dimensions | 28.0 x 11.3 x 3.9 mm | 29.8 x 11.7 x 4.9 cm |
| OS | Windows 11 | Steam OS/Win 11 |
| Release Price | TBC | $399 (16G+64GB) $529 (16G+256GB) $649 (16G+512GB) |
| Release Date | Q2 2023 | February 2022 |
Source: Geekbench