AMD's fastest handheld SoC, the Ryzen Z2 Extreme, has been benchmarked on and showcases strong CPU & GPU performance.

Last month, AMD introduces its Ryzen Z2 handheld SoC lineup which featured a range of APUs made exclusively for the handheld gaming segment. On the top of the list was the Ryzen Z2 Extreme, which shares a lot in common with the Strix Point APUs that we have already seen on the market.

In terms of specifications, the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme will feature 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 5 core architecture. The chip has been tuned around a 15-35W power envelope, and to achieve its efficiency goals, it uses a combination of high-performance Zen 5 cores (3 in total) with high-efficiency Zen 5C cores (5 in total). The Zen 5 cores clock up to 5 GHz while the Zen 5C cores clock at up to 3.30 GHz. Both cores have a set base clock of 2 GHz. There's also 8 MB of L2 cache and 16 MB of L3 cache on the SoC.

While the 8 core and 16 thread chip, may feel familiar to the Ryzen AI 7 350, AMD has given the Ryzen Z2 Extreme a huge edge in the graphics department by dropping in the full Radeon 890M "RDNA 3.5" config which packs 16 compute units clocking in at 2.9 GHz. This is the flagship iGPU for the Strix Point / Krackan series, offering great gaming performance, and featuring support for all the new stuff that AMD has out there such as FSR, Frame-Gen, Fluid Motion Frames, and more. Other than that, the chip features support for LPDDR5X-8000 memory, and will also come in an AI flavor which packs the 50 TOPS NPU.

AMD Ryzen "Z" Series Gaming Handheld APUs:

One of the leading devices to make use of the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU will be the MSI Claw A8 . The Claw A8 gaming handheld features 24 GB of LPDDR5X memory, and looks spectacular. The same console has now been tested in Geekbench which gives us a first taste of the Ryzen Z2 Extreme SoC.

Starting with the CPU performance, the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme SoC managed to outperform all other Strix Point APUs in the single-thread performance test while the multi-threading performance was on par with the 10-core Ryzen AI 9 365. This is a very strong score for a handheld SoC, and goes to show that even power/thermal constrained devices such as handhelds are now on par with laptops which have more cooling space and less restrictive power targets.

Against its predecessor, the Z1 Extreme, the Z2 Extreme offers a 26.5% uplift in single-core, and 27% uplift in Multi-Threaded performance.

with the Radeon 890M iGPU matching the same performance of the laptop-class Radeon 890M configurations.

Now, since the Ryzen Z2 Extreme can be set between 15-35W, we can't say for sure which TDP mode this was tested at but even at 35W, these are respectable figures for the flagship Z2 Extreme. With Microsoft also powering its ASUS ROG Xbox Ally with the Z2 SoCs, we should be seeing these devices on the market really soon.

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