Asus ROG Ally will be first
It turns out that neither the Asus ROG Ally nor the Ryzen Z1 is an April Fool’s joke, they are both real products coming soon. ROG Ally is the first device to use the new Zen 4 and RDNA 3 based chips, and we have devices coming soon to challenge the Steam Deck. If AMD’s PR is correct and he runs 55% faster than the current generation, AMD will certainly sell well. The hardware suggests it’s possible, with the Ryzen Z1 having 6 CPU cores and 4 RDNA 3 while the Z1 Extreme has 8 Zen 4 based CPU cores and 12 RDNA 3 based CPU cores. It has GPU cores.
The pool of DDR5 used for VRAM puts a cap on devices with Z1 Extreme, so the difference in performance between Z1 and Z1 Extreme isn’t as big as the specs suggest. Hardware isn’t everything, so if Steam Deck’s competitors want to usurp the current mobile gaming throne, they’ll have to do some serious work with their OS and drivers.
