AMD’s Ryzen Z1 series isn’t far from being one of the best CPUs out there. However, Zen 4-powered chips work wonders for handheld gaming devices such as Steam Deck’s main competitor, the ROG Ally. Despite being a processor with less than 30W power consumption, the Ryzen Z1 series could rival some desktop processors as long as they’re a few generations old.
For those not into the gaming handheld scene, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme is AMD’s highest performing processor for handheld devices. Equipped with the latest Zen 4 cores, his Ryzen Z1 Extreme features 8 cores, 16 threads and decent clock speeds to brag about. The octa-core chip features a base clock of 3.3 GHz and a boost clock that reaches 5.1 GHz. Nevertheless, Ryzen Z1 Extreme’s RDNA 3 based integrated graphics are largely responsible for the chip’s graphics power. It has 12 RDNA 3 compute units at 2.7 GHz.
While other ROG Ally owners are busy with their games, Twitter users Mochamad Farid Fanani used Cinebench R23 to run the Ryzen Z1 Extreme benchmark and provide some reference to compare how much processing power is inside the tiny Zen 4 chip. The Ryzen Z1 Extreme inside ROG ally can access 16 GB (2x8GB) of LPDDR5-6400 memory.
| processor | multicore | single core |
|---|---|---|
| Core i5-13600K | 23,050 | 2,007 |
| M2 Max (MacBook Pro) | 14,797 | 1,620 |
| Ryzen Z1 Extreme | 10,818 | 1,676 |
| Apple M1 (Mac Mini) | 7,833 | 1,522 |
| Core i5-10600K | 9,221 | 1,268 |
The Ryzen Z1 Extreme delivered 32% higher single-core and multi-core performance than the Core i5-10600K. This is an impressive feat on the one hand as the Ryzen Z1 Extreme is 30W and reportedly runs at 15W whereas the Core i5-10600K is a 125W processor. This is a big difference in TDP. On the other hand, the Core i5-10600K is his three-year-old chip, so it takes away some of the benefits from the Ryzen Z1 Extreme.
It stands to reason that the Ryzen Z1 Extreme cannot compete with more recent models such as the Core i5-13600K. Margins were the worst. The Core i5-13600K is 20% faster in single-core performance and 113% faster in multi-core performance.
Ryzen Z1 Extreme was better than Apple M1 (from Anandtech’s review) mac mini). The Zen 4 chip outperformed the Apple M1 by 10% in single-core performance and 38% in multi-core performance. The Ryzen Z1 Extreme was 3% faster than the M2 Max (MacBook Pro 2023) even in single-core performance. However, the M2 Max showed its strength in the multi-core benchmarks, outperforming the Ryzen Z1 Extreme by 37%.
ASUS has a provisional monopoly on AMD’s Ryzen Z1 series of high-performance processors for handheld gaming. The maximum potential of this processor still remains a mystery. It will be interesting to see if other manufacturers can get more out of the Ryzen Z1 series.
