Portable gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck and the Ayaneo 2 have taken off in the last year, and they've been powered by AMD APUs. They offer the ability to play full-fledged PC games on the go, thanks to the powerful hardware inside. AMD has now announced its Ryzen Z1 series of chips based on Zen 4 architecture and aimed at PC gaming handhelds while also announcing that the Z1 series will power the upcoming Asus ROG Ally handheld.

The AMD Ryzen Z1 series consists of the regular Z1 and the Z1 Extreme, with up to 8 cores and 16 threads. It features RDNA 3 graphics and supports AMD's Super Resolution, Radeon Chill, Radeon Image Sharpening, AMD Link, and more. Both chips support USB4 and up to LPDDR5X RAM and are compatible with Windows 11.

These chips will first come to the Asus ROG Ally, a handheld Windows-based PC gaming console that is expected to be poised as a major Steam Deck competitor. The Steam Deck uses an "AMD APU" that doesn't have any specific marketing name, while the Ayaneo 2 uses an off-the-shelf AMD Ryzen 7 6800U. While the ROG Ally has specifically been named as packing a Z1 series processor, other handhelds are expected to release in the coming months powered by it, too.

Given the proliferation of PC gaming handhelds, it's particularly interesting to think about whether this (or a succeeding chip) could come to a potential Steam Deck 2 in the future. Even just by looking at the specification sheet, it has more cores and threads, and the Extreme edition has more RDNA 3 compute units. Furthermore, Zen 4 also utilizes TSMC's N5 4nm process node, which is expected to have an improved power efficiency compared to the Zen 2-based Steam Deck. It's an all-around better chip and would make for an upgrade over the original Steam Deck, no matter what device it goes into.

The Asus ROG Ally's launch event will take place on May 11, exclusively sold through Currys in the UK and Ireland both online and in person. There is no word on further international availability yet.