The AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme is here, with AMD taking the wraps off its latest mobile gaming handheld CPU to reveal a more powerful and power efficient chip than its hugely successful predecessor, the AMD Z1 Extreme. With the latter powering a large number of the most successful gaming handhelds of last year, expectations are high for its latest chip.
The list of new best handheld gaming PC contenders powered by the new chip already includes the Lenovo Legion Go 2 and the Zotac Zone 2/2025. With AMD‘s latest mobile chip sporting a more powerful GPU, some speedier CPU cores, and better power efficiency, this should mean being able to run games at higher frame rates or higher resolutions while getting longer battery life too.
AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme release date
The AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme release date is Q1 2025, with devices including the new chip expected to start arriving at some point in this time frame. AMD confirmed this time frame at the Z2 Extreme announcement.
AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme price
The AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme price is not one buyers will pay directly as the cost of the chips is wrapped up in price of the gaming handhelds built using the chip. However, handhelds based on the previous Z1 Extreme tended to fall within the range of $499-$799.
AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme specs
The AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme specs include an upgraded GPU compared to the Z1 Extreme, with it sporting 16 compute units, up from 12 compute units before. The GPU also uses a newer RDNA 3.5 architecture. The new chip also includes clever low-power Zen 5c CPU cores.
| Ryzen Z2 Extreme | Ryzen Z2 | Ryzen Z2 Go | |
| Total CPU cores | 8 | 8 | 4 |
| Zen 5 cores | 3* | 3* | 3* |
| Zen 5c cores | 5* | 5* | 5* |
| L3 cache | 16MB* | 16MB* | 16MB* |
| GPU architecture | AMD RDNA 3.5 | AMD RDNA 3.5 | AMD RDNA 3.5 |
| GPU stream processors | 1,024* | 1,024* | 1,024* |
| GPU compute units | 16 | 12 | 12 |
- * These figures are still speculation for now
The most crucial upgrade of the Z2 Extreme chip for many buyers will be its faster GPU. As well as getting a 33% increase in compute units, the architecture of the GPU has switched from the RDNA 3 of Z1 to RDNA 3.5. The changes in architecture aren’t night and day in terms of performance but it brings a small improvement while being more power efficient too.
Also here to improve efficiency is the addition of Zen 5c CPU cores. These are 25% smaller than usual Zen 5 cores with slightly smaller cache amounts and a design that’s overall optimized to be as power-efficient as possible without losing any actual key features. That’s as opposed to the approach Intel took with some of its recent CPUs that had efficiency cores (E-Cores) that were dramatically less capable than the power cores (P-Cores) of its CPU architecture.
Along with these 5c cores, AMD has also included three ‘full-fat’ Zen 5 cores that are optimized more for peak performance than power saving. This 3:5 ratio is interesting as you might expect the company to just do four of each. However, with most games still predominantly using just one or two cores, it makes sense to keep the number of these more power-hungry cores as low as possible.
Along with the range-topping Z2 Extreme, the Z2 range includes the Ryzen Z2, which has a slightly reduced GPU of only 12 compute units. There’s also then the Ryzen Z2 Go, which has the same 12 CU GPU but with just 4 CPU cores. This is the chip being used to power the defacto Steam Deck 2 in the shape of the Steam OS-running Legion Go S.
For more on AMD’s latest tech, check out the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT desktop GPU and the FSR 4 frame generation feature that it will support. Our first FSR 4 hands on impressions were that it’s a big step up in quality on previous versions of the company’s frame generation.