AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme 15W APU For Handhelds Outperforms An Intel Core i9-9900K At 95W
By: Muhammad Zuhair
Source: https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-z1-extreme-15w-apu-for-handhelds-outperforms-an-intel-core-i9-9900k-at-95w/
AMD Ryzen Z1 APUs have taken the industry by storm, especially when it comes to elevating the performance of handhelds in the market. New benchmarks show us the amazing CPU efficiency progress that has been achieved by the red team over the years.
AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU Benchmarks Show The Efficiency Progress That Zen 4 Has Achieved, Making 15W Chips As Powerful As Last-Gen 95 Watt Desktop Processors
For a quick recap, the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU features 8 Zen 4 cores with 16 threads, 16 MB L3 cache 8 MB L2 cache. It has a base clock of 3.30 GHz and a boost close to 5.1 GHz, with a TDP in the 15-28W range. The iGPU featured is the Radeon 780M which features 12 RDNA 3 compute units for a total of 768 cores running at 2.7 GHz.
We have seen the processor’s capabilities in the recently released ROG Ally handheld. However, Twitter user Mochamad Farido Fanani has benchmarked the processor at Cinebench R23, and the results will surely surprise you.
Cinebench R23 Benchmarks
Analyzing the results, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme surpasses the desktop i9-9900K and even sits ahead of the Core i5-11400 and Core i5-10400, both of which are 65W (PL1) CPUs. The astonishing fact is that the Z1 Extreme only utilizes 15W, while the i9-9900K is rated at up to 95W.
Considering the vast difference in power consumption, one could notice the advancements made in the processor architecture compared to those back in 2020. The AMD Ryzen Z1 APU is made so efficient thanks to its Zen 4 core architecture and handheld-specific power optimizations which the company talked about over here.
The AMD Ryzen Z1 APU is the industry’s pioneer in providing high performance at low power consumption for handheld consoles. However, a disappointing fact is that we haven’t seen the processor’s implementation in other handhelds outside of the ASUS ROG Ally which already is facing various overheating issues. The APU could potentially provide much more performance when featured on higher-end devices with proper cooling solutions.