We’ve already talked about the new Ryzen Z2 Extreme SoC, which has just been unveiled and is the talk of the town, as it will be powering the Rog Xbox Ally X at the end of the year. However, it’s on a new version of the MSI Claw A8 console that it’s taking its first steps, giving us an idea of its potential.A brief summary to start with. The Ryzen Z2 Extreme is etched by TSMC in 4nm and is based on the Zen 5 architecture, with 3 high-performance Zen 5 cores and 5 high-efficiency Zen 5C cores, making a total of 8 cores and 16 threads. It features a maximum clock frequency of 5.0 GHz, 8 MB L2 cache and 16 MB L3 cache. Its graphics are based on a Radeon 890M (RDNA 3.5). Finally, this APU has an adjustable TDP ranging from 15 W to 35 W.
Ryzen Z2 Extreme: a big leap forward.
The graphics section is set to bring several notable improvements. And this first test leak from Geekbench confirms these expectations. The Z2 Extreme’s graphics performance is virtually identical to that of the 890M used in the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. Above all, the scores easily surpass those obtained by the Radeon 780M in the previous-generation Z1 Extreme. Elsewhere, the results speak for themselves, with single-core performance up 26%, while multi-core performance leaps 27%.
These initial results seem to reinforce AMD’s supremacy in mobile gaming solutions. The Ryzen Z2 Extreme boosts mobile performance even further, with power consumption seemingly under control. Its impressive specifications seem to indicate that the Reds will be taking the lion’s share of this market in the coming months. Intel’s promising Lunar Lake SoC is therefore relegated to its efficiency qualities, while a possible new solution could arrive, but not before the end of 2026, with Nova Lake-AX.
