ASUS ROG Ally now available with AMD Ryzen Z1 APU for US$599

Until now, ASUS has only offered the ROG Ally with the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme, an APU that matches the performance of the Ryzen 7 7840U in most areas. However, the company is finally ready to sell the device with the Ryzen Z1, a lesser APU that reduces the cost of ASUS' first gaming handheld.

As far as we can tell, ASUS has only changed the APU, which has six out of a possible eight CPU cores. Thus, the Ryzen Z1 should match the CPU performance of the Ryzen 5 7540U and Ryzen 5 7640U. The Ryzen Z1 also features an iGPU with 4 Compute Units (CUs), narrowing comparisons further to just the Ryzen 5 7540U.

According to AMD, both Ryzen Z1 APUs feature optimisations for gaming handhelds, such as tweaked voltage curves designed to improve runtimes. Based on early data from the likes of ETA Prime and Retro Game Corps, the Ryzen Z1 gives up plenty of performance compared to the Ryzen Z1 Extreme. ASUS has only shaved US$100 off the Ryzen Z1 version of the ROG Ally though, reducing its starting price to US$599 in the process. Please see our ROG Ally review for full thoughts about ASUS' first gaming handheld beyond its Zen 4 and RDNA 3-based APUs.

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