I know we are a greedy lot, expecting cool new products and double digits improvements YoY, but AMD's announcements feels a bit nothing burger:
9850X3D: the world's greatest gaming CPU, now with 2-3% extra greatness.... and presumably a more than 2-3% price tag jump
the Ryzen AI 400 lineup; potential for good products in the prebuilt, and Mini-PC space, but the fact you have to get the top dawg 12 core chip to get the full 16CUs... and RAM right meow, eeeek! And the answer is in the name, right? Very spendy AI workstations...
Weirdly, the most exciting for me is the AI Max+ 388, since this feels like it has the potential to be a better product for low power handheld/laptop gaming than the current Strix Halo halo products. Even that is still tempered by the fact we are getting another year of RDNA3.5+++++++ while they apparently sit on RDNA4... never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, AMD!
Maybe I'm missing an angle here, but the lack of a built in battery feels like a weird design choice. I want to like it (MOAR POWA = good!), but it just feels unbalanced as a handheld. And at that price!
And also maybe I'm just biased because I already have a high-end desktop for hi-fi gaming, and so for me, my Ally X is more of a simple pick-up-and-play device of convenience to play older/less demanding games in my backlog... as themightyant noted, this feels like it would be better implemented like a Switch; emphasizing low watt efficiency mode with a built-in 60-80wh battery in handheld mode, but can be let wild with a full power budget when docked.
I feel like this is where Strix Halo makes sense as a handheld chip vs. the Z lineup, which is a nice balance of power efficiency. I would happily buy this if it came with a Nintendo like dock solution for big screen play. Hopefully we will see some new handhelds with the new 388 chip at least!
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Re: AMD Unveils Ryzen 7 9850X3D: Fast, Incremental
I know we are a greedy lot, expecting cool new products and double digits improvements YoY, but AMD's announcements feels a bit nothing burger:
9850X3D: the world's greatest gaming CPU, now with 2-3% extra greatness.... and presumably a more than 2-3% price tag jump
the Ryzen AI 400 lineup; potential for good products in the prebuilt, and Mini-PC space, but the fact you have to get the top dawg 12 core chip to get the full 16CUs... and RAM right meow, eeeek! And the answer is in the name, right? Very spendy AI workstations...
Weirdly, the most exciting for me is the AI Max+ 388, since this feels like it has the potential to be a better product for low power handheld/laptop gaming than the current Strix Halo halo products. Even that is still tempered by the fact we are getting another year of RDNA3.5+++++++ while they apparently sit on RDNA4... never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, AMD!
Re: GPD Win 5 Brings PS5-Class Perf To PC Handhelds
Maybe I'm missing an angle here, but the lack of a built in battery feels like a weird design choice. I want to like it (MOAR POWA = good!), but it just feels unbalanced as a handheld. And at that price!
And also maybe I'm just biased because I already have a high-end desktop for hi-fi gaming, and so for me, my Ally X is more of a simple pick-up-and-play device of convenience to play older/less demanding games in my backlog... as themightyant noted, this feels like it would be better implemented like a Switch; emphasizing low watt efficiency mode with a built-in 60-80wh battery in handheld mode, but can be let wild with a full power budget when docked.
I feel like this is where Strix Halo makes sense as a handheld chip vs. the Z lineup, which is a nice balance of power efficiency. I would happily buy this if it came with a Nintendo like dock solution for big screen play. Hopefully we will see some new handhelds with the new 388 chip at least!