The Extreme model is cheaper than I thought it would be. In fact, why would you even get the vanilla version when the price difference is only $100 between them?Reply
From a Marketing perspective, you sometimes position one product to make the other look like a better deal and push people towards that. I suspect that is happening here. Though given that their margins are likely pretty small, it may just be how things landed (at least to some extent).Reply
Yeah, I understand that concept of Good-Better-Best, or whatever it is called. Apple does it on all their products to try and get you to not buy their lowest end models.
What I don't understand is why the "premium" Z1 Extreme Ally is not priced to match. I would have figured at least $200 price difference between the two models.
Even the Steam deck goes from $399 for the base model, to $529 for the better model, and has a $649 option for the best model.
Arguably, the low end Ally is priced a bit high compared to the steam deck.Reply
The Z1 Extreme is the most extremely bandwidth/power/thermally limited device I have ever seen - so the value proposition of 3x (12 vs 4 CUs) isn't real in terms of performance ... I really wonder why Asus went with the 12CU version except for spec sheet bragging rights.
There's come comparisons out there now with Steam Deck and this thing is looking dissapointing imo (eg https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/the-asus-r... ) to be honest (except when RTX on when the newer hardware leaps ahead)
Clearly 15W/30W "performance"/"turbo" is not enough for the Z1 Extreme despite it being 4nm .. looks like it needs more like 45W+ to actually perform well.Reply
[more] in 15W performance mode it's getting outperformed by the Steam Deck (also 15W) in every game they tested (same ArsTechnica source) - that takes some doing considering they are on 4nm vs 7nm
I can only assume the 120Hz and bigger LCD screen is using a lot more power, but it looks bad, will wait for more reviews for now (maybe some launch issues ?)Reply
Kind reminder that RDNA3 drivers are still on a very early stage where sometimes you have better fps on the RDNA2 equivalent. AMD does have a bad rep (deserved) of launching with very non-optimized drivers, but fixing them later on, so... let's see what happens.Reply
If AMD was truly designing a chip for portable consoles, they would do something similar to the steam deck. 8 core CPU with lots of cache is a waste of die space and power for negligible gain in this scenario. And possibly that's why steam deck is so good at low TDP configs. But sadly AMD is doing what makes the most profit - rebranding/repackaging laptop chips.Reply
There are findings of a smaller "Phoenix2" SoC in Linux drivers. It reportedly has a 2x Zen4 + 4x Zen4c CPU, 4x RDNA3 WGPs (8CUs) and I read somewhere that is supports the faster LPDDR5X 8533MT/s.
The Phoenix on the Z1 / 7x40U was designed for laptops so it isn't all that interesting for handhelds, but this Phoenix2 should be the actual successor of Van Gogh.
It could also be that a bunch of laptop brands (Dell, MSI, Gigabyte, Lenovo) are waiting for Phoenix2 to release their handheld.Reply
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meacupla - Friday, May 12, 2023 - link
The Extreme model is cheaper than I thought it would be. In fact, why would you even get the vanilla version when the price difference is only $100 between them? Replyingwe - Friday, May 12, 2023 - link
From a Marketing perspective, you sometimes position one product to make the other look like a better deal and push people towards that. I suspect that is happening here. Though given that their margins are likely pretty small, it may just be how things landed (at least to some extent). Replymeacupla - Friday, May 12, 2023 - link
Yeah, I understand that concept of Good-Better-Best, or whatever it is called. Apple does it on all their products to try and get you to not buy their lowest end models.What I don't understand is why the "premium" Z1 Extreme Ally is not priced to match. I would have figured at least $200 price difference between the two models.
Even the Steam deck goes from $399 for the base model, to $529 for the better model, and has a $649 option for the best model.
Arguably, the low end Ally is priced a bit high compared to the steam deck. Reply
xol - Friday, May 12, 2023 - link
The Z1 Extreme is the most extremely bandwidth/power/thermally limited device I have ever seen - so the value proposition of 3x (12 vs 4 CUs) isn't real in terms of performance ... I really wonder why Asus went with the 12CU version except for spec sheet bragging rights.Source - AMD's own publicity material ie https://community.amd.com/t5/gaming/the-all-new-am... specifically 2nd image down : it never even gets 2x performance, barely manages +50% in most cases
There's come comparisons out there now with Steam Deck and this thing is looking dissapointing imo (eg https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/the-asus-r... ) to be honest (except when RTX on when the newer hardware leaps ahead)
Clearly 15W/30W "performance"/"turbo" is not enough for the Z1 Extreme despite it being 4nm .. looks like it needs more like 45W+ to actually perform well. Reply
xol - Friday, May 12, 2023 - link
[more] in 15W performance mode it's getting outperformed by the Steam Deck (also 15W) in every game they tested (same ArsTechnica source) - that takes some doing considering they are on 4nm vs 7nmI can only assume the 120Hz and bigger LCD screen is using a lot more power, but it looks bad, will wait for more reviews for now (maybe some launch issues ?) Reply
heffeque - Friday, May 12, 2023 - link
Kind reminder that RDNA3 drivers are still on a very early stage where sometimes you have better fps on the RDNA2 equivalent.AMD does have a bad rep (deserved) of launching with very non-optimized drivers, but fixing them later on, so... let's see what happens. Reply
erinadreno - Friday, May 12, 2023 - link
If AMD was truly designing a chip for portable consoles, they would do something similar to the steam deck. 8 core CPU with lots of cache is a waste of die space and power for negligible gain in this scenario. And possibly that's why steam deck is so good at low TDP configs. But sadly AMD is doing what makes the most profit - rebranding/repackaging laptop chips. ReplyNeuralNexus - Saturday, May 13, 2023 - link
Steam Deck is power efficient because it is running on Linux plain and simple. Replyerinadreno - Saturday, May 13, 2023 - link
Could you point out which kernel module/driver/syscall etc made Linux more efficient? Replyxol - Saturday, May 13, 2023 - link
If it's going to play Series S/X / PS5 targetted games at 720p then I would expect it would need the 8 cores...That's my assumption anyway Reply
ToTTenTranz - Saturday, May 13, 2023 - link
There are findings of a smaller "Phoenix2" SoC in Linux drivers. It reportedly has a 2x Zen4 + 4x Zen4c CPU, 4x RDNA3 WGPs (8CUs) and I read somewhere that is supports the faster LPDDR5X 8533MT/s.The Phoenix on the Z1 / 7x40U was designed for laptops so it isn't all that interesting for handhelds, but this Phoenix2 should be the actual successor of Van Gogh.
It could also be that a bunch of laptop brands (Dell, MSI, Gigabyte, Lenovo) are waiting for Phoenix2 to release their handheld. Reply