The upcoming Phoenix APUs from AMD are a game-changer for portable and handheld devices. Between 15 and 45W TDP, Zen4/RDNA3... They're slowly trickling out to thin and light laptops, but I can't wait to get them in the next Steam Deck killer.
Not as nice as my old Atom router because of the active cooling on the CPU and the ATX power connector. The latter I can fix with a PicoPSU but the former...
I'd rather have a passive radiator on the CPU and add some airflow via a huge case fan - which is what i'm doing now for my router box. That way it's a lot more silent.
I totally could believe that in another year or 2 there will be sufficient performance uplift. steam Deck with 50% more performance at the same battery life would be great.
I hope a dynamic 120Hz screen (like in the iPhone but obviously not as screamingly expensive) is also in the pipeline.
With a 120Hz screen, you can run the UI and overlays at 120FPS, run cinematics at 24FPS or 30FPS and the game at 40FPS or 60FPS. All fits neatly into 120Hz.
They are going to need more performance by then too though. They are tied to the PC gaming universe and the games people want to play will keep getting more demanding.
They have it a lot harder than something like Switch.
The basic system requirements for most PC games has barely budged in years mostly due to high GPU costs and lack of killer features that would require higher requirements. Neither factor seems to be immediately changing.
We already had a game changer, Apple Silicon. AMD chips are a bit better than Intel's on mobile but not by much. Mobile Zen4 and RDNA3 SoC would not be a game changer. We already know how they perform on desktop and how much power they use per performance.
Let me know when Apple decides to sell their chips to 3rd party manufacturers, when they end up in a handheld gaming device, and when most games run natively on ARM with competitive performance.
Apple silicon was only a game changer for productivity tasks, and only for people willing to jump into the Apple ecosystem. In all other cases, especially for gaming, an APU with the performance of Zen4/RDNA3 at the announced TDP doesn't exist yet. So, yes, it's a game changer.
> when most games run natively on ARM with competitive performance.
They just need to run natively on ARM to get performance that's more than competitive on the CPU side. The GPU is no slouch but is not top of the line (yet). Seems trivial to pair the ARM CPU with an external GPU.
So why would your phrase your argument as "it's not a game changer because it boosts if there's available power/cooling", rather than "it's not a game changer because Apple's CPUs are better"?
