MSI Claw A8 handheld gaming PC has a Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip with 16-core graphics

MSI's first handheld gaming PC arrived in 2024, but it landed with a bit of a thud thanks to the lackluster performance of its Intel Meteor Lake processor. Since then the company has launched several new models powered by Intel Lunar Lake chips that deliver significantly better performance.

Now MSI is expanding its handheld lineup with its first AMD-powered model. The upcoming MSI Claw A8 (BZ2EM) uses AMD's Ryzen Z2 Extreme processor.

AMD first introduced the Z2 Extreme processor earlier this year as part of an updated line of chips designed specifically for handheld gaming PCs. It's the most powerful Z-series chip to date, featuring the same integrated graphics as a Ryzen AI HX 370 Strix Point processor, with 16 RDNA 3.5 GPU compute cores.

But since these chips are designed primarily for gaming, they lack the dedicated Ryzen AI NPU found in the company's laptop processors. And while the Ryzen AI HX 370 chip has a 12-core, 24-thread CPU, the Ryzen Z2 Extreme has an 8-core, 16-thread CPU instead (with 3 Zen 5 CPU cores and 5 Zen 5c cores).

The MSI Claw A8 has an 8 inch, 1920 x 1200 pixel, 120 Hz IPS LCD touchscreen display with up to 500 nits brightness, up to 24GB of LPDDR5-8000 memory, and an M.2 2280 slot for a user-replaceable PCIe Gen 4 x4 SSD.

Other features include two full-function USB4 Type-C ports with support for 40 Gbps data transfer speeds, charging, and video output, a microSD card reader, 3.5mm audio jack, and stereo speakers.

The handheld has an 80 Wh battery, support for WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, and a fingerprint sensor for biometric security.

via Tom's Hardware

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