Aya Neo now promises Ryzen 6000 APU later this year
The company announced a modification to the just-announced handheld console specs and promises an upgrade to Ryzen 6000 series later this year.
In a lengthy blog post on the official website, Aya Neo defends its choice of a Ryzen 7 5800U processor over the AMD Ryzen 6000 series, which was just announced by AMD at CES 2022. With Valve’s Steam Deck now arriving in February, Aya Neo’s newest handheld console was more than expected to feature RDNA2 based APU, just as Stem Deck. Sadly that was not the case, as the company explains it is too soon and too complicated to secure such CPUs this early for such a small company as Aya Neo.
Aya Neo announces Ryzen 7 5825U Barcelo, Source: AMD
Furthermore, there is a small modification to the specifications. This modification also explains why the company postponed its December launch till after AMD’s CES conference. This was the reason why everyone thought Aya Neo Next might actually get the Ryzen 6000 series, but the delay was due to a different SKU that also launched at CES: Ryzen 7 5825U codenamed “Barcelo-U”.
AMD Ryzen 5000U Barcelo APUs, Source: AMD
Alongside Ryzen 6000 series AMD introduced its long-rumored Barcelo APUs, based on refreshed Cezanne silicon with Zen3 and Vega graphics. Those were in fact the only Vega-based APUs introduced by AMD at CES. Those new APUs bring a frequency change over existing Cezanne-U chips. In the case of Ryzen 7 5825U which is being added to the Aya Neo Next Pro, it features a 100 MHz higher base and boosts clocks (2.0/4.5 GHz vs 1.9/4.4 GHz) and 200 MHz lower GPU clock (1.8 GHz vs 2.0 GHz).
Interestingly, only two versions of the new console will feature Barcelo APU, namely the vanilla and Pro version, while the mid-spec’ed Advanced model will still feature Ryzen 7 5800U. The company explains that there was no time to update the marketing materials for the launch, which suggests it was a last-minute change.
AMD Ryzen 6000 by end of this year
In the blog entry, the company confirms it will launch a Ryzen 6000 APU console, but not sooner than by the end of this year.
The AYA team also said that they will do their best to let fans experience the charm of the 6000 series as early as possible, but this is likely to happen at the end of this year. At this stage, as a small factory, I want to get the 6000 series The difficulty is too high.
— Aya Neo
It does not seem like gamers should expect an RDNA2-based competitor to Steam Deck any time soon. However, for Aya Neo with ‘Rembrandt’ to matter, it should either be a lot better console or simply cheaper, because current pricing is just absurd compared to Steam Deck.
| Handheld Gaming Consoles | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VideoCardz | Aya Neo NEXT (PRO) | Aya Neo NEXT Advanced | Aya Neo 2021 Pro | Steam Deck | One XPlayer | Nintendo Switch OLED |
| Picture |  | |  |  |  |  |
| Architecture | AMD Zen3 | AMD Zen3 | AMD Zen2 (Renoir) | AMD Zen2 & RDNA2 | Intel Tiger Lake | ARM Cortex |
| SoC | Ryzen 7 5825U | Ryzen 7 5800U | Ryzen 7 4800U | AMD Van Gogh | Core i7-1185G7*** Core i7-1165G7** Core i7-1135G7* | NVIDIA Tegra X1 |
| SoC CPU | 8C/16T @ 4.4 GHz | 8C/16T @ 4.4 GHz | 8C/16T @ 4.2 GHz | 4C/8T @ 3.5 GHz | 4C/8T * 4.2*, 4.7**, 4.8*** GHz | 4x A57 + 4x A53 |
| SoC GPU | AMD Radeon Vega 8 @ 2.0 GHz | AMD Radeon Vega 8 @ 2.0 GHz | AMD Radeon Vega 8 @ 1.75 GHz | AMD RDNA2 8 CUs @ 1.6 GHz | Xe-LP (Iris) 96 EUs @ 1.35 GHz | NVIDIA Maxwell 256 CUDA |
| Memory | 16*-32GB LPDDR4X-4266 | 16GB LPDDR4X-4266 | 16GB LPDDR4X-4266 | 16GB LPDDR5-5500 | 16GB LPDDR4X-4266 | 4GB LPDDR4-3200 |
| Storage | 1TB*-2TB NVMe | 2TB NVMe | 0.5TB – 1TB NVMe | 64GB eMMC (PCIe Gen2x1) 256GB/512GB NVMe (PCIe Gen3x4) | 512GB*, 1TB **, 2TB *** NVMe | 64GB |
| Display | 7″ 1280×800 IPS | 7″ 1280×800 IPS | 7″ 1280×800 IPS | 7″ 1280×800 IPS | 8.4″ 2560×1600 IPS | 7″ 1280×720 OLED |
| Connectivity | WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 | WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 | WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.0 | Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5 | Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, USB 4.0 x2 | WiFi 5, |
| Battery | 47 Whr | 47 Whr | 12,300 mAh | 40 Whr | 15,300 mAh | |
| Weight | TBC | TBC | 650 g | 669 g | 820 g | 420g |
| Dimensions | TBC | TBC | 25.5 x 10.6 x 2.0 cm | 29.8 x 11.7 x 4.9 cm | 28.8 x 13.0 x 2.1 mm | 24.2 x 10.2 x 1.39 cm |
| OS | Windows 11 | Windows 11 | Windows 10 | Steam OS 3.0 (Arch) | Windows 10 | Custom |
| Release Price | $1,315* $1,565 | $1,465 | $1,215 | $399 (64GB) $529 (256GB) $649 (512GB) | $1,059 * $1,158 ** $1,599 *** | $349 |
| Release Date | February 2022 | February 2022 | September 2021 | February 2022 | December 2021 | October 2021 |
| * vanilla edition | * Standard Edition ** Pro Edition *** Ultimate Edition | |||||
Source: AyaNeo
