GPD Win Max Pictures Confirm Switch From Intel to AMD Ryzen APU: Report
The last time we caught up with GPD, the company had tweeted out a few vague schematics of its forthcoming Win 2 Max handheld gaming PC, fueling reports that the company was switching from Intel chips to AMD's Ryzen.
GPD has had a strong history of using Intel's Atom processors, such as Cherry Trail, for its thin and small PCs. Now, according to images found by the sharp-eyed folks at lilputing, those rumors appear to be confirmed.
GPD has a unique position in the market with its Win and Pocket series of products, which have used Intel's power efficiency-focused Atom processors. However, gaming has never been very powerful on the Atom architecture, even at a low 720p resolution. The newly leaked images of the upcoming Win Max show the board using what looks like a Ryzen Embedded V1000-series APU, which is found in the upcoming Smach Z, a much smaller, yet similar handheld gaming device.
The purported internals of the Win Max show some pretty decent IO: an HDMI port, 2 USB Type-A ports (version unknown), a USB Type-C port (likely for charging), a micro SD slot, and what appears to be a headphone jack. Internally, the Win Max also has an M.2 slot with possible NVME support, along with a WiFi and Bluetooth card.
The RAM isn't visible, though that might be because it is on the other side of the board (not shown). RAM will be important for the Win Max as single channel memory, while normally bad for CPU performance due to lowered memory bandwidth, is even worse for AMD's integrated Vega graphics, since graphics profit heavily from dual-channel memory or high-speed memory like GDDR6 and HBM2.
Judging by the size of the device (which seems like a larger 3DS) and its battery, it's likely this processor won't be running at a very high TDP, meaning performance will be significantly lower than on typical laptops, but it will almost certainly be faster than an Atom-based processor. And possibly more power efficient as well.
Image Credits: Liliputing via gpd_devices discord channel
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Matthew Connatser is a freelancing writer for Tom's Hardware US. He writes articles about CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and computers in general.