One-Netbook Is Testing Its Own AMD-Powered Handheld to Challenge Steam Deck

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Will it use a Zen 3 APU or Van Gogh SOC?

Onexplayer
(Image credit: Amazon)

Indiegogo startup One-Netbook is giving gamers a chance to test its new AMD-powered handheld gaming console called the "OneXplayer AMD Edition." According to a Tweet by @OnenetbookO (via Liliputing) gamers can sign up for a chance to get this new handheld device from One-Netbook for the sole purpose of putting it through its paces. 

Unfortunately, details of the device's system specs remain a mystery, so it appears that aside from letting us know it will be powered by an AMD chip, One-Netbook isn't ready to show the world exactly what it's working on just yet.

We can gather a few things from its current Intel-based console, named the OneXplayer. It features an 8.4-inch display with a monstrous 2560x1440 resolution, amounting to 358 pixels per inch. The handheld is powered by Intel's 11th-gen Tiger Lake i7-1185G7 processor, Iris Xe integrated graphics, and 16GB of LPDDR4x-4266.

At 720P, One-Notebook tested a bunch of titles, demonstrating that worst-case framerates were around 40 fps in some of the most demanding games like Flight Simulator 2020 and Forza Horizon 4, but the vast majority of other games had frame rates around 60 fps, or well above it.

If One-Netbook is already testing an AMD version of the console, we suspect it'll be very similar to the Intel version, with the major adjustment being a new AMD APU. One-Netbook will probably use either a Ryzen 5 5600U or Ryzen 7 5800U, which are the latest APUs from AMD right now.

Unfortunately, it remains to be seen if AMD's RDNA2 powered Van Gogh APUs will make it to the console as they did with the Steam Deck. As far as we are aware, AMD isn't selling Van Gogh as an official APU, and it was probably only developed for Valve's Steam Deck as a semi-custom unit. 

If One-Netbook does use a Zen 3 APU in its new gaming handheld, it'll be interesting to see how it stacks up against the Steam Deck once it arrives. Technically the AMD OneXplayer will have an edge in CPU horsepower compared to Steam Deck's Zen 2 cores. However, in the graphics department, things could be drastically different with all of AMD's current Zen 3 APUs still using Vega graphics instead of RDNA2.

Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ChaosFenix
    I am actually really interested in next gen Rembrandt APUs rumored to be coming early next year. The top-end chip is rumored to use TSMCs 6nm node which comes with an 18% area reduction which should at least lower costs. It should also come with 8c16t of zen 3+ cores. Not sure of the difference between zen3 and zen 3+ yet but zen3 comes with 19% more performance over the zen2 cores in the steam deck so it should at least match that if not add a few more percentage points. As for the GPU I would think they would offer at least 8 RDNA2 cores. The steam deck has 8 cores and the current APU lineup has 8 vega cores. I wish we could get back to having 12 like the original APUs did but so long as we don't regress I think it will be okay. The memory subsystem likely won't be too different since the steam deck already uses LPDDR5 unless it was supporting LPDDR5X.
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  • lazyabum
    Zen 3? Whoa.... you'd think they were trying to fit a Threadripper 3990X in there.
    Reply