Alright, so imagine this — there I was, scrolling through tech news, and boom! Microsoft’s “Project Kennan” finally popped out of the tech rumor mill and into reality. I mean, it’s apparently going to become part of the ROG Ally 2 lineup. Two versions, they say — one black, one white. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Black one’s got this Xbox Button, giving off major “gamer badge” vibes. I guess they’re really trying to make it official.
Up till now, all we had were whispers about this handheld. But now? Some fresh info. Turns out, someone connected model ID numbers to the US FCC listings. Pretty wild, right? It kinda reminds me of the OG ROG Ally setup: AMD’s Z1 with 4 CUs and the Z1 Extreme packing a heftier punch with 12 CUs. Hundred bucks difference, give or take. Staying true to x86 — that’s the backbone — so you don’t have to ditch your favorite games.
About that Xbox Button — it’s loud. I mean, shouting “Project Kennan” to anyone who’ll listen. But don’t get your hopes up for some snazzy custom OS — it’s most likely running Windows 11. Maybe the button’s just a shortcut to the Game Bar, like hitting a button on your TV remote. Who’s to know what other goodies Microsoft might have up its sleeve? We’ll find out soon, I guess.
Anyway — oh man, where was I? Oh, right. AMD! The Kennan thingy is said to be rocking the Z2 Extreme chip — with eight cores, doing fancy Zen 5 and Zen 5c dances, 16 threads, the whole shebang. Heard it has this rad Radeon 890M with 16 Compute Units or something. Tricked out with 64GB LPDDR5x-8533 and a juicy 2TB SSD. The display? Touchy-feely 7-inch IPS, hitting 120 Hz. Basically, a portable beast.
The white variant — now that’s a mystery wrapped in a shiny package. It’s packing this unknown AMD APU, whispers say it bears an “Aerith Plus” codename. Seems like a cousin to what was in the Steam Deck. Four cores, 6-20W TDP? Who knows? We’ll probably get the deets from AMD or Asus at Computex.
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