GPD Win Max 2 With AMD Ryzen 7 7840U Tested: Lightweight & Efficient RDNA 3 Gaming With OcuLink eGPU Support

The first previews of the GPD Win Max 2 portable gaming handheld with AMD Ryzen 7 7840U have been published, showcasing strong & efficient performance.

The difference between the other handheld consoles and the GPD Win Max 2 is basically the form factor that the latter ships with. While the other consoles use a traditional handheld design, GPD's Win Max 2 goes with a semi-handheld and semi-laptop approach. The 10.1" display is equipped to a half-sized keyboard that also hosts the D-Pad and other controller keys. The whole device largely remains similar to its predecessor but hosts some key changes such as the hardware within it.

Just like all the other handhelds except the ASUS ROG Ally, the GPD Win Max 2 features the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U APU which has a TDP of 15-28W. This CPU carries 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 4 core architecture and also packs a Radeon 780M iGPU that utilizes the RDNA 3 graphics architecture. The GPU side has 12 compute units for a total of 768 cores running at a frequency of 2.7 GHz.

The handheld also offers support for LPDDR5x-7500 memory and comes with an OcuLink port that can be used for an external M.2 or an external GPU. As mentioned before, the GPD Win Max 2 has a large 10.1" display that outputs 1600p resolution. Since the Ryzen 7 7840U APU is a capable chip with Zen 4 cores, it can very well be paired with a high-end GPU for a desktop-like experience. ETA Prime notes that the OcuLink port offers a much better eGPU experience compared to Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4.

With that said, ETA Prime and The Phawx shared some really nice performance benchmarks of the GPD Win Max 2 running various games. The Phawx also added PS3 emulation benchmarks, making use of those AVX-512 instructions featured on the Zen 4 core architecture. The YouTuber also put a static clock of 2 GHz on the Radeon 780M GPU since it was reportedly downclocking itself to the base clock while running the game. The consistent 2 GHz lock made the chip 26% better with AVX-512 enabled versus the stock chip.

Other PS3 games tested included Red Dead Redemption and Demon Souls with the former running between 20-30 FPS and the latter running at a consistent 30 FPS. ETA Prime further tests the GPD Win Max 2 in standard AAA titles which offer great performance and efficiency that you should be expecting from the Radeon 780M RDNA 3 GPU on portable devices. Although pricing is not known currently, we expect more info such as availability and the Ryzen 5 7640U model during this month.