According to estimates from the last three years, the majority of the gaming handhelds sold are powered by AMD Ryzen chips.
With a Prediction of Around 8 Million Handheld Units Expected to Ship by the End of 2025, AMD Takes the Win
Even though handhelds have been there for decades, handhelds that can play PC games only became popular after Steam launched its Deck in 2022. It has been just three years, and we are seeing a plethora of handhelds from popular vendors like ASUS, MSI, ZOTAC, and others.
Most handhelds have one thing in common: they all run on AMD CPUs except for handhelds like MSI Claw 7/8 AI+ etc. From the very start, when Valve adopted AMD's custom Zen 2 CPU, the majority of handheld makers went for faster AMD chips. This was expected since Intel's Meteor Lake was only released at the end of 2023 and companies like Lenovo and ASUS had already debuted their Legion GO and ROG Ally before that.
Even with Meteor Lake in the market, the majority of handheld makers went with AMD Zen 4 chips, and, since then, several other vendors have started adopting Zen 5 processors. This is why when IDC recently released the data on the total number of handheld shipments from 2022 to early 2025, the majority of shipped handhelds were AMD-powered. This makes AMD proud of itself and its Senior Director of Consumer Marketing, Saša Marinković, proudly boasts about it on X.
From Zero to Hero, in just four years. Vast majority of these handhelds are powered by @AMD https://t.co/cL4tpBWGj1 pic.twitter.com/0Cjg90pdlN
— Saša Marinković (@SasaMarinkovic) February 25, 2025
I think it’s amazing,
This didn’t exist three years ago; we went from nothing, zero, to incremental category creation in the millions of units.
- Frank Azor, Consumer and Gaming Marketing, AMD
The IDC market research shows that the total number of Windows and SteamOS-based handhelds shipments was close to 6 million in the last three years (2023-2024). The prediction for 2025 is around two million, with the majority of handhelds featuring AMD's processors. This data doesn't include every handheld but the most popular and sold ones, including Steam Deck, ASUS ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, and MSI Claw 7.
That said, the report suggests that more than half of the 6 million units comprise Steam Deck sales and might have crossed 4 million units as of now. While the Steam Deck is the slowest gaming handheld among the above-mentioned ones, its excellent user interface via SteamOS helped it gain more traction compared to Windows-based handhelds.
Surely, Intel has done pretty well with its Lunar Lake chips, but if AMD's Strix Halo makes it to gaming handhelds, it will be incredibly difficult for Intel to catch AMD in performance unless Intel's upcoming series, Panther Lake, is really powerful enough to compete with Strix Halo in iGPU performance. AMD also has its new Ryzen Z2 series rolling out, so the gaming handheld market is in a very competitive state.
News Sources: The Verge, @SasaMarinikovic
About the author: Sarfraz Khan is a hardware reporter with a focus on PC components and the builder community. With years of experience writing about PC hardware and laptops, his work has been featured on several reputable technology publications. Sarfraz's hands-on experience is demonstrated through his first-person accounts of using and comparing different hardware configurations, providing practical and relatable insights for everyday users. His technical analysis is respected by peers in the enthusiast community and has been cited by specialized hardware sites such as Germany's Igor's Lab.
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