With the new official SteamOS 3.8 third-party portable consoles are able to demonstrate their true power Asus ROG Ally with this OS beat Steam Deck in most games.
The ETA Prime YouTube channel has shown a significant increase in the performance of the Asus console with unlocked TDP up to 40 watts. This is the second such case, but this time, enthusiasts showed the biggest increase. The performance increased by a huge 20% when comparing ROG Ally X with Steam Deck with the same TDP. «Out of the box» SteamOS 3.8 does not allow you to control TDP on ROG Ally X. On ETA Prime, I used the SimpleDeckyTDP plugin, which unlocks values in the range of 4-40 watts. By default the console operates on 18 W.
Since the Steam Deck can only consume up to 15 watts, ETA Prime was also limited to the ROG Ally X. Gaming benchmarks show about a 10% speedup compared to the Steam Deck. However, in Cyberpunk 2077, the ROG Ally X was able to deliver 53 frames per second compared to 44 for the Steam Deck, which is about 20%.
In Black Myth: Wukong, the ROG Ally X has a 12% advantage and about 10% in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Of course, there are scenarios where ROG Ally can’t match the Steam Deck, such as Monster Hunter Wilds, which is not yet approved for the Steam Deck.
ETA Prime didn’t show what kind of boost the ROG Ally X gives in 40W mode, but it’s not hard to imagine. It would also be interesting to test SteamOS 3.8 on more powerful consoles with processors AMD Strix Point or Intel Lunar Lake.
Source: Wccftech
