Asus ROG Ally

silicon is binned for both power and speed. Dies that need more power end up in desktops, those that need less end up in laptops.

The power consumption to work output also isn’t linear, it’s more like an exponential curve.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
silicon is binned for both power and speed. Dies that need more power end up in desktops, those that need less end up in laptops.

The power consumption to work output also isn’t linear, it’s more like an exponential curve.
Click to expand...

There is an annoying variance as well with the Z1 Extreme chips - while most are close at the rated TDP for the device the performance at certain TDPs can be quite extreme as much as 25% difference at both min and max TDP settings - fortunately mine seems one of the better ones.
 
I'm seriously considering selling my gaming laptop to get one of these. I bought my Legion 5 laptop for a bit of portable gaming when away or if I was just feeling lazy to game in bed, rather than sitting in front of my desktop. However, something like the Ally seems much more portable and convenient to do some light gaming on the go. I can still dock it and use it with a monitor like a laptop if I really need to.

Has anyone else ditched their gaming laptop completely and swapped it for one of these handhelds? If so how did are you finding it?
 
Not on an Ally, but a Legion Go. I much prefer playing games on handheld than even my desktop these days.
Connects to monitor over USB-C if I want, but very rarely do this.

My only concern about docking these, or running connected to external displays on charge all the time you're playing, is the battery life degrading.
I docked my previous Ayaneo Air quite a bit, and think the much higher heat of running it at highest tdp, on power, wasn't great. Battery started to swell despite it not being hugely old.
 
Last edited:
ljt said:
I'm seriously considering selling my gaming laptop to get one of these. I bought my Legion 5 laptop for a bit of portable gaming when away or if I was just feeling lazy to game in bed, rather than sitting in front of my desktop. However, something like the Ally seems much more portable and convenient to do some light gaming on the go. I can still dock it and use it with a monitor like a laptop if I really need to.

Has anyone else ditched their gaming laptop completely and swapped it for one of these handhelds? If so how did are you finding it?
Click to expand...

My Legion Go has replaced my gaming laptop for a lot of uses but when I really want to do some proper gaming away from home, etc. it is no substitute for having a desktop class performance GPU like my gaming laptop has.
 
Food for thought, thanks both.
I'm hoping it wouldn't be docked that often as I would just use my desktop when at home, and if out then it'll be easier to handle and wouldn't need a table or desk free like I would with a heavy gaming laptop.
 
ljt said:
Food for thought, thanks both.
I'm hoping it wouldn't be docked that often as I would just use my desktop when at home, and if out then it'll be easier to handle and wouldn't need a table or desk free like I would with a heavy gaming laptop.
Click to expand...
Personally I wouldn't buy a Ally if I was wanting it for outside the house, I remember when I had mine I was playing a pretty low TDP game and I'd maybe get couple hours, on old Steam Deck I'd get easily double it, OLED be triple or even longer, the Z1 chip just can't go low enough
 
will13 said:
Personally I wouldn't buy a Ally if I was wanting it for outside the house, I remember when I had mine I was playing a pretty low TDP game and I'd maybe get couple hours, on old Steam Deck I'd get easily double it, OLED be triple or even longer, the Z1 chip just can't go low enough
Click to expand...
The new ally has double battery life. With some of the efficiencies etc the battery life is over twice as much.
 
Last edited:
will13 said:
Personally I wouldn't buy a Ally if I was wanting it for outside the house, I remember when I had mine I was playing a pretty low TDP game and I'd maybe get couple hours, on old Steam Deck I'd get easily double it, OLED be triple or even longer, the Z1 chip just can't go low enough
Click to expand...
It would be the Ally X if I were to go for one of the handhelds, which I believe has an 80wh battery (the same as my lenovo 5 laptop actually)

As long as it will last 2 hours that would be fine. I doubt I would be on it longer than that at any one time, so could just put it back on charge afterward.
 
Its on preorder now.... Ive pre ordered, but may change my mind... lets see! Its a bit of a hefty price considering the functions are not that different to the original Ally (extra ram and extra battery, m2280...)
 
Apart from the battery, I would have been happier if they had seriously improved the cooling to allow the chip to clock higher. But in all honesty it's still the same chipset, so the performance gain is probably negligible.

I think we just need to wait for the next generation of mobile chips, to get better performance. The 1080 screen is crying out for it :D
 
FlyingFish said:
Apart from the battery, I would have been happier if they had seriously improved the cooling to allow the chip to clock higher. But in all honesty it's still the same chipset, so the performance gain is probably negligible.

I think we just need to wait for the next generation of mobile chips, to get better performance. The 1080 screen is crying out for it :D
Click to expand...

Yeh, I'm interested in one, but deffo waiting for the next-gen handhelds.
 
FlyingFish said:
Apart from the battery, I would have been happier if they had seriously improved the cooling to allow the chip to clock higher. But in all honesty it's still the same chipset, so the performance gain is probably negligible.

I think we just need to wait for the next generation of mobile chips, to get better performance. The 1080 screen is crying out for it :D
Click to expand...

It is the GPU side which needs more performance really and not necessarily higher clock speeds but more of stuff like cache and processing units. The CPU in these handhelds is actually pretty decent - my Go clocks up 14K in Cinebench MT compared to 15-16K for desktop class Ryzen 5800 chips and 18K for the 7800X3D.

Battery life the big one though both gaming but also being conservative with power in low or idle states - they are otherwise quite useful for non-gaming stuff as well.
 
Last edited:
ljt said:
I'm seriously considering selling my gaming laptop to get one of these. I bought my Legion 5 laptop for a bit of portable gaming when away or if I was just feeling lazy to game in bed, rather than sitting in front of my desktop. However, something like the Ally seems much more portable and convenient to do some light gaming on the go. I can still dock it and use it with a monitor like a laptop if I really need to.

Has anyone else ditched their gaming laptop completely and swapped it for one of these handhelds? If so how did are you finding it?
Click to expand...

I regularly go through hardware, i find that having one nice bit of hardware in the house helps a lot though as there is nothing worse than limiting yourself to for example just an ally. When those more demanding titles come out and you want to play them at reasonable settings/fps you regret not having the oomph to run it. As such i would say as long as you have one system in the house that you can at least stream to the handheld then you will be good to go so you can run them over the network to the handheld
 
ljt said:
Has anyone else ditched their gaming laptop completely and swapped it for one of these handhelds? If so how did are you finding it?
Click to expand...
Can't comment (Although in a recent trip to Japan I was very tempted to buy) . I work on the road and have a Lenovo Legion 5600h, 16gb, 3060. Bought a steam deck on launch and while it is an incredabily compromised device still the first thing in my bag. Just so much easier especially as don't get massive ammounts of free time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom