Asus ROG Xbox Ally X: Digital Foundry cautions gamers as handheld console's performance is reportedly uninspiring
The first-ever Xbox-branded handheld gaming consoles, the ROG Xbox Ally and the ROG Xbox Ally X, are launching on October 16th. Several media outlets went hands-on with the portable consoles for the first time at Gamescom, giving us a look at the new Xbox gaming experience for Windows handheld consoles.
Digital Foundry also spent some time with the ROG Xbox Ally X. The outlet explored the console's software and found it to be unfinished. Since Digital Foundry excels at testing the performance of games on PC and console hardware, they also ran games like Doom: The Dark Ages and Clair Obscur Expedition 33 on the ROG Xbox Ally X. The results, as discussed in the latest DF Direct, could disappoint some fans.
Asus ROG Xbox Ally X performance in AAA games
DF tested Doom: The Dark Ages on the ROG Xbox Ally X at 540p upscaled to 1080p, with low settings, using DRS, and FSR 3 “Performance”. At these settings, the ROG Xbox Ally X was reportedly touching 50 FPS, which is a solid result for a TDP-limited handheld gaming console. DF notes that a 1080p output resolution is a bit high for a power-constrained portable console. So, setting the target resolution to 720p makes more sense for a portable machine with a small 7-inch display.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, however, ran much worse than Doom: The Dark Ages. At 1080p with low settings and using Unreal Engine 5’s Temporal Super Resolution, the ROG Xbox Ally X could only produce around 27-30 FPS in the game’s opening level.
Seeing this performance, DF mentions that gamers who expected the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X to provide a traditional Xbox home console-like experience with rock-solid FPS in AAA games “need to rein in their expectations”. Despite packing a powerful Z2 Extreme APU with Zen 5 CPU cores and an RDNA 3.5 iGPU, the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X is still a portable gaming console with a limited power budget.
That said, the ROG Xbox Ally X consoles that DF tested were almost certainly running pre-release software. So, it won’t be surprising if, when the ROG Xbox Ally X officially launches, the performance is a bit better than what is shown here. However, this is pure speculation, so we’ll have to get the console in our hands before passing any final judgment.
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