Unplayable on Steam Deck: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 tested with gaming handhelds, ROG Ally manages playable frame rates despite hiccups

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has finally arrived on PC, although the launch would best be described as tumultuous, owing to widespread complaints regarding game crashes, inexcusable frame drops, and occasional graphical glitches. That said, the game does boast relatively humble system requirements, which might allow for an enjoyable experience on gaming handhelds. According to TechPowerUp's recent in-depth analysis, however, the situation is more complicated than it appears on paper.

TechPowerUp tested two extremely popular gaming handhelds with Marvel's Spider-Man 2: Valve Steam Deck, and Asus ROG Ally - both based on AMD APUs. The Steam Deck is powered by the AMD Van Gogh APU with a Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 GPU, whereas the Asus ROG Ally is powered by the substantially more potent Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU with an 8-core CPU and 12-CU iGPU allowing for a whopping 8.6 TFLOPS of raw performance. With the system specifications out of the way, let us address how the handhelds performed. The results, are mostly in line with what we expected.

Handheld potential: Steam Deck stumbles, ROG Ally survives

At 720p with "very low" settings, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme-powered ROG Ally managed a playable 51.3 FPS at 25 watts with a minimum FPS of 17.8. At 15 watts, the number dropped to 38.9 FPS, with a minimum of 13.1. The Steam Deck, however, showed its age and barely managed 26 FPS at the same settings, with a minimum of 12.8 FPS. At the slightly more visually appealing "low" preset, the ROG Ally clocked a respectable 46.1 FPS, whereas the Steam Deck struggled with 21.1 FPS.

Interestingly, the game experienced crashes on the Windows-based ROG Ally, unlike the Steam Deck, which did not experience any such issues. Frame rates were also more stable on the Steam Deck according to TPU's testing, although still borderline unplayable even with upscaling. The ROG Ally, unsurprisingly, fared much better, and once it gets the update to the recently unveiled Ryzen Z2 Extreme with four additional CUs, the performance will only get better. The Steam Deck (currently $470 on Amazon), unfortunately, is not expected to see a successor any time soon, although SteamOS handhelds from Lenovo are already available with Ryzen Z2-series APUs.