Asus ROG Ally vs Steam Deck: can powerful new tech deliver a game-changing handheld?

Out-specs Steam Deck - but battery life and bugs are problematic.

Review by Richard Leadbetter Technology Editor, Digital Foundry

Updated on 20 May 2023

One of the key advantages of the Asus ROG Ally up against the Steam Deck comes from the performance of the Z1 Extreme processor, and in this part of the review, we're going to put the handheld through its paces across a number of benchmarks - titles you would have seen benched in our Steam Deck review or our more recent AyaNeo 2 test. The AyaNeo 2 follows much the same template as the ROG Ally: to deliver a similar package to Steam Deck but upgrading the core processor to something more capable.

So in the benchmarks on this page, we'll put the new handheld through its paces - we'll kick off by concentrating on games that ran rather well on the Steam Deck. On the next page we'll move onto titles that pushed the Valve handheld beyond its limits to see if the Asus ROG Ally can keep pace. Beyond that, we'll also be factoring in more limited data from the Ryzen 7 6800U, this time benched on the new AyaNeo Air Plus. With this approach, we'll get to see how the ROG Ally compares against the established Steam Deck, and we'll have some numbers for how the new silicon stacks up against its immediate predecessor from AMD.

Control

Remedy's Control has been a mainstay of our benchmarking suite since 2020 and transitioned over to our handheld testing because it runs so well. The low settings are broadly equivalent to the last-gen console versions of the game and native 720p was the rendering resolution of the Xbox One version. Here - and in all of our Ally benches - we're benching at 720p and 1080p.

In the 15W shoot-out - Steam Deck vs ROG Ally in performance mode - the more advanced silicon in the Asus product delivers a 21 percentage point lead, dropping back to 12 percent at 1080p. For more profound advantages, you need to move to the 25W turbo mode - a 55 percentage point boost at 720p up against Deck rising to 46 points at 1080p. You'll also note how little the scores are between the two turbo modes - we may be temperature or bandwidth limited here.

First impressions: there are appreciable gains over the Steam Deck at the same 15W wattage, but you need to soak the processor with power to see what the Z1 Extreme can really do.

Control, Low Settings, TAA

Forza Horizon 5

Forza Horizon 5 runs rather well on Steam Deck - in fact, we got a decent experience from it running on the underpowered Vega-based GPU found in the original AyaNeo Air - so it's a great candidate for scalability with a more powerful processor. Usually we bench at the same 4x MSAA used on Xbox One, but Asus tells us that MSAA support in the Ally is in line for optimisation (it seemed fine for us on this title but we moved to TAA anti-aliasing regardless).

In the all-important 15W head-to-head, the Ally delivers 29 to 33 percent more performance than the Steam Deck at 720p and 1080p resolutions respectively, which is at the top-end of the frame-rate increases you'll see comparing the Ally to the Valve handheld. I also noted that while both handhelds could stutter in this benchmark, more prolonged in-game stutters were noticeable on the Ally during gameplay.

Again, it's 'pay to play' in terms of the big performance boosts over Steam Deck. The turbo modes are where you need to be in order to comprehensively best the Valve handheld - a 66 percent boost at 720p, 63 points ahead at 1080p. We appear to be CPU, temperature or bandwidth limited at 720p as both turbo modes deliver similar results. At 1080p, you can still get an eminently playable experience and it's quite the thing to see play out.

Forza Horizon 5, High, TAA

God of War

In God of War, we're running on 'original' settings which puts us on par with the quality level established by the PlayStation 4 release. What's interesting here is that at 720p at 15W, the Ally only delivers 12 percent more performance up against the Deck - likely down to AMD's weaker DX11 driver vs the more efficient open source Radeon equivalent used by the Steam machine. We've also used the AyaNeo Air Plus here to bench the Ryzen 7 6800U - it has issues up against both Ally and Deck at 15W to the point where retests were required to verify this outlier result.

Continuing the 720p analysis, the 6800U in the Air Plus is around 20 percent faster than Deck at 25W, while the Ally moves ahead with a 41 percentage point lead over the Valve handheld. Bearing in mind the extra power consumed, the mains turbo advantage is barely noticeable.

Again, it's at 25W where the Ally really makes a difference against the Deck, with a 41 percentage point lead at 720p rising to 55 points at 1080p. Again, you'll note that the boost from mains power does little to change performance with a two to five point advantage depending on resolution. Power draw increases significantly though obviously, plus the fan noise increases as the SoC edges closer to its 95 degrees Celsius limit.