Asus wasnt joking: the ROG Ally gaming handheld is real, and Im pumped

Date:
Tue, 04 Apr 2023 16:32:47 +0000

Description:
Could the Asus ROG Ally finally unseat Valves Steam Deck from the handheld gaming throne?

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Well, its confirmed: Asus really wasnt joking when it said it was making a handheld gaming PC on April Fools Day. The Asus ROG Ally is an AMD-powered handheld that looks set to take on Valves Steam Deck - with some seriously impressive specs.

Asus claims that the AMD APU powering the ROG Ally is the fastest chip yet, and packs support for connecting to Asus own XG Mobile external GPU - letting you hook up an RTX 4090 for potentially unbelievable performance.

The APU is a custom-designed 4nm Zen 4 chip with an RDNA 3 iGPU, which is practically guaranteed to deliver superior performance to the Zen 2+/RDNA 2 APU found in the Steam Deck. This will likely make the XG Mobile a bit redundant; why youd need to connect a crazy-powerful $1,999 GPU, I cant fathom. The ROG Ally will use the same ROG Intelligent Cooling found in Asuss Republic of Gamers laptops.

The rest of the specs look set to blow the Steam Deck away, too: the Ally shares the same 7-inch screen size, but it packs a higher 1080p resolution over the Decks 1280 x 800 and doubles the refresh rate at 120Hz. Asus also claims the maximum brightness is 25% better than the Steam Decks. We also
know (from the Canadian Asus website , which strangely is the only region
with any info on the Ally) that itll run Windows 11.

We dont know anything about how the battery life will measure up yet, but we do know that the ROG Ally will be a bit smaller and lighter than the Steam Deck, weighing in at 1.3 pounds (about 0.59kg). It doesnt have the Decks
fancy touchpad controls, instead opting for a layout that almost perfectly matches the Nintendo Switch . Its real!Stay tuned for more Want to know when pre-orders start?https://t.co/ljc2GNN0UU#ROG #ROGALLY #PlayALLYourGames pic.twitter.com/IG6vDtgTag April 3, 2023 See more The Steam Deck is great,
but its time for something new

Im massively happy to see this. Why? Because weve seen a whole bunch of Steam Deck imitators so far - like the solid AyaNeo 2 - but this is the first product Ive looked at and thought thats not an imitator - thats a competitor .

In fact, the ROG Ally could be more than just that: it could be the Steam
Deck killer. Just off the specs that have been revealed so far (via a pair of videos from two YouTubers who were given exclusive early access), it should absolutely wreck the Deck in raw performance and graphical fidelity.

Im amped - for two reasons. First of all, because Im (hopefully) gonna be reviewing this bad boy, and I just cant wait to get my hands on it. But secondly, because this will hopefully set a new bar for the performance of gaming handhelds - the Steam Deck is now more than a year old, while the hardware powering the Nintendo Switch is even older.

Its time for new hardware! And AMD is proving that we dont need expensive discrete graphics cards : APUs could really be the future of gaming, and this is the proving ground for that technology. In short, Im hoping that Valve and Nintendo are taking notes.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/asus-wasnt-joking-the-rog-ally-gaming-handheld- is-real-and-im-pumped


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