ROG Ally

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Got mine. Gotta say as far as user experience, it's kinda clunky. Def prefer Steam Deck on that regard, but it's about what you'd expect running a windows handheld.

Performance and gaming is great though, rocket league was chugging just fine, being smooth as butter on the 1080p 120hz screen. Diablo was a bit laggy, but I didn't mess with the settings much (was running on High).


Downloading other games right now to try them out, then playing with the settings to see if I can "tune" it to overcome the UX issues.
 
I picked one up today, initial setup was clunky and lots of updates. Windows is sorta screwing Asus here a little bit by doing stupid things like forcing a default install of office and onedrive etc. Once you update everything and clean up the garbage it runs well.
I only tried D4 on it so far and it plays well, I need to dial in the settings but seems viable once some controls are ironed out.
D4 plays better with sticks than with clicks. Blizzard learned a lot from D3 console and Nintendo switch.

During long cutscenes if you're on battery the stupid device will go the sleep. But to be fair, I bought on launch day
 
Zangmonkey said:
I picked one up today, initial setup was clunky and lots of updates. Windows is sorta screwing Asus here a little bit by doing stupid things like forcing a default install of office and onedrive etc. Once you update everything and clean up the garbage it runs well.
I only tried D4 on it so far and it plays well, I need to dial in the settings but seems viable once some controls are ironed out.
D4 plays better with sticks than with clicks. Blizzard learned a lot from D3 console and Nintendo switch.

During long cutscenes if you're on battery the stupid device will go the sleep. But to be fair, I bought on launch day
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Try turning on FSR in the graphics options, if you haven't already. It's AMDs upscaling tech. I left it on the default of "Performance". Gives a nice boost. I'd also recommend turning down the shadows and ambient occlusion settings because you really can't see any difference on the small screen.

Edit: BTW, the sleep issue is a Windows power saving setting. Microsoft's got the sleep timer on battery set way too low by default.
 
So for those of you who have the Ally, is it worth buying over the Steam Deck? I previously had a steam deck, but sold it. I have Xbox Gamepass though, and it seems like it would be a better fit for the Ally.
 
kirbyrj said:
So for those of you who have the Ally, is it worth buying over the Steam Deck? I previously had a steam deck, but sold it. I have Xbox Gamepass though, and it seems like it would be a better fit for the Ally.
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So far my ally has been enjoyable. My gripe is that windows doesn't make the handheld easy.
Steam deck is a custom Linux OS without all the Microsoft bloat. Asus needs something to stop Microsoft from fucking it up.

However, if you're ok with navigating windows to uninstall dumb shit and fix windows default settings then the Ally is superior hardware and the gamepad is nice.
 
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I gave my steam deck to the nephew for his birthday, so I picked this guy up to play Diablo on my lunch breaks. Pretty solid so far. I'm suprisingly most impressed with the audio.

Side note, the $40 official carrying case is a joke. It has just enough room to carry the Ally, but no carrying strap or room for charger.
 
I decided against the Ally, we will see if that was a mistake or not. My AOKZOE A Pro shipped today and also plan to make it my D4 machine as my son always hogs the desktop.
 
Anyone try a generic steam deck dock with it (JSAUX or something)? I see that Asus has an AC adapter/dock, but I want to put it on my desk.

I hear that it should work except that it won't go into "turbo" 30W mode, only 25W.
 
kirbyrj said:
Anyone try a generic steam deck dock with it (JSAUX or something)? I see that Asus has an AC adapter/dock, but I want to put it on my desk.

I hear that it should work except that it won't go into "turbo" 30W mode, only 25W.
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I would imagine that any dock with a 65W PD passthrough would work fine.
 
Can you Dual Boot Steam OS and Windows? I think replacing the SSD with a 2-4TB unit (if it can take full size 2280) and dual boot. Steam OS is what I would run most of the time and only boot into Windows for stuff like D4. I agree someone needs to make a custom Windows OS ISO with all the dumb shit removed and configured correctly. (Looking at you Asus)
 
relapse808 said:
Well I didn't get a Ally but my AOKZOE A1 pro came in today. I will get a chance to test it tonight. It did ship with the ram at 7500mhz.

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Mine arrived Tuesday also. I spent all day Wednesday installing games, setting up Windows how I like it, and playing D4. The 8" screen is great and Diablo 4 looked excellent on it. Easy to get 60fps with med/low settings and FSR2 on Performance, although I bumped up the power limit from the default 15W to 20W to smooth out the gameplay. Cooling system works well and the fan doesn't get ridiculously loud like my Ayaneo Next does. Decent sound too... but nothing to get excited about. I played almost 8 hours of D4 on it and the controls never cramped my hands or got hot/sweaty. You can play this for hours straight and not have to worry about it digging into your hand.

Don't expect more than 2 hours out of the battery playing D4 at native res and 60fps, with the screen at 75-80% brightness. I had mine plugged in most of the time.
 
Astral Abyss said:
Mine arrived Tuesday also. I spent all day Wednesday installing games, setting up Windows how I like it, and playing D4. The 8" screen is great and Diablo 4 looked excellent on it. Easy to get 60fps with med/low settings and FSR2 on Performance, although I bumped up the power limit from the default 15W to 20W to smooth out the gameplay. Cooling system works well and the fan doesn't get ridiculously loud like my Ayaneo Next does. Decent sound too... but nothing to get excited about. I played almost 8 hours of D4 on it and the controls never cramped my hands or got hot/sweaty. You can play this for hours straight and not have to worry about it digging into your hand.

Don't expect more than 2 hours out of the battery playing D4 at native res and 60fps, with the screen at 75-80% brightness. I had mine plugged in most of the time.
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Hmmm I was playing D4 yesterday. I had the settings at high(defaulted to high) at 1200p and was getting pretty much 60 the whole way in multiplayer. The battery lasted about 2 hours and 40 min at the default TDP(15w?). Screen brightness was 50%. The fan is definitely not really loud, my GDP Win 3 is louder than this and its doesn't pump out as much heat as I expected. Overall I am very impressed with it and glad I picked it over the Ally for the bigger screen and larger battery. I also agree with the comfort of the console. My hands never got hot and can easily due a 2+ jour session of Diablo 4 and be comfortable.
 
Anyone try using Playnite for their handheld? (Videogame library manager with a variety of UI themes).

My 1TB 2230 just came in and I plan on installing Windows 11, Playnite, and some other tools on my Steam Deck to ape the SteamOS experience on Windows (but with access to all the other Windows storefronts). Hoping that works out well, as I'd be more willing to leave the 'safety' of Valve's hardware for a more powerful unit (ie: Ally) if the software is there.
 
I picked up an open box from my local bestbuy. I am really on the fence with this one. I will give it some time but I am leaning towards reselling it. hardware is top notch but software is just not their. I will say D4 runs really well with a good mix of medium and high at native 1080p and FSR at performance
 
SeymourGore said:
Anyone try using Playnite for their handheld? (Videogame library manager with a variety of UI themes).

My 1TB 2230 just came in and I plan on installing Windows 11, Playnite, and some other tools on my Steam Deck to ape the SteamOS experience on Windows (but with access to all the other Windows storefronts). Hoping that works out well, as I'd be more willing to leave the 'safety' of Valve's hardware for a more powerful unit (ie: Ally) if the software is there.
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I am going to do something similar with emulation on the rog ally. Not sure which plat
 
one thing I would recommend is to create a custom tdp and fan curve as the built in for AC connection boost instantly pegs the unit at 95c. it's almost useless
 
On Diablo 4 set the textures to medium. Can’t tell a difference in 1080p that fixes most of the stutter.

I was able to get 110+ fps with fsr on ultra performance with so off. Settled on balanced at 80s fps.
 
Tried out Elden Ring on the Ally. Couldn’t get a locked 60 fps, but to my surprise I can run max settings at 1080 at and cap it a 30 and it runs smoother than bloodborne or dark souls 3 on the ps4. Dropping to 900p and using rsr moves it closer to 40fps. Ray tracing drops it to low 20s.

I am damn impressed.

Also you can get x86 tuning utility and mess with the turbo settings… locked it to 42 watt.

Seems like it has the same problem as the steam deck in certain games where it won’t scale up fps, but raising settings doesn’t hit it as hard.
 
equinox654 said:
On Diablo 4 set the textures to medium. Can’t tell a difference in 1080p that fixes most of the stutter.

I was able to get 110+ fps with fsr on ultra performance with so off. Settled on balanced at 80s fps.
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That was the main reason I dumped the Ally... Inconsistent performance mostly around stuttering in various games. It was not a FPS issue either. I have a Deck inbound and will do a comparison. I feel I am going to be happier with the deck not mention cheaper even after a 1TB SSD upgrade and 1TB sdcard(emulation stuff etc..)
 
Vengance_01 said:
That was the main reason I dumped the Ally... Inconsistent performance mostly around stuttering in various games. It was not a FPS issue either. I have a Deck inbound and will do a comparison. I feel I am going to be happier with the deck not mention cheaper even after a 1TB SSD upgrade and 1TB sdcard(emulation stuff etc..)
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I am pretty sure the stutter was from the video ram being full. I know its been a while since most of us have had to squeeze into 16gb total ram. Hell I have 64 gigs of video ram and 24 gigs of video ram on my desktop. Last time I was close to that constrained was my GTX 970 build years ago.
 
equinox654 said:
I am pretty sure the stutter was from the video ram being full. I know its been a while since most of us have had to squeeze into 16gb total ram. Hell I have 64 gigs of video ram and 24 gigs of video ram on my desktop. Last time I was close to that constrained was my GTX 970 build years ago.
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not sure that's the issue. steam deck plays it's flawlessly. admitity I did not spend that much time on it. I even had the GPU set to 4gb just like I do on the steam deck. the jump from 720p to 1080p is quite the jump in pixel count. I will chock it up to early software/hardware.
 
I love my Ally, but I confess I use it as an emulation machine primarily. GC, 3DS, PS2, for the most part - with upscaled higher resolution texture packs. I have D4 installed and I will play it on on the couch, runs at 60fps most of the time minus town, but I wouldn't stake my life on a high tier nightmare dungeon playing on the Ally. Lag spike would be certain death.

I think it will certainly improve with patches over time. It's a step in the right direction for pushing the handheld market forward. Step up your game, Nintendo.
 
delita said:
I love my Ally, but I confess I use it as an emulation machine primarily. GC, 3DS, PS2, for the most part - with upscaled higher resolution texture packs. I have D4 installed and I will play it on on the couch, runs at 60fps most of the time minus town, but I wouldn't stake my life on a high tier nightmare dungeon playing on the Ally. Lag spike would be certain death.

I think it will certainly improve with patches over time. It's a step in the right direction for pushing the handheld market forward. Step up your game, Nintendo.
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Honestly that's why I returned mine and went with a Steam Deck base and upgraded it. Saved 250-300$ over Ally. I hope this pushes Asus to develope a second generation.
 
Vengance_01 said:
Honestly that's why I returned mine and went with a Steam Deck base and upgraded it. Saved 250-300$ over Ally. I hope this pushes Asus to develope a second generation.
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It's funny because this all makes me think back to 2017 when the Switch was released. At the time, it didn't score great reviews, the original model had poor battery life, launched with <10 titles. It grew substantially over time. I think the Ally is pretty good, if it were $500 instead of $699 it would be a no brainer for most people based on what you can do with it. Windows touch is probably the biggest drawback for me. A lot easier to just hook a mouse up and do all the initial software/game installation. I'm sure a lot of people get frustrated in the setup alone.
 
delita said:
It's funny because this all makes me think back to 2017 when the Switch was released. At the time, it didn't score great reviews, the original model had poor battery life, launched with <10 titles. It grew substantially over time. I think the Ally is pretty good, if it were $500 instead of $699 it would be a no brainer for most people based on what you can do with it. Windows touch is probably the biggest drawback for me. A lot easier to just hook a mouse up and do all the initial software/game installation. I'm sure a lot of people get frustrated in the setup alone.
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Steam Deck had similar problems. But I feel its the overall the better package at this time. The Ally will be more a niche product. Just like alot of the other Windows Hand-held coming from other niche players.... They are just to close to basic gaming laptops with alot lower performance. Valve knew what they were doing with the Custom APU vs the new Z1 with RDA. Seems Valves APU is more power efficient. I have seen D4 drawing only 14 watts total from the battery. Mix med/high 45FPS lock and FRS Quality. Also O/C memory to 6400 from stock 5500 and undervolted my deck as well.
 
Vengance_01 said:
Steam Deck had similar problems. But I feel its the overall the better package at this time. The Ally will be more a niche product. Just like alot of the other Windows Hand-held coming from other niche players.... They are just to close to basic gaming laptops with alot lower performance. Valve knew what they were doing with the Custom APU vs the new Z1 with RDA. Seems Valves APU is more power efficient. I have seen D4 drawing only 14 watts total from the battery. Mix med/high 45FPS lock and FRS Quality. Also O/C memory to 6400 from stock 5500 and undervolted my deck as well.
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I almost bought an Ally a couple times. I'm one of those people who not every game is tied to Steam, so I liked the idea of just being able to use the native launchers. I also planned on docking it as a secondary Windows computer.

I ended up with a Steam Deck (again) if only because it's a more mature setup at this point and has a wider install base to get "how to" info. I've run Windows on it off an external NVMe drive, and the Ally would definitely have it beat. And the price is a lot lower. I'm all in with a dock, 1TB SSD, and the 512GB Steam Deck (used) for $100 less than I'd pay even open box for a Ally at this point.
 
I really don’t get all of the complaints online. I have the ally and the steam deck.

As far as the OS goes it’s no different than any other windows machine that I have had. I remote into it or plug it into a USB’s hub with a monitor and network kvm for keyboard and mouse to set things up. The steam shortcut in armory crate goes straight into big picture mode.

All of the games that wouldn’t work in proton work fine in windows.

Some things run great in 1080p others need fsr and still look better than a 720p panel. Things with out fsr can use rsr and look better than a 720p panel.

More handheld appropriate games like hades and children of morta are great at 120hz.

The screen is about as good of an LCD that I have seen. Doesn’t leave me wanting an oled.

I guess you could complain about the battery. Though I only need enough battery to sit on the pot or go from the couch to the bed. Honestly I would have rather had a dgpu and no battery and just kept it plugged in. I exclusively play with max fans with a tdp override with universal x86 tuning ultility. Keeps the tdp around 42 watts as if it was in docked mode.

Hell if the cable on the egpu was a foot longer I would get that and sit it on the arm of the couch and play that way lol.
 
equinox654 said:
I really don’t get all of the complaints online. I have the ally and the steam deck.

As far as the OS goes it’s no different than any other windows machine that I have had. I remote into it or plug it into a USB’s hub with a monitor and network kvm for keyboard and mouse to set things up. The steam shortcut in armory crate goes straight into big picture mode.

All of the games that wouldn’t work in proton work fine in windows.

Some things run great in 1080p others need fsr and still look better than a 720p panel. Things with out fsr can use rsr and look better than a 720p panel.

More handheld appropriate games like hades and children of morta are great at 120hz.

The screen is about as good of an LCD that I have seen. Doesn’t leave me wanting an oled.

I guess you could complain about the battery. Though I only need enough battery to sit on the pot or go from the couch to the bed. Honestly I would have rather had a dgpu and no battery and just kept it plugged in. I exclusively play with max fans with a tdp override with universal x86 tuning ultility. Keeps the tdp around 42 watts as if it was in docked mode.

Hell if the cable on the egpu was a foot longer I would get that and sit it on the arm of the couch and play that way lol.
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then honestly just get a of those tiny PCs with the same chip but with a much higher tdp and better cooling. I have nothing against Ally but in it's current state steam deck is the better buy not mention it's much cheaper.
 
I've had the Ally for about 3 weeks now, and I'm pretty happy with it. Yeah, the battery life isn't that great, but hasn't been a wall that i've run into yet. Pretty much every plane has power in the seat, and when I'm home my attention span for gaming usually tops out at about an hour anyway.

I did buy a 2tb nvme drive for it, got a 13 hour flight to Tokyo coming up and wanted a wider selection of games to bring with me.
 
FYI you can boot smokeless off a flash drive and change the TDP of the ally. I mostly play plugged in and raising the TDP to 40watt and disabling some cpu cores and fixing the gpu clock gave me a pretty large boost in Baldurs gate 3.
 
A few of my friends have tried and returned the Ally, it's software is worse than half baked relative to the steam deck and it's fan is super loud and doesn't even smell good like the Steam Deck's fan. I played Time Splitters for PS2 on it yesterday for a while and used a whopping 6% of the battery.
 
equinox654 said:
FYI you can boot smokeless off a flash drive and change the TDP of the ally. I mostly play plugged in and raising the TDP to 40watt and disabling some cpu cores and fixing the gpu clock gave me a pretty large boost in Baldurs gate 3.
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good call on smokeless but can't you do your own custom tdp already
 
Vengance_01 said:
good call on smokeless but can't you do your own custom tdp already
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You can't get it to stick above 30watts with out changing the bios values like smokeless does.

Just be careful 45 watts caused the ally to turn its self off after a couple of hours and it took a while to get it to turn back on. Played bg3 for 6 hours yesterday at 40watt and it was fine.
 
Review of the rog ally with the smaller APU (Z1 non-extreme)

The difference between the Z1 extreme & the Z1 non-extreme is that

1. Larger APU has 3 times the CU count (12cu:4cu). However AMD claimed that memory would be a bigger bottleneck than GPU
2. larger APU is 8 cores of full-fledged zen4. Smaller APU is a "hybrid design" with 2 full fledged zen4 cores & 4 smaller zen4c cores. The zen4c cores are limited by max freq, so multi-threaded games will be CPU limited in the smaller APU

TL;DR
1. There is a performance difference (GPU bottleneck) when playing AAA games (or more demanding yet to be released in future)
2. For older games which don't tax more than 2 CPU cores, the z1 non-extreme would give better battery life (in silent mode, VRR & 120hz enabled with fps caps)
3. In all other scenarios the Z1 extreme gives better performance for same battery life.


View: https://youtube.com/watch?v=wIVmTb4PkvM&feature=youtu.be

Marees said:
The next Valve Steam Deck is a prime candidate which would utilize AMD's Phoenix 2 APUs among a list of other handheld and portable devices. It will definitely be interesting to see the efficiency numbers that the Phoenix 2 APUs produce. The first AMD Phoenix APUs will make their debut on laptops in March 2023 so we can expect an update later in 2023 on the Phoenix 2 parts.

the upcoming hybrid design is said to feature 2 standard Zen 4 cores and at least 4 clock/power-optimized Zen 4 cores. The Zen 4 cores are essentially the same architecture but the way power is managed across them is very different. It is not like Intel's hybrid approach where the P-Core and E-Cores utilize vastly different architectures.

The latest SKU was spotted by @InstLatX64 within the MilkyWay@Home database. Although the APU has no name or SKU branding mentioned, it is stated that the "A70F80" CPUID belongs to a range of upcoming APUs that will be part of the Phoenix 2 family.

https://wccftech.com/amd-hybrid-phoenix-2-little-phoenix-apu-with-24-core-configuration-spotted/

AMD Van Gogh SOC Successor Specs 'Preliminary':​

SOC NAMEVAN GOGH SOCLITTLE PHOENIX SOC (TBD)
Process Node7nm4nm?
Die Size163mm2110-150mm2
TransistorsTBDTBD
CPU ArchitectureZen 2Zen 4
Cores / Threads4 / 86 / 12?
CPU Clock (Max)3.5 GHz~4.0 GHz
GPU ArchitectureRDNA 2RDNA 3
GPU Compute Units8 CUs (512 SPs)4-8 CUs (!512 SPs)
GPU Clocks1.6 GHz2.0 GHz+
MemoryLPDDR5-5500LPDDR5-6400
LPDDR5X-8533
TDP4-15W4-15W?
ProductsSteam DeckSteam Deck 2?
Launch20222023-2024
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Marees said:
Review of the rog ally with the smaller APU (Z1 non-extreme)

The difference between the Z1 extreme & the Z1 non-extreme is that

1. Larger APU has 3 times the CU count (12cu:4cu). However AMD claimed that memory would be a bigger bottleneck than GPU
2. larger APU is 8 cores of full-fledged zen4. Smaller APU is a "hybrid design" with 2 full fledged zen4 cores & 4 smaller zen4c cores. The zen4c cores are limited by max freq, so multi-threaded games will be CPU limited in the smaller APU

TL;DR
1. There is a performance difference (GPU bottleneck) when playing AAA games (or more demanding yet to be released in future)
2. For older games which don't tax more than 2 CPU cores, the z1 non-extreme would give better battery life (in silent mode, VRR & 120hz enabled with fps caps)
3. In all other scenarios the Z1 extreme gives better performance for same battery life.


View: https://youtube.com/watch?v=wIVmTb4PkvM&feature=youtu.be
Click to expand...


Everything I've seen says the non extreme version of the Z1 is garbage in terms of actual gaming performance compared to both Steam Deck and regular Z1 Extreme.
 
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