News MSI issues new Claw BIOS update, claims to outperform ROG Ally in top 100 most popular Steam games

[Admin]

MSI has published yet another BIOS update for the MSI Claw, with more performance improvements. The improvements are so good that the Claw supposedly outperforms the ROG Ally by 26% on average in Steam's top 100 most popular games to date.

MSI issues new Claw BIOS update, claims to outperform ROG Ally in top 100 most popular Steam games : Read more

 

[Metal Messiah.]

Frustratingly, MSI did not disclose which version of the ROG Ally it benchmarked (the vanilla ROG Ally or the Extreme version with the Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip).

I'm inclined that MSI has presumably compared the non-extreme vanilla Ryzen Z1 chip here.

But if it is indeed the "Z1 Extreme" variant, then it would be a huge win for MSI's claw console, given how it has been struggling to compete with other gaming consoles, not only on the performance front, but also the current market pricing trend.

But even the power consumption and battery time figures weren't shared though !

 

[thestryker]

While I didn't expect a whole lot from the Claw it was pretty clear on launch the firmware needed a ton of work as it wasn't even close to performing like laptops with the same chip did. I'd love to know what the reason was behind them shoving it out the door whether it was to hit a quarterly target, new hardware releases or some combination of both (though I know we'll never know). I'm very glad that they didn't just abandon it though as it should have been a decent alternative from the start hardware capability wise.

 

[SSGBryan]

I am sure it was to hit a quarterly target.

 

[cyrusfox]

Problem is you only get 1 chance to make a first impression, and after the disaster that was its outing... Good luck on changing public perception on Intel handhelds.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZG-WP8A_2c


I was really looking forward to a competent handheld with Thunderbolt... Really see a good use case for it, but not sure this fits the bill. Would love to see a review with the new bios and how the battery and performance holds up. Sure wish the PC OEM's would take a note from Apple and not release it till fully polished.

 

[Amdlova]

First impression asus rma...
Good look with your rma

 

[Notton]

are they finally up to the numbers that were teased at pre-launch?

 

[Pierce2623]

I'm inclined that MSI has presumably compared the non-extreme vanilla Ryzen Z1 chip here.

But if it is indeed the "Z1 Extreme" variant, then it would be a huge win for MSI's claw console, given how it has been struggling to compete with other gaming consoles, not only on the performance front, but also the current market pricing trend.

But even the power consumption and battery time figures weren't shared though !

The percentage of the performance gains that are being reported are much too small to jump ahead of the z1 extreme. Most games would require 50-100% improvements to jump ahead of the z1 extreme.

 

[Pierce2623]

Problem is you only get 1 chance to make a first impression, and after the disaster that was its outing... Good luck on changing public perception on Intel handhelds.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZG-WP8A_2c


I was really looking forward to a competent handheld with Thunderbolt... Really see a good use case for it, but not sure this fits the bill. Would love to see a review with the new bios and how the battery and performance holds up. Sure wish the PC OEM's would take a note from Apple and not release it till fully polished.

Well the usb4 devices all supposedly will run a GPU dock without being TB certified if that’s why you wanted a TB port on a handheld. I don’t really see much other use for it on handheld unless you want to hook your handheld up with a TB external SSD, which seems kinda wasteful considering the price increase over USB external SSDs.

 

[Pierce2623]

While I didn't expect a whole lot from the Claw it was pretty clear on launch the firmware needed a ton of work as it wasn't even close to performing like laptops with the same chip did. I'd love to know what the reason was behind them shoving it out the door whether it was to hit a quarterly target, new hardware releases or some combination of both (though I know we'll never know). I'm very glad that they didn't just abandon it though as it should have been a decent alternative from the start hardware capability wise.

From the testing I’ve seen on Meteor Lake, the TSMC GPU tile is fairly efficient and competitive but the compute tile made at Intel is still extremely inefficient compared to Zen4 and Zen4c.

 

[Quirkz]

But even the power consumption and battery time figures weren't shared though !

Yeah, I'd like to see the power consumption figures - As the APU in the claw is optimised for a higher TDP.... which isn't great in a handheld.
It's not much use if the Claw is running at 45W TDP vs the 25W Ally to get those performance improvements.

 

[kealii123]

Yeah, I'd like to see the power consumption figures - As the APU in the claw is optimised for a higher TDP.... which isn't great in a handheld.
It's not much use if the Claw is running at 45W TDP vs the 25W Ally to get those performance improvements.

Beat me to it.

They are probably benchmarking against the lower Z1 chip AND running at nearly double the TDP. Meanwhile, the steamdeck gets 90% of the performance at 15 watts. I don't see a compelling handheld to get over the 'deck right now (I don't fancy 40 min battery life)

 

[Metal Messiah.]

The percentage of the performance gains that are being reported are much too small to jump ahead of the z1 extreme. Most games would require 50-100% improvements to jump ahead of the z1 extreme.

Yes, I agree. That's why I was more inclined towards the chip being the "non-extreme" Z1 variant. The jump is not that high in most of the game titles like you mentioned, and I'm also curious to know the power consumption, battery, and temp figures as well.

No footnotes on the test system have been provided by MSI either.