News Running Linux On The ROG Ally Doesn't Help Battery Life

[Admin]

The ROG Ally was tested under Linux to see if it was any better or worse compared to the Steam Deck, which also runs Linux. Sadly, the ROG Ally exhibited the same behavior as on Windows, with good performance but poor power efficiency.

Running Linux On The ROG Ally Doesn't Help Battery Life : Read more

 

[cknobman]

The difference between custom made silicon and off the shelf chips.

Steam helped design its chip from the ground up.
The Z1 Extreme is the same chip as the 7840U with a lower wattage range and a feature turned off.

 

[mitch074]

Zen 4 may be more recent than The Steam Deck's Zen 2 cores, but a lot of the performance improvements between these chips are not as prevalent as one might think...
Zen 2 to Zen 3 : a lot of the performance gains came from Zen 3's ability to use 8-core CCX, where Zen 2 was limited to 4-core CCX. Thing is, the Steam Deck uses a 4-core processor, so this limitation doesn't apply.
Zen 3 to Zen 4 : mainly, support for DDR5. Thing is, AMD mixed their chips in a way that allows them to use Zen 2 and Zen 3 cores with DDR5.
Yes, Zen 4 includes more cache, AES-512 support, and this new processor has double the number of cores. Also, it comes in a smaller engraving.
But it's not enough to jugulate the huge amount of extra power all this hardware entails, and on such a restricted environment only to play games, it's a pain.
It would be interesting to compare the two again, but with the Ally running with 4 cores parked - power to performance ratio may be quite a bit better.