The ASUS ROG Ally is built on the AMD Ryzen Z1 and Z1 Extreme processors. These low-power APUs leverage the Zen 4 CPU and the Radeon RDNA 3 graphics architecture to deliver a solid 1080p gaming experience. Intel’s Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” CPUs are supposed to be a generation ahead of these chips. However, that’s not true in most consumer workloads, especially gaming. The ROG Ally powered by the Ryzen Z1 Extreme is up to 58% faster than the Core Ultra 7 155H-based MSI Claw in gaming.
In Cyberpunk 2077, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme averages 52 FPS, giving the Ally a massive leg up over the MSI Claw and its Core Ultra 7 155H SoC. Even the Z1 variant of the ROG handheld is faster than the Claw (Core Ultra 5 and Core Ultra 7 variants) while costing nearly half as much. Let’s have a look at the specifications of the two handhelds.
The Ryzen Z1 features a hex-core CPU and 4 RDNA 3 CUs (256 shaders) clocked at up to 2.5GHz, offering 2.7 TFLOPs of peak single-precision performance. The Ally variant with this chip costs $399. The Z1 Extreme increases the CPU core count to 8 and the GPU CUs to 12 (768 shaders). The handheld with it costs $799.
The MSI Claw’s Core Ultra 5 135H variant is priced at $699, while the Ultra 7 155H model costs $749 with 512GB of SSD storage. Unfortunately for Intel, even the $399 ROG Ally trumps the Core Ultra 7-powered Claw at 1080p, with an even wider performance lead at 720p.
We see a similar display in Forza Horizon 5, where the Ryzen Z1 Extreme is 22.6% faster than the Core Ultra 7 155H, while the Z1 is about as fast.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs relatively better on the Arc Xe-LPG featured on the Core Ultra SoCs. It’s still not as fast as the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, trailing by 5-7%. If it’s any consolation though the Core Ultra 5 135H does outpace the Z1 variant of the Ally by 26%.
Intel’s Core Ultra processors may feature superior hardware, but the Arc drivers have a ways to go before they can challenge the Ryzen APUs in gaming workloads.
Source: Retro Tech Dad.
