ROG Ally….did it bomba?

kikkis said:
I dont get handheld pcs, but to me windows seems like better solution than, hoping things work with proton or whatever.
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it does on the surface but then you realize Windows is power consuming, bloated and can't really be as easily customized and tailored for different scenarios. it uses more battery power, drains more resources, and isn't as optimized for handhelds and laptops as Linux/SteamOS is. Battery Life and performance are PARAMOUNT to handheld gaming systems which are meant to be played in handheld and (of course) taken on the go.

Windows is useful for ONE configuration and that's a desktop PC plugged into the wall with all the power it needs to run a demanding OS. Anything else, like the Deck and the Ally, and the cracks show FAST.
 
64bitmodels said:
it does on the surface but then you realize Windows is power consuming, bloated and can't really be as easily customized and tailored for different scenarios. it uses more battery power, drains more resources, and isn't as optimized for handhelds and laptops as Linux/SteamOS is. Battery Life and performance are PARAMOUNT to handheld gaming systems which are meant to be played in handheld and (of course) taken on the go.

Windows is useful for ONE configuration and that's a desktop PC plugged into the wall with all the power it needs to run a demanding OS. Anything else, like the Deck and the Ally, and the cracks show FAST.
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If you really believe that, why not just load Steam/OS on it and still have the better hardware? Your also conveniently ignoring all of the advantages that windows does offer the mobile space that linux/steamOS lack.
 
THE DUCK said:
If you really believe that, why not just load Steam/OS on it and still have the better hardware?
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There is no support for other handheld besides steam deck when it comes to steam os, the only thing you can use is holoiso, which isn't as accurate and may fall into errors at times

Also, the "better hardware" lacks the track pads and extra back buttons.
 
OverHeat said:
It's release day still available on Best Buy and nobody is talking about it here today.
What is going on???
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I doesn't even perform better than the Steam Deck at low TDP. Worse performance and battery life. Barely better performance on higher TDP, but turbo mode requires so much battery, it's basically useless as a handheld device on the go.
 
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64bitmodels said:
There is no support for other handheld besides steam deck when it comes to steam os, the only thing you can use is holoiso, which isn't as accurate and may fall into errors at times

Also, the "better hardware" lacks the track pads and extra back buttons.
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May, or may work just fine.

Now you can't have it both ways, you said gaming was its most important function amd for that, 99% of its users won't care about the trackpads and would much prefer the much higher horsepower and lighter profile for extended gaming sessions.
 
Handheld PC have been a thing for awhile. Nobody really cared until Valve marketed and subsidized the Steam deck. The ally is just another release after taking the impact of the deck into account. I don't think any full price device is going to make the same waves as the deck.
 
Doesn't seem like a good enough upgrade from the deck, also don't want windows on it and its to expensive.

Also the games i do play already play on the deck without problems. I would have been interested if it had steam OS on it lowered price and had 2-3 times the performance over the deck, but we are far away from that it seems like. So i will wait on valve to release a deck 2.
 
Gamezone said:
I doesn't even perform better than the Steam Deck at low TDP. Worse performance and battery life. Barely better performance on higher TDP, but turbo mode requires so much battery, it's basically useless as a handheld device on the go.
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Handheld device on the go is, again, relative. The steam deck is fucking massive and heavy. Clearly a first gen product. Don't get so defensive. It's almost like people are starting to relate their identity to a video game "console" again. The Sony Ponies and Xturds have ruined enough of this hobby for many of us. Can't we just enjoy advancements in technology and support (critically) new products that push the envelope without resorting to hyperbole?!
 
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I spent most of my time away from home today, and I spent probably 7 hours playing Diablo IV on my ASUS ROG ALLY. It looked and felt fantastic. The battery life isn't great (I think it lasted around 3 hours), but I was also playing at 60 fps in Performance mode. It was extremely quiet, and it didn't get uncomfortably hot other than the screen. When I touched the screen it was shockingly hot, but that screen looks way more impressive than the Steam Deck.

So far, I am sold. I want to try out Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, but I keep getting sucked into playing Diablo IV with friends.
 
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How can you say a product has bombed when it's been released less than 24 hours ago?
There's bene plenty of reviews in the last month, the hype might have calmed down a bit but it's a solid product that is way more powerful than a Steam Deck and with a much better screen.

You can't go back to a Deck once you start playing with it.
 
64bitmodels said:
it's hilarious how ASUS tried to market Windows and full game compatibility as a selling point when all it did was turn people away from the device and keep Steam Deck relevant. You'd think the opposite since "Deck is so finnicky and Windows just works" but apparently it was the opposite and people just know better these days. Now if only people applied that mentality to their home computers instead of just handhelds....

Not to mention the piss poor battery life in part due to the useless 1080p 120hz screen (you do NOT need that on a handheld), overpowered chip that takes away more in battery life than it gives in performance, the bloated OS and the terrible drivers. Lack of the Deck's touchpads and gyro (there is a gyroscope in the handheld, but none of the software can use it?!?!?) making only platformers, fighting games, racing games, and melee action games tolerable on the thing

So until someone recognizes the value of the software + hardware + price combination Valve engineered with the Steam Deck, these overpriced big "MORE POWERFUL THAN THE DECK" handhelds will continue to flounder. Only company that seems to get it is AYN who's doing their own thing of making a smaller handheld at a similar price to the Deck.
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The major issue with the ROG Ally is the poor battery life, which Asus count have avoided if they'd sensibly put a bigger battery there.
Windows and better performance IS the selling point.

Way too early for threads to talk about 'DoA'.

Gyro is one thing, but I'd be shocked if up to 20% of Deck owners even game with the touchpads.
 
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I had it for a week and works well for my needs. Yeah quick resume is not there but hey at least they officially released here in aus where SD is only via grey imports.

Plus all the games I want to play...plays well via 720p60 with stuff maxed out for most minus the RT fad. I see no point of pushing 1080p or 120hz as it hurts the battery life....unless the game is pure 2d. My only real gripe is the white shell...it attracts dirt and in time it will get discolored like my dreamcast.

Anyways GG asus 👍
 
Gamezone said:
I doesn't even perform better than the Steam Deck at low TDP. Worse performance and battery life. Barely better performance on higher TDP, but turbo mode requires so much battery, it's basically useless as a handheld device on the go.
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Erm in every review I've seen this thing smokes rhe steam deck at 25 Watts and above...this chip wasn't designed to go 9 Watts or lower.

The ally smashes the steam deck in performance but the steam deck still rules.
 
Torrent of Pork said:
I'm probably one of the rare unicorns whom this product actually speaks to. Mine arrived on the 11th, but I haven't had time to fuck with it more than setting it up, and logging into my MS and Steam account.

Don't have a PC, and has been a console gamer my entire life.

Love the Switch, and its portability.

Wants to get into PC gaming, and is willing to settle for 1080/60 low for modern games that don't hit the Xbox.

Already a GPU subscriber, so it needs to run PC Gamepass natively.

The $800 ASUS external GPU will bring it up to a 1440/60 machine for when it's docked to my TV, and for $1500 total it's only a few hundred more than a prebuilt rig with the same capability.
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Is this part actually true? Because I think I can make a 5800x3D PC build with a 2070 Super for around 800 and under. I haven't looked up benchmarks for this yet. What type of power are we talking here?
 
One big mistake is to have same size battery as the Deck with the latter being more efficient.

Sure you can boost to 30w APU load but that will last you an hour or less on battery life.
Plus it's Asus and after latest round of their AMD AM 5 fiasco, I don't trust them to support their products.
 
DenchDeckard said:
Erm in every review I've seen this thing smokes rhe steam deck at 25 Watts and above...this chip wasn't designed to go 9 Watts or lower.

The ally smashes the steam deck in performance but the steam deck still rules.
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Issue is how much battery life will you get at 25w+. So unless you dock it it's a bit pointless. If it had at least 50wh battery or maybe 60, then it would be a different story.
 
SaintALia said:
Is this part actually true? Because I think I can make a 5800x3D PC build with a 2070 Super for around 800 and under. I haven't looked up benchmarks for this yet. What type of power are we talking here?
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It could be because he's talking about prebuilts, but then prebuilt PC's are never the sensible choice.
 
Got mine and fell better than my previous sd I had for a short period of time.

In japan rog ally was sold out in minutes . Still I plan to return mine (I bought inside the 30 day test campaign or money back)

Just have to finish hi fi rush and high on life
 
64bitmodels said:
There is no support for other handheld besides steam deck when it comes to steam os, the only thing you can use is holoiso, which isn't as accurate and may fall into errors at times

Also, the "better hardware" lacks the track pads and extra back buttons.
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SteamOS no doubt was a business decision based on just how much it'll cost to bankroll developers to work on Linux OS that's pretty much custom. Valve got deep pockets where cost isn't an issue but other businesses that just run profits by slapping hardware together won't be able to fully commit like Valve have.
 
StereoVsn said:
Issue is how much battery life will you get at 25w+. So unless you dock it it's a bit pointless. If it had at least 50wh battery or maybe 60, then it would be a different story.
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There was rumours that Asus are looking into offering battery upgrades, I hope they do. I guess at 25 watts you get a little over an hour and a half play time? ETA prime has a lot of guides for 15 - 18 watts where you are getting closer to 3 hours.

I have a huge 65 watt power bank that I plan to plug into mine so...theres that.
 
THE DUCK said:
99% of its users won't care about the trackpads
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except for games which require heavy mouse movement such as.... the entirety of the RTS, sim, FPS genres. Which are the defining genres of the PC gaming space and probably one of the major reasons why you'd pick a handheld like this up over A retroid or an AYN Odin.
 
Davevil said:
triple-h-cant-stop-laughing.gif
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bro if a deck running a customized OS with a translation layer and a weaker processor is somehow managing to lag not too far behind a 2x more powerful processor using the native OS these games were made for (and even surpassing it in low wattage scenarios) It's clear Valve did SOMETHING right.
 
Did anyone expect this to be a big thing?

Seems like a super niche product. I'm not surprised very few are talking about it, or buying it.
 
I guess we should expect hardware updates to the Ally every year? Because they only make money on the hardware, they have to continually crank out updates I imagine. I bet the sequel is ready to go and will be announced in the coming months.
Every Ally sold is a win for Valve, as most people are going to use it with Steam. Valve set themselves up for a win-win situation here.
 
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It's a great niche device. I don't know how big the pc mobile market really is. It is very much so, a push the medium forward, device. A necessary step if you will. That said, it has great hardware under the hood. I'm enjoying mine.
 
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DenchDeckard said:
There was rumours that Asus are looking into offering battery upgrades, I hope they do. I guess at 25 watts you get a little over an hour and a half play time? ETA prime has a lot of guides for 15 - 18 watts where you are getting closer to 3 hours.

I have a huge 65 watt power bank that I plan to plug into mine so...theres that.
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I mean, having a power bank is great, but it is not very portable.

And if you are gaming at 15w-18w, gains over Steam Deck aren't worth the price of entree here.
 
I almost bought one, but then I remembered I never play handhelds and canceled my order.
 
I have seen alot of people side swipe the windows jank as something to put up with.
Absolutely NOT.
Windows is garbage, I wish there was an OS for PC that was gaming focused where you could install all these launchers and games with anti cheat but wasnt desktop based.
 
TrebleShot said:
I have seen alot of people side swipe the windows jank as something to put up with.
Absolutely NOT.
Windows is garbage, I wish there was an OS for PC that was gaming focused where you could install all these launchers and games with anti cheat but wasnt desktop based.
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The Anticheats work on Linux, but the problem is emulating the windows version of the same anticheats on linux. If Bungie decide they only want Destiny 2 to work on Windows then they can stop it working on your new non-existent legendary gaming OS as well.
 
Has anyone tried the RSR sampling yet? I didn't even know about it. Apparently its a driver-level version of FSR, that upscales the resolution and improves performance for games that don't officially support FSR.
 
I wanted one until I saw the reviews about how crap its battery life was and how fiddly it could be to use a windows tablet if you're not a PC gamer like me. I haven't touched PC gaming since my teens and I'm 36. I don't want to battle with all the shit that comes with that. Would rather turn it on, install a game I want to play and it just work.
 
1 1/2 days in, upgraded the hard drive when it showed up, the installed D4, SF6, HWL, and FF:SOP (FOR THE CHAOS!!!!!!!!!!!!).

SO….performance is far superior to my steam deck. I am not sure why the echo chamber constantly has to shit on this devices performance. You have a crazy amount of custom power profiles you can build, the hardware is beefy, and the 1080p screen makes all those upscaled 720p games look awesome.

The only REAL caveat here: You have to be PCMR user to get the most out this device (okay…okay...a bit of hyperbole there). You really have to be comfortable adjusting settings and have a grasp on what technology (software wise) best benefits the game you are playing.

Is it as EASY to use as the deck? No it is not, see my PCMR comment above.

Is it a better piece of tech? IMO yes it is. It has a better feeling in the hand, the components are higher quality (as it should be for the price and time difference) and you get better performance for your games based on your willingness to tweak.

I am currently working on some Tiny OS (windows 11 based) images to see if I can get a smaller less resource intensive version of windows on the device but we will see how that goes.

For me at least, having access to the Steam OS experience on this device AND the flexibility windows OS provides is a real winner here.
 
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