This is the ASUS ROG Ally, the most powerful handheld gaming console right now, and this is an
Nvidia RTX 4090 mobile GPU, which we can connect to the Ally for a massive FPS boost in games!
It makes 4K gaming at max settings a reality, even without features like DLSS,
FSR or frame generation, all of which can also be used to further increase performance,
making this the ultimate portable gaming setup.
It’s so more than just an external GPU though. Known as the XG Mobile,
this box is a fully fledged dock, giving you a more stable ethernet connection,
HDMI and DisplayPort outputs for hooking up a monitor or TV, USB A and C ports for
connecting a keyboard and mouse, and even an SD card slot if your ally doesn’t have enough space.
It’s got a 330 watt power supply built in, so it charges the Ally too, and compared
to a gaming laptop, it’s honestly still quite portable, it’s just a thin box.
It connects to the Ally with this port at the top. The connector is proprietary to ASUS,
but they’ve been using this same adapter since early 2021 on a number of laptops,
so you can use it with other ASUS devices like the Flow Z13, Flow X13, or Flow X16.
Unfortunately the cable is kind of short, so it can be a bit awkward to position. They just can’t
make it too long because it’s a direct PCIe 3 connection with 8 lanes, giving us 63gb/s
of bandwidth - That's 57% more compared to a Thunderbolt 4 eGPU. You can actually use the
XG Mobile without an external screen connected, but the short cable makes that super awkward,
and you lose some performance as the integrated graphics need to process the signal. Even without
that overhead, the lower 1080p resolution becomes a bit limiting for the 4090.
Take Hogwarts Legacy for example. The ROG Ally plus 4090 is hitting 76 FPS at 1080p,
decent considering what it is, but there’s clearly a bottleneck as it’s basically reaching the same
frame rate at the higher 1440p resolution. In this case it’s a bit better than a 3080 Ti laptop,
but worse than a 4080 laptop, and then at 4K it’s only slightly behind a 4090 gaming laptop with
the same mobile GPU. In other words, you get the most out of the XG Mobile at higher resolutions.
The 4090 laptop GPU actually uses the same die as the 4080 desktop, but the desktop card uses more
than double the power and has faster memory. Which is why it performs quite a bit better.
Simply turning on DLSS and setting it to balanced mode was enough to
boost this game above 60 FPS at 4k max settings,
while frame generation can also help make things smoother by inserting its AI generated frames.
Other games like Cyberpunk 2077 were doing quite well, even at 1080p ultra settings,
not far off 100 FPS, though it’s still not able to beat a 4070 laptop GPU,
again because of bottlenecks. Then at the higher 1440p resolution the Ally
is close to a 4080 laptop GPU, as higher resolutions are more GPU heavy and shift
the workload more to the XG Mobile. It’s only running at 40 FPS at 4K ultra settings,
but I mean the average FPS is a little ahead of a desktop RTX 3080, which isn’t bad at all.
Again we can make use of features like DLSS with balanced mode to improve the experience,
and then frame generation is just the cherry on
top. At this point you could even throw on some ray tracing effects if you want.
A Plague Tale Requiem was also doing fairly well at 1080p ultra settings, not too far
behind a 4080 laptop this time. They’re even closer together at 1440p, and the fact that
this handheld device with a small box can beat a desktop 3080 still kind of blows me away. It
starts getting a bit stuttery at 4K, running around 40 FPS just like Cyberpunk previously.
It felt a lot better just turning DLSS on, and then even more so when combined with frame
generation, though of course not too many games actually have this feature just yet. Honestly if
you’re playing games on the Ally that support these features you should absolutely use them.
The XG Mobile is able to push FPS in games to the next level. Even 4K gaming at max
settings on this little device becomes possible. The ROG Ally can basically
perform like a high-end gaming laptop, but with a similar price tag to match.
This combination is not cheap! Right now the top specced Ally that I’ve got is $700,
while the lower specced model is $600. The XG Mobile with RTX 4090 mobile GPU
on the other hand? That’ll set you back an additional $2000 - yikes!
Now to be fair, there are lower specced XG Mobile options available for less money,
including Nvidia’s RTX 3080 or AMD’s RX 6850M XT. The main thing you’ll
be missing is Nvidia’s frame generation support, which gives you smoother gameplay,
but only in supported games. So depends if you want to exchange your wallet for that.
High-end desktop GPUs definitely offer better performance for less money,
but even a Mini-ITX system is nowhere near as portable compared to the Ally and XG Mobile
combination. With this level of performance you can totally dock the Ally to a monitor with a
keyboard and mouse and use it like a Windows desktop with high-end laptop tier performance.
Don’t worry, you definitely don’t need the expensive XG Mobile to have a good
time playing games on the ROG Ally, and this is all thanks to AMD’s Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip.
It’s got its own RDNA 3 graphics built in, which I found to perform similarly
to Nvidia GTX 1650 graphics in a gaming laptop. This is honestly quite impressive
considering the Ally is basically using integrated graphics from the processor,
something I don’t even bother testing normally on laptops, but this has been specially designed with
GPU performance in mind. Although the frame rates look low compared to other laptops,
don’t forget that this is a $700 handheld console. When you’re actually playing games on this thing
you’ll make use of features like FSR upscaling and lower setting levels to get the best experience.
I’m only using high settings here as I’ve got a bunch of existing laptop data to compare against.
The Ally runs much quieter without the XG Mobile too, let’s have a listen.
It's actually fairly quiet by itself if you're not manually maxing the fan out.
I suppose you could just turn your speakers up if you’re using the XG Mobile,
and if you’re sitting on your couch it’ll be further away compared to handheld mode too..
And obviously as you’d expect, the XG Mobile requires way more power to run.
The raw CPU performance from the Ryzen Z1 Extreme is quite impressive too. This 8 core
16 thread CPU is able to beat a number of much bigger gaming laptops that also
cost much more money. It doesn’t lose too much performance when running on battery power either,
which is kind of important for something that’s designed to be used handheld on the go. Again
don’t forget this is a $700 device, the laptops near it here are at least 3 times more expensive.
For some context, the Ally is in-line with AMD’s 8 core Ryzen 7 5700X desktop processor
in multicore performance, while the Ally was ahead in single core performance,
except the 5700X would be drawing much more power,
The XG Mobile definitely takes you to a whole new
level if you’re after a portable 1440p or even 4K gaming setup.
The RTX 4090 version that I’ve got here is pretty expensive,
but the cheaper models still offer excellent performance.
You can check out how well they perform in this video next. I’ve tested 14 games at 4K,
1440p and 1080p resolutions on the RTX 3080 and Radeon RX 6850M
XT, so check that one out next if you want to beef up your Ally without spending $2000!