At first, the ASUS ROG Ally was thought to be an April Fool’s joke, but it’s now clear that the hardware is about to make life difficult for the Steam Deck. Today the start date and the local pricing were confirmed.
The ASUS ROG Ally could become a Steam Deck killer, after all the handheld PC, which was presented again in detail today, has noticeably better technical equipment. In some cases, this had already been confirmed in advance, but today it was discussed in detail again.
The ROG Ally will feature a brand new APU from AMD: the Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip. This is based on the Zen 4 architecture with RDNA 3 graphics and can even keep up with the performance of home consoles with eight cores, 16 threads and 8.6 teraflops of graphics performance. It was also announced today that an AMD Ryzen Z1 variant with six cores and 12 threads will be available in the third quarter of 2023; this slimmed-down form results in a lower price point for the console, which we’ll get to later. Both APUs should support the upscaling technologies FSR and RSR.
Otherwise, the handheld relies on the zero-gravity thermal system with dual fans and ultra-thin heat sink fins as well as special heat pipes; this should keep the ROG Ally at an optimal temperature. Other than that, there is 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory at 6400 MHz, 512 GB of PCIe Gen 4 memory, a UHS-II microSD card slot and Wi-Fi 6E support in the device. All this should ensure opulent graphics on a 120Hz Full HD screen with 1080p resolution and FreeSync Premium support. This shines with a maximum brightness of 500 nits.
What does all this mean in practice? Hogwarts Legacy should be able to be played in 1080p with an average of 60-70 fps, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 with 75-80 fps and NBA 2K23 with 85 fps – just to name a few examples.
And when will this good piece come out? As of June 13, 2023, the ASUS Rog Ally will be available worldwide; Pre-orders are now possible, although initially only in the more expensive version with the Extreme chip (RC71L-NH001W); the cost point here is 799 dollars. In the third quarter, the handheld will also be available in a technically somewhat slimmed-down version (RC71L-NH002W) for 699 dollars.
Thanks to Windows 11 you have the best possible access to your games. ASUS also cooperates with Microsoft and other manufacturers for this. Supported platforms include Steam, EA, Xbox Game Pass, Epic Games Store, GOG.com and more. ROG Ally comes with free three-month access to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
