It’s a massive 105-minute DF Direct Weekly landing today, with myself, John and Alex discussing reactions to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, along with some follow-ups on John’s coverage last week. We also discuss the fact that Sharp is providing a new display for an as-yet unannounced console (Switch 2?) while we also give a preview of sorts to A Plague Tale: Requiem’s new 60fps performance mode. How did Asobo deliver this and to what extent is it really running at 60 frames per second? We’ll have more on that later this week, but just remember – there’s no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to real-time rendering and we’re not just looking at rendering resolution reductions here. Regardless, 60fps was the key demand from many console gamers and it’s great to see the developer respond.
The focus of this blog post concerns the Asus ROG Ally – and why we didn’t have a review on embargo last week. Essentially, there seems to be an issue with my unit where the 15W performance mode runs significantly more slowly than it should when it is plugged into the mains – and bearing in mind that battery life is at a premium on this machine, that’s how I benched it. Just as I finished my review, various Ryzen 7840U benchmarks emerged that seemed somewhat at odds with my results, which shouldn’t be happening as the ROG Ally’s Z1 Extreme should be on par or better than the results I was getting.
Through a process of trial and error, I eventually found out that on my unit at least, running it from mains in the 15W mode impeded performance, while removing the power cable instantly gave me a circa 18-20 percent frame-rate boost, making the results much more plausible and requiring a full re-test of the 15W performance preset. This is all the more bizarre as in its high-power turbo mode, plugging the unit into the mains increases performance as it should. I’ve been talking to Asus about this and hopefully a new unit will be heading my way but my 3DMark results do seem close enough to theirs in the reviewers’ guide, so I’m fairly confident that my new ‘from battery’ 15W benchmarks are accurate.
