Steam Deck vs. ASUS ROG Ally Arch Linux Gaming Performance

The ASUS ROG Ally with its Zen 4 CPU cores and RDNA3 graphics were showing much better performance than the Steam Deck in various open-source games. But on a performance-per-Watt basis the Steam Deck remained quite competitive to this ASUS handheld.

The 3DMark Wild Life native Linux build was also showing nice gains with the Zen 4 + RDNA3 powered ROG Ally.

For those wanting maximum performance the ASUS ROG Ally to no surprise is capable of delivering much better gaming performance with its Zen 4 cores and RDNA3 graphics compared to half the number of cores and Zen 2 based design of the Steam Deck along with the RDNA2 graphics. But for those interested in power efficiency, the Steam Deck was still competing well and leading against the ROG Ally in various games.

During these gaming tests the ASUS ROG Ally's Z1 Extreme saw a SoC power consumption around 14.5 Watts on average with a peak of 25 Watts compared to a 10 Watt average with the Steam Deck and 16 Watt peak. When the ASUS ROG Ally was running in the performance ACPI Platform Profile it jumped to a 30 Watt average and a recorded peak of 53 Watts.

In the benchmark-friendly games tested, the ASUS ROG Ally was on average 30% faster than the Steam Deck and or 74% faster in the power-hungry "performance" ACPI Platform Profile mode.

Of course, besides the performance there are also other factors to consider between the gaming handhelds like the displays, controls, etc. The ROG Ally is also slightly more expensive at the top-end at $699 USD compared to $649 for the 512GB Steam Deck.