More from Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and more: all the news about the handheld PC gaming revolution
IGN’s Wesley Yin-Poole has an excellent interview with Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais and Yazan Aldehayyat, including one reason why they have no news about Steam Deck 2. It’s because yet again, the promised “generational leap” in performance is not yet possible. They haven’t found the right chip.
Griffais says:
“We’re not interested in getting to a point where it’s 20 or 30 or even 50% more performance at the same battery life. We want something a little bit more demarcated than that.”
Correction: I originally wrote there was no way to bring up the task switcher on Claw — the best part of FSE — but that’s because MSI Center claimed I was on the latest BIOS when I wasn’t! With BIOS 10F, I can long-press Quick Settings to task-switch. Because that BIOS may have fixed other things too, I also need to re-test sleep (which wasn’t working for me).
The Xbox Ally is better with Bazzite.
You know how Sony’s quietly building a PS5-grade handheld? GPD’s kind of already done it — by stuffing the monster AMD Strix Halo chip in the Framework Desktop and ROG Flow Z13 gaming tablet into a handheld that needs SO MUCH electricity. Preorders are live at Indiegogo.
The change, part of Hotfix #34, means the game will have “a more stable framerate, lower loading times, and smoother gameplay,” according to Larian Studios.
The $800 OneXGPU Lite is tiny and versatile with both OCuLink and 80Gbps USB 4 v2 (which should work with Thunderbolt 5 machines too). Its older AMD 7600M XT won’t beat the pricier Asus XG Mobile, though, which has an internal power supply — while the OneXGPU requires a big external brick.
Remember when the Steam Deck burst onto the scene and validated Linux for gaming in one fell swoop by making your Windows games handheld? Your phone might be next.
We’re rather fond of Mechanism accessories around here, and Siri’s latest is something I’ve never seen before: a credible, folding way to attach your handhelds to an airplane seatback without becoming a Reddit meme. Hopefully. $19, shipping today, or bundled with a Magsafe adapter for your phone for $25.
Find Nvidia’s updated Linux app here. In the app’s Settings > Gameplay, set Frame Rate to 90 fps. For best results, I also recommend setting resolution to 3456 x 2160, and running each game at 1440p.
Nvidia also launched its RTX 5080 servers today, but it’s a soft launch:
Valve has filed two trademarks, one for consoles, accessories, and controllers, and one for “computer hardware” generally. The Valve Index VR headset trademarked the same, so don’t take “console” literally! With Steam Deck, it filed for handhelds, too. I bet the “Frame” isn’t Deckard, Roy or Fremont, but the whole enchilada:
Few handheld gaming PCs have OLED screens — fewer of those have variable refresh rates. The Legion Go 2 has those and sustained brightness of 500 nits, peaking at 1000 nits, in a native landscape orientation to avoid panel refresh weirdness! According to Evan Blass’s huge new dump of leaked images, anyhow.
