The MSI CLAW has yet to become available to either the media or general masses but some media outfits in China have reportedly managed to get their hands on the console. Unsurprisingly, these outfits benchmarked the Intel-powered handheld console with a handful of games and compared it to the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme chipset.
The MSI CLAW was supposedly tested with four game titles: Cyberpunk 2077, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Resident Evil, with the results posted on the Chinese social media platform, BiliBili. On that note, the models obtained by the Chinese media are those fitted with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU and Core Ultra 5 135H, both of which are packing eight and seven Xe Cores, with their respective ARC integrated GPUs. Further, they tested it using its four different power level presets: 15W, 20W, 25W, and max TDP, which is 40W.
As a point of comparison to the MSI CLAW, the ASUS ROG Ally and its Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC ships out with just three power configurations, 10W, 15W, and 25W. The latter can be increased to 30W but you will need to keep the gaming handheld plugged into a power source that outputs 60W or greater.
In Cyberpunk 2077, the MSI CLAW with the 155H churned out an average frame count of 29 fps, while the model with the 135H was considerably worse at 22 fps. Do note that these results were obtained while running both consoles at a 20W TDP limit and with Intel XeSS enabled and the graphics preset set to Low Quality.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the reviewer only posted the results of the MSI CLAW powered by the Core Ultra 7 155H, both running at 20W and 15W, as well as the graphics preset running at High Quality but with upscaling turned off. In both TDP settings, the console appears less powerful than the ROG Ally and its Z1 Extreme, with the 15W faring considerably worse for the Intel-powered console. However, at max TDP, the console does manage to sustain a 49 fps average.
It should be noted that these performance metrics are still early number and therefore still inconclusive of the MSI CLAW’s overall performance once it launches. As pointed out by Videocardz, it is possible that the testers employed drivers that may be different from the ones that will be made available upon the console’s official product launch. As such, it is best to take this with a grain of salt. For that matter, we’re definitely looking forward to reviewing the CLAW, if and when it makes it into our lab.
(Source: BiliBili [1] [2] [3], Videocardz)
