I appreciate your kind words, and I don't want to kill the good mod or anything, but there's not a single week when the idea of going "f*ck all this" and stop doing the news doesn't cross my mind.

Give me more tasks or responsibilities and you'll see me getting burned out very fast.

ASUS ROG Ally gaming console is actually real, features Ryzen APU and supports RTX 4090 external GPU

https://videocardz.com/newz/asus-rog-ally-gaming-console-is-actually-real-features-ryzen-apu-and-supports-rtx-4090-external-gpu

Sounds quite impressive. Weighs less than the steam deck, it's a lot quieter than the steam deck (Ally 20DB vs Steam Deck 37DB), 1080p 120hz display vs 720p 60hz, runs Windows 11, SSD replacement is easier than the Steam Deck, also has custom UI software, has supposedly double the performance of the steam deck. You can also plug it into their external laptop 4090 gpu dock if you want more juice. The question of course is the price and while Asus says they will be competitive, most likely it will be starting at $600 if not more. The other question is the battery life.

AMD Ryzen 5 7540U Zen4 “Phoenix” APU with Radeon 740M integrated RDNA3 GPU has been spotted

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ryzen-5-7540u-zen4-phoenix-apu-with-radeon-740m-integrated-rdna3-gpu-has-been-spotted

Sounds like this is what they could been using

AMD confirms A620 motherboards are ideal for 65W TDP, higher TDP support is not guaranteed

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-confirms-a620-motherboards-are-ideal-for-65w-tdp-higher-tdp-support-is-not-guaranteed

Intel Reportedly Making Next-Gen GPUs At TSMC: Battlemage 4nm In 2H 2024 & Celestial 3nm In 2H 2026

https://wccftech.com/intel-making-next-gen-gpus-at-tsmc-battlemage-4nm-2h-2024-celestial-3nm-2h-2026/

Certainly a bit later release dates that I would have liked.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Is Now The Most Popular GPU On Steam

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3060-is-now-the-most-popular-gpu-on-steam/

I don't think the 60 series will get 12GB of vram again for quite some time.

The "low" (no) texture option requires nearly 6GB of VRAM. Something is broken here.

Crazy how the 3060 has climbed up the GPU ranks. Guess people are buying them up after all the pricing shennanigans this gen.

Also quite interested in the 4070 seeing the power consumption. With some undervolting might be able to get it running sub 130W when gaming. Meaning console like power consumption with the right set up, which is pretty insane.

Of all the possible days to announce a new product, Asus went and did it in (almost) the worst one. What were they thinking?

An dbeing a ROG product, I doubt it'll go as low as $600. I doubt it will be less than $800 at the very minimum.

The xx60 products are always the most popular cards so no surprise here.

I'm not so sure about the xx60s and the memory capacity. This gen they may be 8GB, but the 5000 ones may go back to 12GB. It will likely depend on how much will AMD give their own cards.

The 4070 reviews will also be interesting to have a more apples to apples comparison with the 3070 GPU as both have the same 5888 cores, giving us an insight of the gen on gen performance increase, even with the higher clocks and memory bandwidth.

I think biggest question that I have with Asus Ally is whether or not they somehow fixed the sleep function. It's one of the key reasons why I love my Steam Deck and why I haven't installed windows on it yet. But by the lack of announcements regarding that aspect, it sounds like it will be a traditional windows experience for better or for worse. I'll likely continue to use my Steam Deck instead.

I hadn't thought about the sleep feature of the device given the many other unknown details about the it: APU details, RAM, storage, battery life, type of panel used (IPS, OLED, etc.), and the list goes on.

Unless they've come up with a custom solution for it, I very much doubt MSoft did something especial just for them. But well, with a mostly fixed hardware (only the SSD seems to be able to get upgraded), Asus can develop a custom BIOS that allows the machine to boot much faster.

Anyway, we'll have to wait until Asus shares more info about it.

Call me finnicky, but I like how "official" the Steam deck looks and acts, compared to Asus's handheld, which we all know is from a hw manufacturer, not a company that manages it's own game store, own OS and is in active touch with devs.

I also have that gut feeling that this is just Asus trying a trick stab at the Deck, and I just don't feel like Asus is going to stick to this long-term, like Valve seems to be doing, so I'm not fully expecting further competition from them with pricing or future iterations/very long-term support.

We've seen what happened with EVGA, and I know Asus is a different kettle of fish, but I dunno, I just feel like Asus and other 3rd parties give up the goose faster than Valve gave up on Steam link and Steam gamepad, the Deck just feels like a different commitment step because it's using both their own HW and their own OS, whilst Asus is third partying literally everything and using Windows 11 (which I really dislike for an OS, and do not trust with a 10ft pole). 

Yeah we can see so far at how moving to TMSC's 4nm has added a lot of efficiency. Even with like for like specs on Ada. With the performance gained quite substantial from higher boosting clocks and massively increased cache. There's probably already number crunched estimates already to see what it performs like (some outlets say 3080-like performance) which isn't too bad of an uplift all considering. I'd be interested to see how the 4070 stacks up vs the 3070 like the same frequency. Then we can see the IPC gains are like this gen.

I'm just really drawn by the incredibly low power consumption of this particular SKU. Lets hope the FE doesn't sell out within 5 minutes lol.

If they can get that standby mode sorted that would be an amazing handheld. Not in the market for one as the Steam Deck is more than enough for me. And at least we know that Valve are constantly updating the Deck with some really good support from Valve and devs alike. But that hardware in the ASUS is crazy.. 2x performance with that APU over SD's Van Gough for what I presume is Pheonix is a fairly decent uplift in only over a year.

Yea that's true. It will be interesting to see how much more in depth their custom software can go outside of the vanilla windows experience.

Yea I think outside of power more hardware and quieter fans and game compatibility, I think the handheld experience is where the Asus Ally will miss the mark. It just feels like a more generic handheld than an actual competitor. Plus Valve gets 30% off of every game sold on steam so they can give the Steam Deck a long life cycle where as Asus doesn't make any additional money.

Yea same. Keep in mind the 2x is at 35 watts and 50% uplift at 15 watts mind you. Considering the battery life according to linus tech tips video is supposed to be comparable to Steam Deck, if the battery is the same at 15 watts as the Steam Deck, then 35 watts will be like a 5 minute battery lol. I do think the display is where the Steam Deck missed the mark cause it's frankly meh where as the Asus one looks god tier by comparison.

Overall I'll wait for the Steam Deck 2 before thinking about upgrading because I think Valve has learnt a lot with the Steam Decks release and will likely fix a lot of the issues.