ASUS ROG Ally & Xbox Ally Handheld Updates To Deliver Hybrid CPU Tweaks And Much More
When the original ASUS ROG Ally handhelds came out, they were followed by a long series of patches that radically improved both the software and hardware, adding new features, fixing bugs, and even directly improving the performance and efficiency of the devices thanks to power management tweaks and driver updates. The ROG Xbox Ally family hasn't seen the same level of improvements so far, but that's likely attributable to the fact that the original Ally was a first-generation product, with lots of kinks to work out. We didn't have any major issues with the Xbox Ally X in our testing, but ASUS is nonetheless hard at work on updates for the device.
The first major updates for the ROG Xbox Ally and its superior "X" sibling are available now, and they're pretty big. The headline feature is, as we noted, the ability to manually tweak separate performance values for the disparate CPU cores in the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme processor used by the ROG Xbox Ally X. While ASUS does refer to them as "P-core / E-core", they're not so different; the CPU has three standard "Zen 5" cores, and five "Zen 5C" dense cores that are more power efficient and operate at lower clocks. In terms of capability, the CPU core types are identical, so it's quite different from the situation with Intel's hybrid CPUs.
We'd show you a screenshot of this feature, but our system still hasn't finished updating after more than an hour.
Having to open the overlay, tab over twice, and then scroll down to this 'Exit' button was very tedious.
Besides that, the updates bring a keymapping feature for entering or exiting the Xbox Full Screen Experience, an update notification feature for the Armoury Crate integration into Xbox Game Bar, and improvements to the FPS Limiter function found therein; specifically, the FPS limiter now uses AMD's driver-integrated Radeon Chill mechanism to do its thing, and the option for a 45 FPS limit has been removed and replaced with a 40 FPS limit that makes more sense on the 120-Hz LCD with which the system is equipped. Although the machine has variable refresh rate support, its valid VRR range is only 48 to 120 Hz, so the 45 FPS cap was a uniquely bad experience.
Beyond that, ASUS says it "improved the gyro aiming algorithm to enhance precision with the gyro sensor," that it added Windows power mode options to the Manual power mode, and critically, the bottom bar button color is now a gray color design. Specifically for the ROG Xbox Ally (non-X), the latest BIOS has improved power consumption in standby mode, optimized BIOS update flow, and fixed a bug with cloud recovery. On the ROG Xbox Ally X, these same updates have brought improved haptics for the Impulse Triggers, improved stability for the touch panel and power delivery firmware, and finally, improved overall gaming performance thanks to a new AMD GPU driver.
One slightly frustrating detail of the patch notes is something we've complained about in the past: the multiple different update channels you have to use for ASUS handhelds. You can't rely on Windows Update alone for all of the necessary fixes, so you have to either download them through Armoury Crate, or if you're not using that, from the ASUS website directly—and while we have to give huge props to ASUS for still offering the downloads (so that Armoury Crate is not required), the update process is less than convenient; we're five restarts in on our ROG Xbox Ally X, and still not fully updated. ASUS also isn't offering our machine the new Armoury Crate SE version 2.1.15.0 despite the company's blog post saying it's released. Hopefully ASUS can get all of this worked out soon; it wouldn't surprise us if yesterday's Cloudflare outage complicated the rollout somehow.
