- Microsoft’s ROG Xbox Ally X Windows 11 custom full-screen experience continues to hold back gaming performance
- SteamOS clone Bazzite offers almost 30% performance boost in several games
- It’s still early days for ROG Xbox Ally X, but Microsoft may have a long journey of future optimizations
There’s no doubt that the ROG Xbox Ally X has joined many of the internet’s lists of the best portable gaming consoles, regardless of the controversy surrounding its price. However, Microsoft’s custom operating system has failed to close the gap with a fierce competitor in gaming performance.
As highlighted by TweakTown, ROG Xbox Ally
Microsoft’s custom version of Windows 11 for ROG Xbox Ally X was created to be compatible with portable devices by reducing background processes to free up more RAM for gaming. While this has improved performance compared to the standard version of Windows 11, it has yet to catch up to SteamOS.
In Kingdom Come Deliverance 2Windows 11 on the ROG Xbox Ally maintains an average of around 47 fps at 17W (TDP/power consumption). Switching to Bazzite, Cyber Dopamine saw a jump to around 62fps with a higher projected amount of battery remaining. That’s a 27% performance increase, and similar improvements are evident in other gaming tests like The Hogwarts Legacy (shown below).
At the very least, a dual-boot setup of Windows 11 and Bazzite (or SteamOS if officially supported) seems like the best way to go, because Valve’s SteamOS still has the disadvantage of not supporting a wide range of popular multiplayer games due to the anti-cheat system, particularly EA’s. Battlefield 6.
Regardless, Linux-compatible games will run much better on the ROG Xbox Ally
Analysis: I’m still not quite sure whether custom Windows 11 matches SteamOS
As I expected, the new full-screen Windows 11 experience doesn’t come close enough to Valve’s SteamOS in terms of gaming performance, and while the former still has a long way to go in terms of additional optimizations through updates, I’m not very confident that it will ever completely close the gap on SteamOS.
Anti-cheat games that don’t run on Linux are one of the main reasons I haven’t switched to SteamOS on my main gaming desktop PC, and it’s painful to realize that users like me could be missing out on extra performance that’s been slowed down by Windows 11’s annoying and unwanted background processes.
Some consumers feel it’s too late for this new full-screen experience to genuinely compete with SteamOS or even, in this case, its clone, Bazzite. It seems like it’s only a matter of time before more gamers switch to Linux, and I think once anti-cheat support is resolved, it may be game over for Microsoft and Windows 11.
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