The speed at which technology is developing is unstoppable. Although Valve’s Steam Deck recently celebrated its first birthday, there are worries about how effectively the newest games will work on it if we finally shake off the cross-gen plague, despite how great the device is in so many other ways. Let me introduce AMD’s Ryzen 7 6800U, a CPU that surpasses the Van Gogh processor found in the Deck in nearly every aspect. Although it is intended for laptops, it also appears to function effectively in a portable device. The newest portable PCs to hit Digital Foundry are the AyaNeo 2 and the AyaNeo Geek. With the 6800U, they perform amazingly well, but battery life suffers as a result.
Setting aside battery consumption for a second, AyaNeo’s two portable devices are powerful machines that can provide outstanding results at 720p and 1080p, making them suitable for docked and mobile gaming. For those who have witnessed the capabilities of the Ryzen 7 6800U when incorporated into a laptop, this will come as no surprise, yet AyaNeo manages to provide similarly captivating outcomes from its mobile devices. AyaNeo easily prevails when faced with games that put Deck under pressure. These portable devices are capable of amazing things: Doom Eternal at 1080p60, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered with ray tracing (! ), Fortnite with the whole UE5 feature set, and A Plague Tale Requiem looking stunning at a locked 30 frames per second.
Before we discuss the handheld’s actual quality, let’s put the underlying technology into context. When comparing the specifications of the 6800U with the customized CPU of the Steam Deck, there is a noticeable disparity. The 6800U features eight cores on a redesigned architecture with greater theoretical boost clocks than the Valve handheld, which employs a quad-core Zen 2 CPU cluster. The GPU side of things is also significantly better: twelve RDNA2 compute units, with a maximum clock of 2.2GHz compared to 1.6GHz in the Valve handheld, replace the eight RDNA2 compute units in the Deck.
Although it appears to be a whitewash, the Van Gogh chip in the Deck has a power range of 4 to 15 W. This drastically increases in the 6800U to a range of 15–22W, while the Ayaneo handhelds here can operate at lower or higher TDPs if desired (albeit the performance won’t be that great). This strongly implies that even while the 6800U will have greater power, the battery life will be reduced because you’ll need to consume more energy to have that improved performance.
The AyaNeo handhelds make an effort to counteract this by utilizing larger batteries; the Deck’s 40WHr battery is replaced with a massive 50.25WHr equivalent in the devices we’re seeing today. Nevertheless, after playing AyaNeo 2 and AyaNeo Geek for just 70 to 75 minutes straight, I’m exhausted. While frame-rate limiters and intelligent TDP adjustment software might be helpful, you’ll constantly run into problems with your endurance when playing demanding games. The harsh reality of Ryzen 7 6800U’s intended use in thin-and-light laptops is brought to light by battery life, whereas Steam Deck’s more economical Van Gogh chip was always intended for a portable gaming device.
Aside from a few small visual differences, the AyaNeo Geek is essentially the company’s attempt to reduce specifications in order to provide a less expensive device. Nonetheless, there isn’t much of a distinction because both are unquestionably high-end handhelds. However, if you want to save money, you may select one of the Geek’s lower-spec options. For instance, both come with a 1200p screen, but the Geek has an 800p option. Whereas the Geek has a Gen 3.0 NVME SSD, the AyaNeo 2 features a PCIe Gen 4.0. Additionally, the Geek’s haptics and gyros have lesser specs, although I really can’t detect the difference in those areas. I tested both using 32GB of LPDDR5-6400 and a 2TB SSD, but once more, there are less expensive solutions in both categories.
The design of the portable device is exquisite. It is quite difficult to criticize. It’s a remarkable gadget that’s smaller than Steam Deck, as comfortable to grip, and has well-designed analog sticks and buttons that make sense. The seven-inch IPS display is also quite impressive, boasting rich color reproduction, deep blacks, and exceptional brightness. Although the 1200p screen might seem excessive for a handheld device, it is feasible to utilize that amount of screen real estate since the Radeon 680M graphics integrated into this device are rather powerful. It’s amazing how nicely games run at 1080p/1200p on a seven-inch screen due to the fine resolution. Regretfully, Steam Deck lacks an essential feature: an adjustable refresh rate. Nevertheless, the 1200p screen may support a 48Hz custom resolution using the Custom Resolution Utility (CRU) program, even if AyaNeo does not advise doing so.
Going back to the device’s physical size, the two AyaNeo variants replace the one USB-C on the Steam Deck with three: two on top and one on bottom. Ultimately, having extra I/O choices is really good, but two of them feature full USB 4 bandwidth to get the maximum out of an external GPU hook-up if that’s your preference. Of course, there’s also a volume button, fingerprint reader, MicroSD, and headphone port. Along with the optional dock, I was also given two USB-Cs, two type-A connectors, and HDMI 2.0 output (although with 4:2:2 chroma subsampling). The primary USB-C docking connector on the front of this device is adjustable, which makes it usable for both the new models and my AyaNeo Air portable. You can see this in action in the hardware gallery on this page. This is what makes it fascinating.
The 6800U outperforms Steam Deck in terms of performance and specifications, but how much more competent is it altogether? The bundle is a win overall. I experienced problems with v-sync deactivated on both devices, as you can see in the video; however, it functioned flawlessly on the AyaNeo Air and the Steam Deck. I decided to test with v-sync enabled throughout as a result. Since handhelds really employ portrait screens—that is, v-sync off screen-tearing moves from left to right instead of up and down as on a regular screen—this is probably how you’ll game anyhow. To be honest, it looks terrible, which is probably why v-sync is required on gadgets like the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck.
The OS and front-end of the AyaNeo handhelds are where they fall short in comparison to Steam Deck. While the AyaNeo devices run Windows 11 with a rudimentary launcher named AyaSpace, Valve spent years developing an interface that works for SteamOS. This locates installed games on your system and displays them in a menu. Additionally, you may adjust RGB on the sticks and alter haptics and inputs using the program. The most beneficial feature is the ability to adjust the processor’s TDP limit. You can go lower than 15W, but doing so will significantly restrict performance and power-starve the processor. However, you can also go higher. Game mode is 22W, but there’s a Pro option that takes you all the way up to 33W. For the record, AMD specifies a 28W maximum in their standards.
Power determines the frame rates in games, and the video review includes a variety of power scaling tests. At 15W, 22W, 26W, and 33W, I tested. Looking at the gallery below, you can see that the power spike from 15W to 22W is by far the largest. AyaSpace refers to this as “game mode,” and it’s the ideal setting for premium mobile gaming. Forza Horizon 5, for instance, has a performance bump of 33 percent when power is increased from 15 to 22 W. You’re only getting eight percent higher performance with 26W, which is around 19 percent more power than 22W. While certain titles experience little advances, the difference between 26W and 33W—which is not displayed in the gallery—amounts to statistical noise.
What you do get in the gallery are performance advantages when compared to Steam Deck operating at its maximum 15W, and some intriguing revelations are included. First off, when paired with a matching 15W power supply, games like Control and Doom Eternal may actually run quicker than the AyaNeo handhelds, even with its specs flaws. This is due to the fact that, astonishingly, the open source Radeon driver that powers SteamOS may outperform AMD’s Windows counterpart in terms of efficiency. However, the full impact of the AyaNeo’s performance advantage becomes apparent after the extra juice is supplied. A 35 to 40 percent performance gain is typical even at 22W, which is an enormous amount of headroom for pushing through the Steam Deck’s restrictions in the most taxing games. There is some more headroom after 22W, but it’s better to save it for docked play, when you’ll be plugged in and not have to deal with the already severe battery life restrictions.
I’ve spent a lot of time and had a great time pushing this hardware, as you can see in the embedded video. I strongly recommend watching it because customizing a PC game to fit the capabilities of the kit can often yield some stunning results that have a far greater impact than performance differences stated as percentages. The idea of an AMD integrated GPU providing workable frame rates for ray tracing features still eludes me. It was especially amazing to run the PC version of God of War at PS4 similar settings and to reach very, very near to the performance of the gold master code, which ran with an unlocked frame-rate, because the idea of PS4-level performance from a mobile device is equally incredible. Spider-Man from Marvel Remastered? That will also operate in 1080p30, and it may provide a better experience than the original PS4 model.
A Plague Tale: Requiem is the most recent example of a PC game we’ve showed operating at settings matching those of the PlayStation 5. In one test, I observed the AyaNeo Geek at 33W delivering 27% of the PS5’s throughput in like-for-like testing. While frame rates increase when resolution is reduced in comparison to the PS5, the PS5 still outperformed it even at 720p (upscaling from 482p via TAAU) and 4K (upscaling from 1440p), by about 10%. Even if it’s only a single scene from a single game, it’s still an intriguing test. A Plague Tale: Requiem has performance issues on Steam Deck, but as you can see in the video, I was able to lock the game at an effective frame rate of 30 frames per second, and it looks amazing on a portable device.
I’m still not sure if games made for the ninth generation consoles will work on these AMD-powered handhelds in the future, and Unreal Engine games still seem to have problems. Theoretically, Returnal and The Callisto Protocol might function smoothly, although stuttering issues were always a possibility. This isn’t the AyaNeo handhelds’ fault, though; rather, it’s the result of ongoing problems with different PC ports. It’s interesting to note that many of these problems are resolved on Deck, which isn’t always the case with Windows-based handhelds, thanks to Valve’s amazing level of curation with the Proton compatibility layer.
Since I’ve been using the AyaNeo 2 and AyaNeo Geek for a few months, the quality of the experience and the performance that is available to me never ceases to amaze me. The surrounding community and the many applications that are popping up also truly impress me. But, it’s unquestionably a device for the sophisticated power user rather than the user-friendly experience provided by the Valve portable. Enticingly, Valve has stated that SteamOS would work on Ryzen 7 6800U devices with improved power management, a better UI, and a Proton compatibility layer optimized for RDNA 2 graphics. It may be really big. Regardless of how excellent the AyaNeo handhelds are, Windows 11 always seems like a strange match in contrast to Valve’s own operating system.
In the end, Steam Deck is still the more affordable and superior choice for the average user, but I’m still rather enamored with the AyaNeo 2 because of its many amazing gaming achievements and its stunning display. I’m also interested to see what happens next because it has been reported that the Ryzen 7 6800U and other lower power CPU alternatives will be included in an updated AyaNeo Air.