MSI Claw 8 AI+ A2VM Evaluation – Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

3DMark

Cyberpunk 2077

Steam Deck preset, no upscaling.

Hogwarts Legacy

Low preset, TAA.

Control

Medium preset, no AA, DX11.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

High preset, TAA, DX12.

Space Marine 2

Low preset, TAA.

Regarding gaming efficiency, the MSI Claw 8 is a beast at 25 W and above. When pitted towards the Steam Deck LCD, Zotac Zone, and ASUS ROG Ally, it could actually typically lead the pack. It’s slower than anticipated in some video games, nonetheless, which might be as a consequence of poor driver optimizations.

That mentioned, we like that Intel, not MSI, is liable for driver updates, which leads to a gradual stream of GPU driver updates. Much higher than, say, on the ASUS ROG Ally and Ally X, the place ASUS ships new GPU drivers, which regularly results in house owners of mentioned gadgets having to attend weeks or longer to obtain a brand new GPU driver for his or her machine after AMD releases its drivers. At least they’ve it higher than Lenovo Legion Go house owners.

Anyway, when the drivers are optimized for a selected sport, the Claw 8 can greatest even the superb Zotac Zone at 25 W. This is predicted as a result of the Arc 140V iGPU powering the MSI Claw 8 is sort of highly effective for built-in graphics and needs to be about 20 % quicker than the Radeon 780M iGPU discovered within the Z1 Extreme, and about on par with the Radeon 980M iGPU discovered within the Z2 Extreme.

On the opposite hand, efficiency at 15 W is considerably disappointing, even in video games for which the Arc 140V is optimized. What is nice are 1% lows, that are glorious even in video games wherein the Claw 8 can not match the Zotac Zone.

What we are able to say is that the Arc 140V is excellently optimized for low wattages. At 12 W and beneath, it mops the ground with each different iGPU, which you’ll see on the following web page, the place we check energy scaling.

We performed a number of indie video games (Crow Country, Minishoot’ Adventures, Lumines Remastered, Crypt Custodian, and extra) throughout testing, and most video games ran nice at solely 8 W. The solely sport the place we needed to improve energy to about 12 W was Minishoot’ Adventures. But nonetheless, it is nice to see you can take pleasure in most 2D video games at 8 W, permitting you to sport for hours with out worrying about battery life.

We additionally should reward Intel for together with ultra-fast 8533 MT/s on-package reminiscence, which actually helps the Claw 8 obtain such excessive gaming efficiency. Better nonetheless, 32 GB of RAM shared by the CPU and GPU permits you to run newer AAA video games with excessive textures.

This is great to see in a handheld as a result of most fashionable AAA video games look greater than first rate even with low element presets, however low textures nonetheless go away heaps to be desired. Having sufficient reminiscence to extend them to excessive in most video games means you’ll be able to noticeably enhance the standard of visuals and not using a efficiency penalty.

We managed to run Forza Horizon 5 at 1200p with XeSS set to Balanced and textures and “Environment Geometry Quality” set to Ultra, with the sport working between 40 and 60 FPS.

We additionally managed to get playable efficiency in a heavy hitter, working Horizon: Forbidden West with textures set to excessive made the sport look beautiful.

Another trick up the MSI Claw 8’s sleeve is that, because it options an Intel iGPU, it could actually make the most of AI-ML algorithm-based XeSS upscaling. Now, XeSS does subjectively look barely worse than DLSS 3 and FSR 4, however its gentle years forward in comparison with FSR 3.1 and older variations of FSR. You do not should take care of awful-looking FSR anymore, since not one of the competing handhelds can run FSR 4, they’re caught with FSR 3.1

This means the MSI Claw 8 is a PC handheld with by far the most effective upscaling answer, which comes very near the standard provided by DLSS 3 and FSR 4. Add a instrument resembling Optiscaler into the equation, and you’ll inject AI-ML based mostly XeSS into each sport that both helps DLSS or FSR! In different phrases, you’ll be able to take pleasure in awesome-looking upscaling should you’re keen to place within the effort. Better nonetheless, putting in Optiscaler may be very easy, so I urge each Claw 8 proprietor to provide it an opportunity; you’ll be able to thank me later.