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STALKER 2 Handheld Performance

17th Dimension

Handheld Gaming Reviewer
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Jul 31, 2024
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STALKER is back after 15 years with Stalker 2 that finally transforms the Zone into a seamless open-world filled with dangers, mysteries, and treasures. Let's see how Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally fare in the latest rendition of the Zone in our handheld performance review.

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So, unplayable, basically. Not surprising seeing just how terribly it runs. Might be interesting to see if things change in, oh, a year or so if they will manage to fix it up a bit.
 
very playable, i'd love to play at 15 fps
 
The graphs in the performance section say Stean Deck, instead of Steam deck.

Anyways, yeah it's just another sloppy unreal engine deployment, like they all have been, and like most of them will end up being.
 
AMD has its work cut of for it with the Ryzen Z2 series.

It also makes me wonder if the future of handhelds are "console" handhelds rather than "Windows" handhelds. Since the name of the game is optimization for these devices.

If Sony and Microsoft release handhelds as extensions to their larger consoles and make devs optimize for it, then we could end up with very playable experiences for all games. Basically the same approach Valve is taking with its "Steam Deck Optimized" initiative.

Handhelds are certainly a very exciting space to watch.
 
Why would you set the Graphics to Epic on an APU?
 
And still people are buying those handhelds.

There are other games which runs quite well on android tablets. But these are most likely no desktop pc games.
 
And still people are buying those handhelds.

There are other games which runs quite well on android tablets. But these are most likely no desktop pc games.

They play loads of desktop PC games. Just not 2022 and later ones with heavy 3D requirements.

There are tons of games from just a few years ago that the vast majority of people out there have never played which will run great on a gaming handheld.
 
I just looked at the first page. This is a AAA Game so I expected these numbers from Handhelds.
It’s not about handheld. It’s about some rubbish game engine that barely look better than some less taxing game engines. Like Metro Exodus look good without all these graphical burdens. At the end of the day, how many PCs out there allows you to run the game at max settings to experience the so called eye candies? So the game looks good but the number of people that will enjoy it is probably like 20%.
 
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I just realised something.

That display resolution is the same as from my laptop with Turion MT-32 AMD64 CPU with X700 graphics from 2006.

I really wonder how many games are optimised or even playable with display resolutions from 2006. (= ~ 20 year old display resolution)
 
And still people are buying those handhelds.
When your shiny new 2024 game runs like crap whilst looking like this because the devs can't figure out how to get lighting / shadows to work in UE5, whilst as a healthy reminder - the very same handhelds will happily get 200fps @ 1440p looking like this on literal 26 year old game engines on same hardware, then it ain't the handhelds with the "competency problem"... ;)
 
minimum is 1060/580, but even that needs frame generation and fsr enabled ...
 
On Rog Ally X using a couple performance mods, I can hit 60fps through most the game so far on only 17 watts. It is using over 20 gigs of ram so it probably isn't possible on og ally without taking settings way down as I'm mostly medium and a couple high. Some towns still dip into the 40s but it has been running great. I made a video of the settings and listed the performance mods I used in the YouTube comments. I was still hitting 60fps on 17watts while recording directly off the ally x.
 
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