It started with the ROG Ally and this AMD Z1 Extreme/7840U chip, supposedly the first ever x86 SOC that is somewhat comparable in efficiency as Apple Silicon, so I bought one, it wasn't very good because power management is still garbage, idle power is way higher than Apple. This is a game console so maybe idle is not what you do most of the time, fair enough, but other problem, I suspected this but I wanted to give Windows yet another shot, it yet again failed, for like the 5th time over ~15 years,
that is, the inability to reliably sleep and wake. Most of the time it works, but occasionally, it ither wakes by itself, or it can't wake when you want it to, extremely annoying for a handheld, returned the product.
Then a few months later, Steam Deck OLED came out, this time it absolutely can sleep, flawless, great job. Valve also somehow managed to turn a bunch of Linux hax that would normally require hours of command pasting into the konsole, work automatically, as a game console to run Windows games. Extremely polished software and hardware experience, great stuff. However I ended up selling it.
I just think the handheld game console thing doesn't make sense for me personally, due to the amount and type of games I play, makes more sense to just get a MacBook, but that's all I will say here, more interestingly for you, hopefully:
Apple Silicon still owns the game, any game with native MacOS code, just demonstrates utter humiliation for any non-Apple chip, still, and I don't know why nobody wants to do anything about it. Comparison between Apple Silicon and PC hardware is hard to find, while this is partially because of compatibility, I would argue it is also because lots of people don't like to see Apple dominate the charts.
So I had to simply do the comparison my self, with Baulder's Gate 3. We run 1280x800 no FSR, Low preset, I have 2 chars standing just before the trigger for the grove fight looking at the hills.
Z1 Extreme 30W: ~63FPS
Van Gogh 6nm 15W: ~37FPS
(these results taken from Youtube resources, because I already sold my consoles)
M2 15W: 50FPS
M2 9W: 42FPS
M3 Pro 14c 15W: 115FPS
M3 Pro 14c 25W: 132FPS
First let's focus on the Z1 versus M2 result, M2 is actually made on an older node with lower transistor count, but more stuff to do, Apple puts in these huge display engines for example. Apple GPUs are supposedly not as good as others for polygon rendering, yet M2 is still more efficient. There's no way to increase power on my M2 because it's in a MacBook Air, but if we could run it at 30w it might match of surpass the Z1 Extreme.
What's really impressive is how much performance M2 maintains at just 9w, where as Z1 Extreme can barely run at less than 12w. M2 can kill the Deck with just passive cooling 9w. They remade the same chip in 4NM for the Deck OLED which is slightly more powerful, so maybe can match M2 at 9w with 15w. However, the Steam Deck cannot keep up with the CPU demands in Act 3 of the game with just4 CPU cores, which is no problem for M2, or the Z1 for that matter.
Then if we look at the latest M3 Pro chip, oh boy, it's just embarrassing, M3 Pro is over 2x as fast as the Z1 Extreme at the same power level. It is in fact so strong, It can maintain 30fps at 2560x1600 ultra settings:
RTX3090 368W: 142FPS
M3 Pro 14c 20W: 30FPS
(GPU power only)
M3 Pro has ~1/5th the performance while using ~1/18th the power, for 3.6x efficiency, which is certainly not crazy considering the 3090 is a much older 8nm chip for desktop. The M3 Pro has less GPU cores than M2 Pro, but Apple claims they redid the architecture so I guess it is now actually much more efficient with game rendering, rather than just video/compute like before. Benchmarks elsewhere can confirm that the M3 Pro is in fact stronger than M2 Pro with less cores.
So on one hand, Apple Silicon still humiliates the competition in performance per watt, we're already 4 years into laptop M chips, and what 10 years into phone chips, still nobody could compete. Valve says garbage like the technology for Steam Deck 2 does not yet exist, but it does, in Apple devices, I bet the small M3 can double the Steam Deck with the same power, is that not enough for a Steam Deck 2?
On the other hand, just from a consumer perspective, instead of dropping that ~$700 on a handheld console, maybe you could just add it to your laptop budget and get a better MacBook. Obviously I understand most games still don't come to Mac but do you really have to play every game on the go? At least for me, keyboard and trackpad is better than gamepad because most games I play are better on keyboard, like BG3. In fact I hardly use the controller for my gaming PC, because basically only racing games are better with a controller, and I don't play fighting games.
that is, the inability to reliably sleep and wake. Most of the time it works, but occasionally, it ither wakes by itself, or it can't wake when you want it to, extremely annoying for a handheld, returned the product.
Then a few months later, Steam Deck OLED came out, this time it absolutely can sleep, flawless, great job. Valve also somehow managed to turn a bunch of Linux hax that would normally require hours of command pasting into the konsole, work automatically, as a game console to run Windows games. Extremely polished software and hardware experience, great stuff. However I ended up selling it.
I just think the handheld game console thing doesn't make sense for me personally, due to the amount and type of games I play, makes more sense to just get a MacBook, but that's all I will say here, more interestingly for you, hopefully:
Apple Silicon still owns the game, any game with native MacOS code, just demonstrates utter humiliation for any non-Apple chip, still, and I don't know why nobody wants to do anything about it. Comparison between Apple Silicon and PC hardware is hard to find, while this is partially because of compatibility, I would argue it is also because lots of people don't like to see Apple dominate the charts.
So I had to simply do the comparison my self, with Baulder's Gate 3. We run 1280x800 no FSR, Low preset, I have 2 chars standing just before the trigger for the grove fight looking at the hills.
Z1 Extreme 30W: ~63FPS
Van Gogh 6nm 15W: ~37FPS
(these results taken from Youtube resources, because I already sold my consoles)
M2 15W: 50FPS
M2 9W: 42FPS
M3 Pro 14c 15W: 115FPS
M3 Pro 14c 25W: 132FPS
First let's focus on the Z1 versus M2 result, M2 is actually made on an older node with lower transistor count, but more stuff to do, Apple puts in these huge display engines for example. Apple GPUs are supposedly not as good as others for polygon rendering, yet M2 is still more efficient. There's no way to increase power on my M2 because it's in a MacBook Air, but if we could run it at 30w it might match of surpass the Z1 Extreme.
What's really impressive is how much performance M2 maintains at just 9w, where as Z1 Extreme can barely run at less than 12w. M2 can kill the Deck with just passive cooling 9w. They remade the same chip in 4NM for the Deck OLED which is slightly more powerful, so maybe can match M2 at 9w with 15w. However, the Steam Deck cannot keep up with the CPU demands in Act 3 of the game with just4 CPU cores, which is no problem for M2, or the Z1 for that matter.
Then if we look at the latest M3 Pro chip, oh boy, it's just embarrassing, M3 Pro is over 2x as fast as the Z1 Extreme at the same power level. It is in fact so strong, It can maintain 30fps at 2560x1600 ultra settings:
RTX3090 368W: 142FPS
M3 Pro 14c 20W: 30FPS
(GPU power only)
M3 Pro has ~1/5th the performance while using ~1/18th the power, for 3.6x efficiency, which is certainly not crazy considering the 3090 is a much older 8nm chip for desktop. The M3 Pro has less GPU cores than M2 Pro, but Apple claims they redid the architecture so I guess it is now actually much more efficient with game rendering, rather than just video/compute like before. Benchmarks elsewhere can confirm that the M3 Pro is in fact stronger than M2 Pro with less cores.
So on one hand, Apple Silicon still humiliates the competition in performance per watt, we're already 4 years into laptop M chips, and what 10 years into phone chips, still nobody could compete. Valve says garbage like the technology for Steam Deck 2 does not yet exist, but it does, in Apple devices, I bet the small M3 can double the Steam Deck with the same power, is that not enough for a Steam Deck 2?
On the other hand, just from a consumer perspective, instead of dropping that ~$700 on a handheld console, maybe you could just add it to your laptop budget and get a better MacBook. Obviously I understand most games still don't come to Mac but do you really have to play every game on the go? At least for me, keyboard and trackpad is better than gamepad because most games I play are better on keyboard, like BG3. In fact I hardly use the controller for my gaming PC, because basically only racing games are better with a controller, and I don't play fighting games.
). I wonder how touchscreens fare in their assessment of ideal gaming controller. 
