The Claw is due to be launched by MSI in the next few weeks, but preliminary results are already causing concern.
At the very beginning of the year, MSI sprang a surprise. Not by announcing its arrival on the portable console market - after all, ASUS and Lenovo had already followed Valve's lead with their ROG Ally and Legion Go. No, if MSI surprised everyone, it was by indicating that for its entry into this new segment, the Taiwanese firm had opted for a partnership with Intel. While the vast majority of players in this market work hand-in-hand, chip-in-chip, with AMD and its powerful APUs, MSI is giving Intel and its new Meteor Lake architecture a run for its money.
MSI Claw vs ASUS ROG Ally at 15 watts © VideoCardz
Two versions of the MSI Claw have already been unveiled. The first will be built around the Meteor Lake Core Ultra 7 155H processor, which is equipped with eight Xe cores, the cores Intel has designed for its ARC graphics cards. Alongside this, a second version of the Claw is planned, this time with a Core Ultra 5 135H processor. Less powerful, it still features seven Xe cores for performance that, at least on paper, shouldn't be too far behind that of the Core Ultra 7 155H. Performance is the great mystery surrounding Meteor Lake chips. A mystery partly lifted thanks to leaks relayed by VideoCardz.
MSI Claw vs ASUS ROG Ally at 20 watts © VideoCardz
Of course, we'll have to wait for proper testing before reaching any conclusions, but these initial results are worrying for both MSI and Intel, which may have been hoping to find a new outlet for its chips. Indeed, compared with ASUS's ROG Ally Z1 - a machine with a format and aesthetic quite similar to the Claw - the gap is clear. On Shadow of the Tomb Raider, for example, the Claw clearly lags behind the ROG Ally with 24 frames per second, compared with 42 when the TDP is set at 15 watts. It's a little better at 20 watts (40 fps vs. 53) then 25 watts (46 fps vs. 56), but the ROG Ally remains ahead, and even when the Claw adopts a higher TDP (40 watts vs. 30), the ROG Ally wins at 49 fps vs. 53.
MSI Claw 155H vs 135H at 20 watts © VideoCardz
Three other games - Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Resident Evil - give fairly similar results, and the case of the MSI Claw with Core Ultra 5 135H is hardly more reassuring. On Cyberpunk 2077, we're talking about 22.53 fps at 20 watts, compared with 29.78 fps on the Core Ultra 7 155H version, again at a TDP of 20 watts. According to the latest rumours, MSI is not due to release its Claw before the end of March. We can only hope that the brand manages to improve its performance, but as its price looks set to be a good notch above that of the ROG Ally, things are looking complicated for MSI... and, by the same token, for Intel.
