ETA Prime is usually legit. I saw an IGN video that also talked about AI integration and they mentioned Ryzen AI in their video so I hope the NPU is indeed available.
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This is literally emblazend on the Xbox website product page for the device
I cant even imagine the shit sandwich they would be eating if these features werent available. The product page also makes no mention of the feature being disable.
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It’s the reason I was wondering about it, because I when watching ETA PRIME’s video, I saw the info graphic that mentioned it and remembered some rumor about the PS6 handheld being the only one that would have an active NPU. From there I checked out some talk about the Z2 Ex and how it’s a laptop GPU that’s being used for handhelds and how AMS disabled the NPU for it.
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It has an NPU. The X version is the first device announced using the new AI Z2 Extreme. It is the first Z processor that AMD didnt disable the NPU. I imagine that was a request from Microsoft.
The regular Xbox Ally on the other hand is basically using a rebranded Steam Deck chip so does not have an NPU.
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Regular All will be quite disappointing imo even though I understand its place for affordability reasons and to be able to market at a certain price, but I somehow doubt it’ll run everything, or at least it won’t run AAAs that well.
Really hoping they come up with something like GeForce experience and optimize games automatically to your hardware to simplify the process for people and make them enjoy the game with the best optimized settings for their system. Should be easy to do with the few different handhelds configurations there are so far.
The NPU though should definitely be used for upscaling or frame generation in some form and that stuff should be implemented at the OS level and used to optimize the experience even more.
People need to know what they’re buying. The base Ally is not meant for high-end gaming. If you play your AAA games on a big TV (like presumably most people,) the Ally is a nice supplemental device for older and/or indie games. If you want an all-in-one device to replace your console, get the Ally X. (In docked mode it should be close to Series S.)
MS is working on something similar to the “Steam Deck verified” system. That should filter your library to only show compatible games. Hopefully there’ll be some default setting profiles for those games.
Regarding the NPU, MSI’s handhelds use AI to automatically adjust the TDP (power usage) to maximize battery life. I can see ASUS/MS maybe doing something similar on the Ally X. On other devices you have to do it manually.
God I wish it could run the majority of my Xbox library, a handheld that can run all AAA games from the Xbox store would be amazing.
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