u/neverspeakawordagain

I posted the other day about wanting to get a gaming computer for my son's birthday, and you all told me that I could get the graphics card and the OLED screen separately, instead of the $6,000 graphics card that was the only one that had an OLED screen built in. I shopped around and I'm going to go pick up this computer and this OLED screen for him tomorrow! You saved me a lot of money! Thank you!

So, after not being able to find a case that fit my Claw 8 EX yesterday; breaking off my left joystick last night; and fixing my left joystick today with somewhat more difficulty than expected, I was really focused on finding a case that actually fit today so I don't have to worry about it falling on the ground again. And I kind of found one!

I say "kind of" because it fits adequately enough that I feel comfortable using the case, but still not well enough that I won't keep my eyes out for a better-fitting case going forward.

On the recommendation of somebody in the comments yesterday, I got the JSaux Legion Go case. I was hesitant upon opening the package, because the exterior dimensions are slightly smaller than the exterior dimensions of the Spigen Legion Go case, which does not fit the Claw 8 EX.

The Claw 8 EX kind of fits in this JSaux case because, unlike the Spigen cast, the Claw 8 EX here sits on top of the molded-in spaces for the Legion Go hand grips, rather than trying to cram it inside that space like in the Spigen case. So, you're losing the protections of that interior molded space where the Legion Go would normally sit, but you still have the protections of the exterior hard shell.

It also only "kind of" fits because you need to keep the zipper open on the upper zippered compartment where you'd normally keep chargers and cables. If you keep that compartment zipped shut, the mesh front of it will press down on the joysticks and keep the lid open slightly, which you can see in the fourth picture above. Unzip that, and the mesh separates apart and the container can close. There's enough room underneath the device to put a charger and USB-C cable inside the hard-molded space between where the grips of the Legion Go would normally sit (at least the portable GAN 65w chargers I use; I don't know if the stock charger would fit there).

So, for now, this is a case that actually kind of works and is better than nothing, and hopefully it will prevent any more instances like last night where the unit fell off my nightstand and a joystick popped off.

I was posting earlier about the difficulty I've had finding a case for the Claw 8 EX, and, well, now here I am. It fell off my nightstand and the left joystick popped off.

On the bright side, since I bought it from Best Buy and I'm a Best Buy Total Rewards member, they'll repair or replace it for free.

On the less bright side, I'm sure that means I won't be getting the replacement until Best Buy gets more new restocks that aren't yet accounted for. So... I'm sure I'll be without one for a while, and in the meantime I'll be back to using my old ROG Ally X (which now feels obsolete).

So it goes.

EDITED TO ADD: I found the missing piece this morning. The plastic wasn't cracked or broken. It cannot be popped on from the front; the base is just about wide enough to cover the RGB ring. So the repair requires taking off the back, removing a bunch of stuff, and putting it back in through the front. We'll see whether I can get that done myself.

FURTHER EDITED TO ADD: Ok, I fixed it. There was a trick to it that made it more difficult than it appeared. Had to take the back plate off - very simple, just six screws in the back of the device, and then used a plastic pick to pry apart the back from the front. The Hall Effect unit with the left joystick and L2 trigger was connected by 3 screws, easy enough to take out. From there, it appeared that the thumb piece pushed right on to the joystick itself. There were two flat sides on the joystick and two flat sides on the interior part of the thumb piece, easy enough to put on and click into place. However, when I put everything back together, the left joystick wouldn't re-center. There was too much friction between the clear RGB ring and the base of the thumb piece. It took me three different tries and way too much time, but eventually I realized the problem: looking at the thumb piece and the joystick, it appears it can go on one of two ways, rotated 180° from each other, with flat sides on both sides. This is not the case; it can only go on one way. Once I had it in the right position, I put the thumb piece on, clicked it down once into position, and then clicked it down a second time past another detent. After putting everything back together, it worked perfectly.

Like seemingly every other Claw 8 EX owner, I've been on the lookout for a case that will fit the device. Amazon started advertising a case specifically for the Claw 8 EX (from a "generic" manufacturer in China); I ordered it and it was delivered today. It felt kind of flimsy, but I was hopeful that it would actually hold the device. No such luck; as you can see above, the device is too wide to fit in the case.

Some people have said that the Spigen Rugged Armor case for the Legion Go, Claw 7 ai+, and Claw 8 ai+ would hold the device. I bought it on those recommendations. As you can see above, the Claw 8 EX also doesn't fit in that case. The bottom grips are too wide.

To date, the only thing I've been able to find that actually fits the Claw 8 EX is the JSaux Sling Bag for the Steam Deck and Rog XBox Ally X. As you can see in the final picture above, that bag is SINGIFICANTLY larger than either of the cases I have that don't fit the device.

My search continues.

Everyone's complaining about how few games have been benchmarked, so here's a couple of more. Somebody asked about Assassin's Creed: Origins in another thread, so I did that. I also did Black Myth: Wukong to see what an Unreal Engine 5 game looks like. All tests done with the unit plugged in, at 30W power draw, in 1200p.

For Assassin's Creed: Origins, I ran two benchmarks: one with everything at the highest (Ultra) settings, and one with medium settings. The game runs into a CPU bottleneck when a bunch of NPCs show up on screen at the same time, which resulted in low minimum framerates.

Ultra settings: 54 average fps; 90 maximum fps; 18 minimum fps

Medium settings: 71 average fps; 95 maximum fps; 15 minimum fps

For Black Myth: Wukong, I ran three benchmarks. I believe there's a glitch in the graphics settings on this benchmark. The benchmarks themselves say that frame generation is on, but I don't believe that's the case; the option to turn frame generation isn't available in the graphics menu for XeSS scaling (I included a screenshot of this). I'm almost certain that this game doesn't natively support XeSS frame gen even though it says "on" there in the benchmarking screen. I think there's a driver issue there. Everything was run at 1200p, with XeSS scaling set to 60 out of 100 (which is the recommended setting). I don't think this game is optimized properly for the Arc G3 Extreme; it kept giving me warnings about low VRAM because it wasn't detecting that the APU shares RAM between the CPU and GPU.

First, I ran everything at the lowest settings. I wasn't sure if this game would run at all, so I started off there. Then I ran it on High settings. Then I ran it on Low with Ray Tracing on.

Low settings: 76 average fps; 93 maximum fps; 37 minimum fps

High settings: 45 average fps; 56 maximum fps; 17 minimum fps

Low settings (Ray Tracing on): 30 average fps; 37 maximum fps; 19 minimum fps

So while I was writing up a review of the Claw 8 EX last night, I mentioned that I thought its performance at 1080p was similar to the performance of my gaming laptop with a mobile RTX 5070 at 1440p. I promised I would do some benchmarking of the two against each other, and, well... here it is.

The laptop in question is an Alienware Aurora 16X with a Core Ultra 9 275HX; a mobile RTX 5070; 32 GB RAM; and a 2TB SSD. I paid $1,799 for it at Best Buy last December - $100 more than I just paid for the Claw 8 EX. The Claw 8 EX technically has a 1200p screen and the Aurora 16x technically has a 1600p screen, but I ran them at 1080p and 1440p, respectively, during all of the benchmarks.

The Claw 8 EX ran plugged in to the wall, at a 30w draw. The Aurora 16X also ran plugged in to the wall, with its 280w power supply.

Short answer: Of the four benchmarks I ran, the Claw 8 EX actually won one of them! The Alienware won the other 3 by wide margins.

First off, Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I really think the G3 Extreme runs into CPU limitations with this game. At the Highest settings at 1080p, the Claw 8 EX gets 72 FPS. The Aurora 16X, at the Highest settings at 1440p, gets 146 FPS. The laptop is 103% better, an absolute trouncing. This was, by far, the biggest win for the laptop. Again, I really think there's a CPU limitation here for the Claw 8 EX.

Next up, Red Dead Redemption 2. In Ultra settings at 1080p, the Claw 8 got 68.4757 FPS. In Ultra settings at 1440p, the Aurora 16X only managed 60.3523 FPS! The Claw 8 beat out the maximum and minimum frame rates as well, and beat out the gaming laptop by 13.5% (albeit, of course, at a lower resolution).

Finally, Cyberpunk. I ran two different tests to check for how the two machines ran this game both with and without AI trickery. Again, the Claw 8 EX ran at 1080p, and the Aurora 16X ran at 1440p.

On the raw raster test, I ran both machines in "Low" graphics settings with all upscaling and frame generation turned off. The Claw 8 EX averaged 74.85 FPS. The Aurora 16x averaged 106.04 FPS, an advantage of 41.7%.

Then, I ran them both at Ray Tracing: Ultra. This is Cyberpunk's highest setting without path tracing, which absolutely destroys performance. The Aurora 16x was run with DLSS Auto upscaling, and 2x frame generation. The Claw 8 EX was run with XeSS Auto upscaling, and 2x frame generation. The Claw 8 EX managed to put out 64.46 FPS, which I thought was absolutely astonishing for device of this type. Alas, the Aurora 16X managed 88.76 FPS, to pull out victory by 37.7%.

In any event, given the price similarities between these two devices, I felt like this would be a helpful exercise to compare the two. I have a feeling that the further you go back in time with games, the more the Alienware's lead would grow, because that Core Ultra 9 275HX is an absolute beast of a CPU, and the CPU in the Intel Arc G3 Extreme is, very much on purpose, limited to conserve power. But I think it's a real testament to what Intel and MSI have accomplished that this comparison is even remotely within the same universe.

Hope people find this helpful!

EDITED TO ADD: I uploaded the wrong screenshot for the Claw 8 EX benchmark; that's a test done at Lowest settings instead of Highest settings. The numbers I gave for the Highest test in the body of the review there are correct.

I got my Claw 8 EX delivered from Best Buy yesterday, and got the chance to use it a bit today. Wanted to give some subjective impressions on it for people thinking of buying it.

I'm not a video game writer or a video game expert. I play single player games only, open world stuff. Most of the gaming I've done recently has been on a ROG Ally X that I've had for two years. I also have a desktop in my home office with a 5070 Ti I sometimes play on (through a 32" 165hz 4k OLED monitor) that I built a bit more than a year ago, and an Alienware Aurora 16x with a 5070 with a 2560 x 1600 IPS screen that I got in December and barely ever use. I got the Claw 8 EX to replace the Ally X. Oh, I also have a PS5, but I literally haven't even turned it on since I played Gran Turismo 7 when that came out.

I always play at full power, either (mostly) plugged into the wall, or plugged into a 65+ w portable battery pack. The two Thunderbolt 4 ports are good on that front since it lets me swap out external batteries without having to reduce system power input even for a moment.

The short story is that the Claw 8 EX is amazing, and an hour of actually using the thing has been enough to convince me that this is a game- changing piece of hardware. I'll break it down, starting with the negatives.

THE BAD:

- Price. It is what it is; nothing else I can add to the discussion. My wife just bought herself a seven thousand dollar purse so she can't complain about me spending $1,699 on this.

- Triggers. This is genuinely my biggest disappointment, to the point that I was kind of heartbroken when I realized it. All of my gaming is either done on an Ally X or with a DualSense controller hooked to a PC. The DualSense has variable resistance triggers and the Ally X has haptic motors in the triggers, which kind of mimics that variable resistance effect. When reviewers said the Claw 8 EX featured Hall Effect triggers and improved haptic feedback I was hoping the triggers would have a similar effect. No such luck; this is a HUGE bummer. The triggers themselves are also small, and just don't feel particularly good.

- Size. The device is MASSIVE. I got a JSAUX case that fits it, but it's huge, and there aren't any non-huge cases that will fit it. I have relatively large hands, but I still have to stretch my fingers awkwardly to reach the menu buttons. The size also makes the device feel weirdly light. It's objectively heavier than my Ally X, but because it's larger, it somehow feels lighter? It's kind of like how a standard 2-foot diameter beach ball factually weighs more than a baseball does, but it feels the other way around due to the density. The light feeling makes it feel flimsy on first impression, even though it isn't.

- Haptic Feedback. It's... adequate. Reviewers had pumped it up as a big generational improvement, but it's nowhere near as good as the haptics on the Ally X, let alone a Dualsense controller.

- Game Information Overlay. Unless I'm really missing something, there's no way to show APU temperature without downloading third-party software, and I legitimately cannot believe that I can't make the standard in-game overlay show a simple clock so I can know what time it is without looking at my watch.

THE GOOD:

- Performance. Oh. My. God. It's better than I could have possibly imagined. I posted a bunch of screenshots earlier of benchmarking - in short, it's 70-80% faster than the ROG Ally X in raster and 100-120% faster when both are using upscaling and 2x frame gen - but that can't even get across how unbelievable the performance is. It's significantly faster on Medium Ray Tracing in Cyberpunk than the Ally X is on Steamdeck settings. I haven't sat down and done benchmarking to confirm this, but it seems to me based on my recollections that the Claw 8 EX on 1080p gives roughly equivalent performance, across the board, to my Alienware laptop with a mobile RTX 5070 at 1440p. That's not a joke; I'll run benchmarks this weekend to make sure I'm not crazy thinking this. What this means is that for me - a guy with relatively poor eyesight, even with glasses - games look better than I've ever seen them. At my desk, my 32" 4k screen is roughly 3 feet from my eyes. With the Claw 8 EX, I take my glasses off and the 8" 1080p screen is less than 6 inches from my eyes. It takes up nearly all of my field of vision, and so things look sharper and crisper to my eyes than they do on a 32" 4k OLED screen talking up a much smaller fraction of my field of vision. Being able to run Cyberpunk at Ray Tracing Medium at 80+ FPS when the screen takes up my whole field of vision is simply astonishing, and shows me details I could simply never make out before. It honestly feels like how big the jump in graphics was when the PS2 came out over the PS1, just an absolutely gargantuan difference.

- The Screen. It's really, really good. Size, image quality, lighting. I'm not concerned about the lack of an OLED screen. Don't miss it. And, again, I say that as somebody with both a 32" 4k OLED screen and a 34" 1440p widescreen OLED hooked up to a desktop with a 5070 Ti.

- Ergonomics. A bunch of reviews mentioned the laser cut plastic handgrips, but I didn't realize how much more comfortable they would make the device to hold until I got it in my hands. Truly a huge improvement over any other handheld.

- Micro SD Express Drive. This one is unique to me, since Micro SD Express cards have gotten stupid- expensive, but when the Switch 2 came out I got one for my then-5 year old son. At the time, Amazon had a sale on Samsung P9 Micro SD Express drives. 512 GB drives were $40. So I got 4 of them, thinking he might fill up just one over time. Well, I still have 3 sealed in the packages, so that's 1 1/2 TB of storage that's fast enough to run games off of, so I don't need to worry about filling up the M2 drive or having to replace it with a bigger one.

TO SUM UP:

I'm going to have to figure out a third- party mechanism for keeping an eye on system temperatures, but other than that, the Claw 8 EX is so good that it's not only made my 5070 laptop obsolete, but it's also a better gaming experience than my 5070 Ti desktop. I'm pretty sure that for the foreseeable future, this is going to be my one and only gaming device.

After I posted screenshots of Cyberpunk benchmarking earlier from my new Claw 8 EX against my old Rog Ally X (non-XBox), some people asked about older games that weren't optimized for FSR / XeSS, and I agreed to run benchmarks on Red Dead Redemption 2 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The Red Dead Redemption 2 benchmark doesn't show any information other than average, minimum, and maximum FPS during the benchmark; the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark provides more detailed information.

Everything was run on both systems at 1080p, 30w power draw, plugged in. Red Dead Redemption 2 was run at the default settings (which are somehow "Ultra"); Shadow of the Tomb Raider was run in DirextX 12 at "Lowest" settings.

Red Dead Redemption 2:
ROG Ally X: Average FPS 36.8421; Maximum FPS 75.7679; Minimum FPS 7.69104
Claw 8 EX: Average FPS 68.4757; Maximum FPS 102.184; Minimum FPS 27.646
So the average FPS on the Claw 8 EX is 86% higher.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider:
Rog Ally X: Average FPS 60
Claw 8 EX: Average FPS 101
So the average FPS on the Claw 8 EX is 68% higher.

Looking at the benchmark results for the Claw 8 EX in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I had a feeling that the results were CPU limited, since it showed CPU usage flat across the entire benchmark. I re-ran the benchmark at "Highest" settings, and, sure enough, that reflected variable CPU usage and an average of 72 fps.

In any event, it shows that in pure rendering power, without AI trickery, the Arc G3 Extreme is a MASSIVE uplift over the Ryzen Z1 Extreme in the Ally X. I don't have a system with a Z2 Extreme to compare anything against, but my understanding is that it's only a slight improvement over the Z1 Extreme, so results should be largely similar.

Just got my Claw 8 EX delivered from Best Buy yesterday, to upgrade from my ROG Ally X (not the XBox version). I ran some quick Cyberpunk benchmarks (I know people get sick of Cyberpunk, but the benchmarking system is the best there is of any game I play so it's the easiest to do direct comparisons with) to see how big of an upgrade it would be, and... I did not expect this big of a jump in performance.

For apples-to-apples comparisons, I ran both the Ally X and the Claw 8 EX at 1080p, both at low settings with no upscaling or frame gen, and at Steamdeck settings with balanced upscaling and 2x frame generation (XeSS for the Claw; FSR for the Ally). Both of the devices were run plugged in at a 30 W draw.

At 1080p Steam Deck settings with balanced upscaling and 2x frame generation, the Ally X produced 67 fps. The Claw 8 EX produced 149.35 fps - a jump of 123% performance.

At 1080p low settings without any upscaling or frame generation, the Ally X produced 37.02 fps. The Claw 8 EX produced 74.85 fps - a jump of 102% performance.

Just for fun, I ran the Claw 8 EX at Medium Ray Tracing with balanced upscaling and 2x frame generation. That gave me 83.31 fps. Meaning that the Claw 8 EX gave 24% better performance AT MEDIUM RAY TRACING than the Ally X gave ON STEAM DECK SETTINGS.

I never in a million years would have imagined that the performance jump could have been this huge. Genuinely shocking.

That's $20 less than I paid for my 5070 Ti a year ago.