We’re a handful of days away from the PC release of Black Myth: Wukong, an action RPG based on the famous 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West (a novel which also inspired the excellent 2010 game Enslaved: Odyssey to the West). With Unreal Engine 5 under the hood, and the ever-looming question of “how much longer will my handheld gaming PC be able to play graphically demanding AAA games?” I was curious to see how if it would even run on my Steam Deck. And if so, what would performance look like on the more powerful — but higher resolution — Rog Ally Z1 and Legion Go?
Fortunately, Black Myth: Wukong developer Game Science released a standalone benchmark tool this week, so let’s get straight to answering those questions.
First, the good news: Black Myth: Wukong utilizes FSR 3.1, which means AMD’s Frame Generation tech is along for the ride. Surprisingly, even without Frame Generation enabled, all 3 of the handhelds are capable of running the game at playable framerates under their native resolutions. I have a bunch of results below.
Now, the bad news: the benchmark tool features a peaceful flyover along a flowing creek, and later rising up through a lush forest. What it doesn’t feature is any combat whatsoever. Since the incredibly fun and frantic looking combat is presumably a main component of this experience, that’s a bummer. But it is nice to have a standalone tool with so many options for testing various hardware.
The benchmark was tested with all devices plugged in, running on built-in display, with power profiles set to high/turbo. Ray tracing was turned off during all runs.
Suffice to say, our awesome handhelds have a lot left to give us. But when Black Myth: Wukong releases next week, we’ll see how these devices perform under actual gaming conditions rather than a canned benchmark.
Here’s a video showing the actual benchmark run. This was captured on my gaming laptop for demonstration purposes only:
Steam Deck OLED
Despite unfortunately using Denuvo DRM, no tinkering was required to get the benchmark up and running on the Linux-based Steam Deck. With the base resolution of 1200×800, with the quality preset on Low, my Steam Deck OLED kicked out an average of 54 FPS with a minimum of 38 FPS. Definitely playable! And the story improves when Frame Generation gets flipped on. Here are some additional results with FSR 3.1 Frame Generation on/off:
- Low | Frame Generation ON: Avg 79 FPS, Min 61 FPS
- Medium | Frame Generation OFF: Avg 33 FPS, Min 20 FPS
- Medium | Frame Generation ON: Avg 53 FPS, Min 20 FPS
ASUS ROG Ally Z1
In this test I’m using the ROG Ally Z1 version, powered by the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC. At the Ally’s base resolution of 1920×1080, here are the results with various quality presets and Frame Generation on/off:
- Low | Frame Generation OFF: Avg 60 FPS, Min 38 FPS
- Low | Frame Generation ON: Avg 86 FPS, Min 59 FPS
- Medium | Frame Generation OFF: Avg 42 FPS, Min 15 FPS
- Medium | Frame Generation ON: Avg 65 FPS, Min 50 FPS
Lenovo Legion GO
The Legion GO also incorporates the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC, but boasts a higher resolution of 2560×1600. I had serious doubts the Legion GO could kick out playable framerates at its native resolution, but those doubts were smashed. Here are my results, with lower resolutions thrown into the mix:
- 2560×1600 | Low | Frame Generation OFF: Avg 52 FPS, Min 30 FPS
- 2560×1600 | Low | Frame Generation ON: Avg 66 FPS, Min 56 FPS
- 2560×1600 | Medium | Frame Generation OFF: Avg 39 FPS, Min 26 FPS
- 2560×1600 | Medium | Frame Generation ON: Avg 54 FPS, Min 45 FPS
- 1920×1200 | Low | Frame Generation OFF: Avg 61 FPS, Min 36 FPS
- 1920×1200 | Low | Frame Generation ON: Avg 78 FPS, Min 66 FPS
- 1920×1200 | Medium | Frame Generation OFF: Avg 45 FPS, Min 28 FPS
- 1920×1200 | Medium | Frame Generation ON: Avg 63 FPS, Min 47 FPS
