In this post, I am going to take a look at games using the in-game benchmarks on the MSI Claw. I have tested the performance of these games both plugged in and unplugged in performance mode to get some idea of what kind of performance we're looking at here in launch week.
I have only had the device for about 5 days, and a lot of people are still getting theirs. Performance has certainly been very hit or miss in games. There's a lot about this device that I really like, and I hope that MSI shows the support and love to really fix it up because some games are running quite well, and I'm enjoying them. But certain games like Cyberpunk have been one of the worst ones I've tested yet, so it is kind of like the worst-case scenario in games that'll break like Helldivers, where if you unplug them, the power profiles never truly kick back in properly and give the GPU what it needs, and all that, and it gets stuck in low performance. I can change some settings and get it to kick back in, but these are things I've been trying to work around and get through as I try to test games and be as accurate as possible here.
Some games obviously run really easily, especially easier-to-run games like Sonic. Still, there is some work to do here. Anyways, I got benchmarks here from these five games plugged in and unplugged for you to check out. If you see some difference in color when it comes to the unplugged stuff and plugged-in, it's because the way my capture card is working. It doesn't affect performance, but the plugged-in mode was kind of like a faded-out color. Something I have to work through with my capture card. The same thing happened on the Steam Deck OLED at launch, and I eventually got it fixed up too.
I have provided you with benchmarks for the five games both plugged in and unplugged and some comparisons happening there. Hopefully, it gave you a general idea of what kind of performance we're getting here. It is kind of all over the place depending on what kind of games we're testing. I'm finding ways to fix some of them as I go or work around some of the bugs and breaks that keep happening when it comes to the power management or the profiles. And where it thinks like I'm not gaming and just kind of kicks out of giving power to the GPU and stuff like that. There's just a lot of little hiccups and bugs. I expected performance from this thing to be in between a Steam Deck and a Z1 Extreme, and I think a lot of games, especially harder-to-run games, will fall in that category. But they have a lot of work to do to really smooth out the performance and at least get it consistent and get some of these games running better. A lot of other games are running fine, especially easy-to-run stuff, but there are definitely some issues and outliers there and things to work on when it comes to the MSI Claw.
I just hope that MSI comes after this thing the way that Lenovo did with the Go, Asus with the Ally, Valve with the Steam Deck. When you're going to release a device like this, you've got to be ready to hit it hard at launch and start fixing all the problems, optimizing, coming up with updates, and all that. So I hope to see that from MSI because there's a lot here I do like about the MSI Claw, but a lot of the inconsistencies with game performance and the power profiles and just odd things happening do need to be straightened out.