Star Wars Outlaws Handheld Performance

[17th Dimension]

Star Wars Outlaws is the latest open-world action adventure from Ubisoft Massive. The game features expansive open-world environments, multiple planets to explore, space combat, and a metric ton of side activities, in the spirit of other open-world Ubisoft titles. Powered by Snowdrop Engine, the game looks stunning on PCs, but how does it run on the Steam Deck and ROG Ally? Find out in our handheld performance review.

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[GreiverBlade]

on the test device section you forgot to edit the section ... it still says "Black Myth Wukong" and list the Steamdeck parameter (since SW: O is not on steam it's a bit odd )

well, that's one game that is not suited for handheld ... tho i would play it on desktop ... if it was on steam

not a fan of Ubisoft game (exception can happens ) but for a SW game i would even have prefered EA since most of recent SW games were published by EA (and were quite good... which is also odd for EA ... )

 

[dgianstefani]

on the test device section you forgot to edit the section ... it still says "Black Myth Wukong" and list the Steamdeck parameter (since SW: O is not on steam it's a bit odd )

well, that's one game that is not suited for handheld ... tho i would play it on desktop ... if it was on steam

not a fan of Ubisoft game (exception can happens ) but for a SW game i would even have prefered EA since most of recent SW games were published by EA (and were quite good... which is also odd for EA ... )

Ha, missed this, both games came out in same time period so didn't catch my eye.

 

[CosmicWanderer]

Legit love that you guys are testing games on handhelds now. I think handhelds should be added as a section to all game performance analysis articles, at least for the two most popular devices which are covered here.

Keep it up!

 

[ViperXZ]

i would even have prefered EA since most of recent SW games were published by EA (and were quite good... which is also odd for EA ... )

I bet because they are forced to make it good, else no dice getting to make an SW game.

Well here it comes, the ruin of mandatory Ray Tracing effects and the end of handhelds and older GPUs who can’t even start the game. Is it worth it? (X) no.

 

[_roman_]

That happened quite fast.

The average frame rate is in the low 20s, and stutters and freezes are a regular part of the Star Wars Outlaws experience on Steam Deck, when you actually manage to play it. The Steam Deck uses an older AMD iGPU based on the RDNA 2 architecture, so the mandatory RT effects of this game are even more of an insurmountable challenge for the APU.

 

[tenow]

Is it possible that stutters were caused by insufficient RAM and memory modded ROG ALLY or ROG ALLY X would run it decently?

 

[CosmicWanderer]

Is it possible that stutters were caused by insufficient RAM and memory modded ROG ALLY or ROG ALLY X would run it decently?

I doubt it's a VRAM issue. Avatar stutters on the Ally X. Outlaws has the same always-on ray tracing. Both are just too heavy for todays iGPUs. Hopefully the ROG Ally 2 comes with RDNA 4 graphics.

 

[ViperXZ]

I doubt it's a VRAM issue. Avatar stutters on the Ally X. Outlaws has the same always-on ray tracing. Both are just too heavy for todays iGPUs. Hopefully the ROG Ally 2 comes with RDNA 4 graphics.

I think both these games or at least Avatar use ray tracing through shaders, so it’s not HW RT it’s software RT which is also less effective (at least in Avatar). And the next ROG Ally will 100% have at least RDNA 3.5 if not 4 (and 3.5 already has the way better RT cores), Asians are quick to adopt new hardware.

edit, from the tpu Avatar Review:
“Unlike other games, which use ray tracing as additional "beyond ultra" settings option, this next-gen version of the Snowdrop Engine relies on ray tracing at all quality levels. Interestingly, they are not using the typical ray tracing that we know from recent games, but a more hybrid approach that's similar to what Unreal Engine 5 does. Ray tracing is used for lighting, reflections and shadows (sun shadows only). Each of those effects has a software shader fallback, to ensure the game will run correctly on older hardware, too.”

edit 2:

I have checked both games now again, they both use a hybrid shader/hardware RT mix (probably low or no hardware RT core usage), that’s why it’s not running well on the handheld gaming consoles with weaker GPUs, they only have 512/768 shaders that’s simply not enough. While it’s still unsure how much of it is hardware raytracing I would say it’s on the low side (or fully software) or else the 4080 would be far ahead of the 7900XTX and not just 10-15%.

 

[Chrispy_]

It's a good looking game, but if feel the performance is disproportionately bad for the graphical fidelity on offer.

Ignoring the complete failure of these mobile devices to approach a playable framerate at lowest settings, the desktop performance review was staggeringly awful. When a $1200 GPU fails to get 45fps at 4K, you know something's up. Sure, you can run it at 1080p to get decent framerates, but who's buying a 4080 to compromise on graphics settings just to hit playable framerates?

 

[dj-electric]

Maybe unintentionally, this item made me laugh

 

[Grebber01]

I used 4 different browsers and 2 windows 10-11 but on both of them it doesn't bring up anything from the steam deck or the rog ally optimized settings pages, just a white screen

 

[W1zzard]

I used 4 different browsers and 2 windows 10-11 but on both of them it doesn't bring up anything from the steam deck or the rog ally optimized settings pages, just a white screen

You should see a single paragraph of text?

https://imgur.com/aNmbTlj

 

[Grebber01]

This escaped my attention I was waiting for the charts to load

You should see a single paragraph of text?

https://imgur.com/aNmbTlj

 

[Vayra86]

Good to find a description of the violent marriage between Ubisoft and Steam.

There is no way in the whole galaxy, far far away that I'm paying a single cent for that bullshit. Selling a game through a distributor and then not having managed the customer experience is just... disgusting beyond belief. They know it. We all know it. It isn't new...

It's a good looking game, but if feel the performance is disproportionately bad for the graphical fidelity on offer.

Ignoring the complete failure of these mobile devices to approach a playable framerate at lowest settings, the desktop performance review was staggeringly awful. When a $1200 GPU fails to get 45fps at 4K, you know something's up. Sure, you can run it at 1080p to get decent framerates, but who's buying a 4080 to compromise on graphics settings just to hit playable framerates?

Is it a good looking game? All I see is some very elaborate layers of varnish over what is otherwise old technology.

Very expensive layers too... I could run a highly detailed, high fidelity The Division 1 on that engine on a GTX 1080 at over 80 FPS at max detail. What the fuck happened? I really can't say this looks much better after you scratch the surface a bit.

Rest assured this game was partly made to upsell Nvidia GPUs Its the story of Ubisoft's life.