Power Scaling (Cyberpunk 2077, 720p, Steam Deck preset, FSR Balanced)

We wanted to find out how gaming performance varies under different power limits. By setting specific limits, we measured the console's performance and plotted the results on a chart. This data is also compared to several competing alternatives, to provide a comprehensive view of how each device balances power consumption and performance.



The Claw 8 achieves fantastic performance at 12 W and below, easily beating the Zotac Zone and Steam Deck. This means you can enjoy a multitude of indie and older AAA games while the CPU and iGPU are sipping power, allowing you to game for hours on end without worrying about battery life.

While outstanding at low power, we're kind of disappointed with the performance at medium power levels. Between 15 W and 25 W, the Claw 8 is "just" fine, easily beaten even by the ROG Ally.

Then at 25 W and higher, the Claw 8 gets serious yet again, managing to offer a respectable level of performance, especially if we consider that its Arc 140V iGPU isn't super optimized for Cyberpunk 2077, the game we tested power scaling with.

Now, you might notice the massive jump happening at 37 W, but there's a catch. Firstly, the device doesn't actually use 37 W of power when you max out its TDP (37 W is the maximum TDP you can set), even when we set both PL1 and PL2 values to 37 W. It actually uses about 31 W with the PL1 value set to 37 W, with an occasional excursion to higher wattages only during loading or shader compilation. In-game, it's rare to see the APU using more than 31 W of power even when set to 37 W.

What happens is that the iGPU achieves its maximum boost clock of 1950 MHz only if you set the TDP to north of 30 W. At 30 W, it struggles to reach 1950 MHz, usually boosting to about 1800 MHz or lower. We don't know why this happens, especially because most of the time, power usage at 37 W doesn't increase compared to using the 30 W power profile.

Setting the TDP to 37 W can yield significant performance improvements, but only in certain games. The only two games that saw noticeable improvements were Cyberpunk 2077 and Control. Some games saw only a frame or two of higher performance, and others gained no performance boost.

Still, considering that maxing out TDP doesn't impede battery life or noticably increase actual power usage, we recommend maxing out the power when playing AAA games because you will get some free performance without having to put up with higher power usage or shorter battery life.