Gaming Performance Update

A few days after our MSI Claw 8 review was published we got an email from Intel notifying us that the official spec for Lunar Lake states that PL2 should always be at least 1 W higher than PL1, or always set at 37 W (the maximum TDP value for Lunar Lake chips).

Matching PL2 to PL1, as we did during our testing (no one from MSI had notified us about the fact that PL2 should be higher than PL1 prior to testing the Claw 8), can lead to significantly reduced performance compared to the suggested configuration (PL2 > PL1). According to Intel, the expected increase in average FPS should be about 10% on average, but it can vary from game to game.

Considering that one day after the email from Intel arrived the MSI Center M app got an update that locked PL2 to always be at least 1 W higher than PL1 (you can no longer match the two, as it was possible before the update), we decided that another round of gaming benchmarks was in order.

We retested the five games in our benchmark suite with the default MSI Center M settings, where PL2 is always set 1 W higher than PL1, since this is how most MSI Claw 8 owners would use the device. We also used the same graphics drivers (32.0.101.6881) and the same Windows settings.
You can check the graphs that include the updated testing data below.

Cyberpunk 2077

Steam Deck preset, no upscaling.

Hogwarts Legacy

Low preset, TAA.

Control

Medium preset, no AA, DX11.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

High preset, TAA, DX12.

Space Marine 2

Low preset, TAA.





As you can see, setting PL2 higher than PL1 can significantly improve performance in certain titles. The biggest winners are Cyberpunk 2077 and Space Marine 2, which saw a nearly 30% performance bump in some scenarios.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider, on the other hand, saw about a 10% performance increase with the new PL settings applied.

Then we've got Control, which didn't perform better in most scenarios aside from 30 W, where the game ran about 10% better with new PL settings.

Finally, Hogwarts Legacy saw minimal improvements (and in some cases, even a slight decline) in performance, which can be explained by testing variance.

In general, we can say that the PL states update is definitely beneficial regarding MSI Claw 8's gaming performance. As you can see, performance benefits usually peter off at 30 W, especially at 1080p. On the other hand, at 15 W and 25 W, the Claw 8 has received some nice performance bumps.

At the end of the day we still believe that performance at 15 W is a tad below what we'd like to see, although we have to admit that we like the updated 15 W FPS numbers in Space Marine 2.

On the other hand, the Claw 8 is even more impressive at 25 W and 30 W, further cementing its status as the most powerful handheld gaming PC on the market at the moment.