ONEXPLAYER/AYA NEO Stock Performance Test – FINAL FANTASY XIV

Before you read on, *this is not intended to be a de facto, “X is better” video!* This is purely so people who have access to neither, either, or both handhelds can get a visual comparison and make their own conclusions. Now, some points to make about this video:

– Both were recorded locally onto the handheld itself using the Windows Game Bar record feature. Its performance hit was (surprisingly) minimal, costing maybe 1-2 FPS overall, so the FPS you see is pretty representative of what I saw outside of recording. (Also, if anyone ever runs into this, RivaTuner overrides OBS in full screen applications, so if you can’t get an image with Afterburner running, that’s why.)
– I tried to keep both runs as close to parity as possible, which included having them both running during the day (night-time rendering seems to have a bigger hit on the FPS, due to different lighting, I suppose). The fact that some parts were synchronized is both creepy and cool.
– I hadn’t realized the OneXPlayer was missing the wattage tracker from RivaTuner until I was in the process of rendering. Generally speaking, the OneXPlayer uses anywhere from 15w-22w, depending on the scenes available.
– Audio switches every 90 seconds from the the left feed (OneXPlayer) to the right (Aya Neo), so it doesn’t seem like one handheld is being showcased more than the other.
– Both my OneXPlayer and Aya Neo were purchased second-hand off of eBay. The Aya Neo I bought was sealed in the box, with an intact warranty sticker, but I don’t know if there was any modifications done internally to the OneXPlayer, via SSD swap, or the like.
– Both the OneXPlayer and the Aya Neo were run at stock configurations, no turbo or boosting was used.
– Final Fantasy XIV is being ran at Standard (Desktop) since running it at Standard (Laptop) showed no appreciable difference in FPS in high traffic areas. I also have a few modules in Reshade running, again, because disabling it showed no real appreciable difference in FPS in high traffic areas. If I’m going to be CPU capped in Limsa, I may as well stack on the pretty.

My own thoughts on using both (having played a solid 10-15 hours on both handhelds) is there is no real clear-cut winner between the two. The Iris Xe graphics are superior to the Radeon, running at a higher FPS (while also at a higher resolution). However, the newness of the drivers means I’ve seen occasional visual bugs that were not present on the Aya Neo, and because the i7-1165G7 is a 4c/8t (vs the 4500U’s 6c/6t), its FPS struggles much more in very high traffic areas, such as Limsa Lominsa, or in full parties. So, while the game runs much more smoothly in less densely populated areas, the Aya Neo feels a bit more “stable” in its FPS; it almost never dipped below 30 FPS during my testing.

Resolution can also be an issue–while the OneXPlayer’s screen is ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS, integrated graphics are not going to run the game at anywhere near a playable framerate at 2560×1600, and dropping it down to a more stable resolution can cause the image quality to look worse than the Aya Neo’s does at 1200×800. However, after a few minutes of gameplay at the lower resolution, I tended to stop noticing the drop in graphical fidelity on the OneXPlayer’s screen, since it (again) ran at a smooth 60 FPS in most areas of the game. Likewise, the higher resolution meant that there was more screen real estate, and the UI felt a little less crowded than it did on the Aya Neo (though this is far less prevalent in FFXIV than it would be in, say, WoW or GW2, where an 800p screen doesn’t leave much room for the UI to be unintrusive).

With both handhelds, I never felt as though I was being severely gimped by playing on it, save for when I had to try and communicate to people in Duty Finder, but luckily enough, FFXIV players are less likely to be total asshats in pugs, so they didn’t seem terribly bothered that I stood there for 15 seconds pecking at a touch screen to respond to something lol.

Bottom line, whichever handheld you got, you’ll get a good gaming experience out of it in FFXIV.

Also, giant angry cat men are cool. (b^_^)b

#AyaNeo #OneXPlayer #ffxiv

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