ROG Xbox Ally X Runs Emulated Bloodborne Faster Than PS4 and PS5 Back Compat

When Tom Morgan looked into the recent upgrades to the PC-emulated Bloodborne experience on a high-end PC, I was so impressed by the results, I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if we tried the latest ShadPS4 build on the ROG Xbox Ally X handheld. Could we match or exceed the performance of the game running on the original PS4 and backwards compatible PS5? Being able to unlock the frame-rate on a device with a smooth VRR panel offered plenty of potential - but ultimately, we'd need raw performance to get the job done. The results were remarkable and I've spent plenty of time this week playing mobile Bloodborne at between 50 to 70 frames per second on the Xbox-branded portable PC.

Running the latest "Nightly" ShadPS4 build, I engaged a range of options - most of them suggested by Tom on his PC testing. I disabled chromatic aberration, engaged the TaskSplit patch, and used the Model LOD -2 option for maximum geometry. The Uncap FPS (with delta time) mod allows us to remove Bloodborne's inbuilt 30fps cap without ruining the game's timing. But crucial to achieving the highest frame-rates possible is the 720p resolution tweak.

So, we are effectively lowering resolution compared to the PS4 1080p original, but banking the freed-up GPU time to deliver a much higher frame-rate. Combined with 35W power delivery from the mains turbo mode and we have the requisite horsepower to hit anything between 50 to 70 frames per second in-game - a nice sweet spot for the Ally X's VRR panel. The seven-inch display is also a good match for the reduction in resolution to 720p - the game still looks fine. Of course, there's nothing stopping you running at the original 1080p, which tends to settle in a 33fps to 40fps window.

To begin with at least though, it's not smooth sailing. Shader caching should be enabled within ShadPS4 to minimise the compilation stutter. You can't avoid stutter on initial run-throughs, unfortunately, but once you have the requisite shaders compiled and cached, the game remains relatively smooth in motion, with the only hitches related to what seems to be traversal stutter.

Flooding the Z2 Extreme with 35W from the mains seems to deliver just about enough performance to take care of the emulator's onerous CPU demands, but it's not exactly ideal, right? By unplugging the Ally, the system drops down to 25W consumption in order to preserve battery life and unfortunately, this also has the side effect of reducing overall performance by around 10 percent, while throttling the CPU, making for a much choppier experience. In good news, we've found that Ally X's command centre includes a manual power profile option that turns the stutters into blips. Change SPL and SPPT to 25W for those improvements.

Even when we drive the portable system to its most power-inefficient maximum when run from battery, the mini stutters generated by the battle between CPU and GPU can still be noticeable in this bandwidth constrained system. Weirdly, there's not much difference between a maxed 35W consumption set-up vs the SPL/SPPT-tweaked 25W, so we'd recommend the latter for around two hours of battery life. It's still fun, just not as smooth as running from the mains.

Is there a route to a compromise-free handheld Bloodborne at 1080p60? Enter the GPD Win 5 using the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 - aka Strix Halo. Once you're past the tedious process of caching shaders via stuttered gameplay, we get to see AMD's remarkable silicon put through its paces with ShadPS4. At just 35W, we're in the high 50s up to circa 70fps at native 1080p resolution using the same options we used on the ROG Xbox Ally X.

But we can go further, of course. Upping processor TDP from 35W to 65W gave us an eight percent boost, rising to circa 17 percent comparing 35W to 80W. It seems that the efficiency sweet spot is at around 35W, which would give us just about two hours worth of playing time on the GPD Win 5's supplied battery. 720p looks fine on Ally X, but 1080p does shine and it's an even more remarkable experience than running the game on the Asus/Microsoft portable. Bearing in mind that Strix Halo fully unlocked gives us performance roughly in line with an RTX 4060, this also bodes well for ShadPS4 Bloodborne play on more mainstream desktop PCs.

All told, some fun experiments here - and you can't help but wonder just how well an unlocked Bloodborne could look and feel on a future PlayStation handheld...