 Just a few short weeks ago, we got a first-hand look at the latest book in Lord Gaven's gospel, the Valve Steam Deck. It's the PC gamer's version of a Nintendo Switch, except instead of running light casual games, it can run the latest AAA titles. It looks freaking awesome. But the thing is, while Valve is definitely pushing the landscape forward when it comes to handheld gaming, they are not the only player in this field, and their competition isn't standing still. This right here is the GPD Win Max 2021 edition. It's the first time that GPD has ever built a Ryzen handheld, and it has eight flippin' Zen 2 cores. But wait, there's more. This is the GPD Win Max 2021 edition Intel edition. The first GPD handheld with Intel Xe graphics, and they're the most powerful onboard graphics we've seen from Intel yet. Man, there are gonna be some interesting stories to tell, like this story about our sponsor. Thanks to Honey for sponsoring this video. Honey is the free-to-use shopping tool that helps search for some of the best promo codes on tons of your favorite sites. Get it today at joinhoney.com slash LTT. ["Planet of the Apes"] Plot twist! I'm gonna kick things off with the Intel version because this is the first device we've ever gotten hands-on with, with Intel's top-of-the-line Tiger Lake CPU, the Core i7-1195G7. And, whew, on paper anyway, it promises to be an absolute beast. It's got four cores, eight threads, boosts up to five gigahertz, can be configured to multiple TDP levels up to 25 watts, and perhaps most importantly has 96 Iris Xe compute units in its onboard GPU, which means it should be significantly faster than the Ryzen 4800U and, who knows, maybe even competitive with the upcoming RDNA 2 graphics on the Steam Deck. That's what I really want to find out. While we've got it open, this is a perfect opportunity to compare the GPD Win Max 2021 against what we know about the Steam Deck. First and foremost, the CPU and memory are both soldered to the main board, but that's pretty much a given in any machine this compact. Where they differ is the SSD. They both use a standard M.2 slot, which is great. That means if you're willing to put the work in, Valve has said that theoretically the Steam Deck should be upgradable, but it should be noted that this one, it will, A, be easier to upgrade, and B, probably more worthwhile, because the Steam Deck uses a 30mm M.2, which up until now, I believe, only even goes up to 1TB of capacity, whereas the GPD Win Max 2021 uses an 80mm M.2, which looks like you could only fit a single-sided, so that's good to know, which means you could go up to 4TB, at least presently. While we're digging around in here, some other notable features are the dual stereo speakers, microSD slot, the Steam Deck has one of those as well for storage expansion, the Intel Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chipset, as well as a full-size Gigabit Ethernet jack, which gives us our first hint as to what the real intended use of the GPD Win Max is, because this is more than just a gaming machine, which isn't to say that it's not gaming-focused. Both Valve and GPD have taken very different approaches to how to handle joysticks. If there's one thing we know for sure, it's that low-profile joysticks do have reliability issues that we as gamers have observed over the years. So GPD, rather than increase the profile of the machine by having the joysticks stick up out of it, has actually sunk the joysticks into the top deck of the laptop, and then you can see here, they take up almost the entire depth of the machine inside, and they've actually had to build the PCB around them. There's no doubt in my mind that Valve's handheld has a better integrated controller, but to GPD's credit, these joysticks feel pretty darn good for low-profile ones. So does the D-pad, and the ABXY buttons have both nice clicky switches, as well as, this is a really nice touch, secondary printing on the Legend with a cross-circle square triangle for PlayStation users, because, let's face it, you're going to be emulating games. Unfortunately, both the shoulder and trigger buttons use the same switches, so if you're super into driving games or anything where you want that nice, fine analog control on your trigger, you're not going to find it here, but it does make up a lot of that ground in I.O. So in addition to your Ethernet port, you've got HDMI 2.0, two USB Type A's, and, yes, my friends, Thunderbolt. That means any number of docking solutions and even external graphics cards, which, naturally, we'll be trying later. And that's to say nothing about one of the WinMax 2021's biggest undocked benefits, the massive 57-watt-hour battery. Now, Intel's Tiger Lake chips, they're pretty power-hungry, but GPD claims that's still good for up to three hours of use under heavy load, with up to 14 hours under a light load. Of course, you're going to want to configure your TDP and squeeze even more out of it, right? Let's screw this thing back together and see if it still works. Now that we're in Windows, one last bit of I.O. I didn't show you is this cool toggle switch right here. It changes the gamepad into a native mouse mode, so that, unlike other handheld devices, you don't have to have a little utility running in the system tray. It just freaking works. So your left shoulder button is your left click, and it actually rebinds some of the keys as well. So you can see this left analog stick is WASD. So it allows it to work in more of like a keyboard mouse mode, if that is, for whatever reason, what you prefer. With some games, that could be better. One thing I noticed just moving the mouse around, though, is that while the eight-inch display on the Win Max 2021 runs at the same 1280 by 800 resolution as the Steam Deck, and it's IPS and actually gets like quite, quite bright, you can see there's a fair bit of smearing as I move the mouse around. Can you see that? This is not the most responsive display I've ever seen. To be clear, this is not a game-breaker. It's only a 60-hertz display. So it's not like you're going to be like, oh, wow, this is just a completely smeary mess or anything like that. But I have seen better. Moment of truth. Do maternal launch. We made it this far last time. Yeah, we made it to where the Master Chief is standing on his thing. It's not Master Chief. I know you had to. You had to. You had to say something. Oh. Oh, wow. Oh. Oh. Had a little, little moment there. Let me flip it into controller mode here. Holy shnikes. This might actually work, which shouldn't really be that impressive, but... Okay, I want to go back. Ooh, ooh, it's definitely got some issues, some issues. Here we go. We've got both machines configured to their maximum TDP, so around 25 watts, although you can see that according to RiverTuner, Intel is actually drawing significantly more than that sometimes, as high as around 35 watts. But the bigger takeaway here is not necessarily that Intel is drawing more power, but rather that Intel is actually not managing nearly the same frame rate, even when it is running smoothly. So what are we getting? Around 35, 40 FPS when it's going? Yeah, sometimes it doesn't go as much. Whoa, not only that, but you can see our Intel CPU managed 100 degrees max. Ooh. Meanwhile, our AMD system, remember, this is with a 4800U, is running at a pretty consistent 60 plus FPS, and this is at exactly the same settings. So all medium, native resolution, with motion blur turned off. Now this is, ooh, this is way more playable. You know though, I am surprised at how close this performance is to the RDNA 2 graphics in the Steam Deck. When I compared head-to-head and do maternal while I was at Valve's headquarters, I found that the Steam Deck was about 50% faster, looking at exactly the same scene as the AYA Neo. So let's go ahead and take the AYA Neo into this same scene, and check this out. We're running at anywhere from around 35 up to around 50 FPS, but generally in the 40 to 45 range. This is not what I was expecting, but we also know that Doom Eternal is not properly optimized on Intel Xe graphics. So let's move on to something else. Hopefully in Dirt 5, we're going to see a more even competition here. The Intel machine managed to load into the game a bit faster, but that's not particularly meaningful from like a gaming enjoyment stand. Whoa, okay. Wow. This is a dead heat. Intel looks like they might be maybe, maybe like 3 to 5% ahead in performance, but it's... Oh, maybe not. Holy crap. I don't remember the last time I saw anything be this close AMD versus Intel. Only the results will tell us the answer. In the meantime, I want to run the AYA Neo because this is the one device that I've had a chance to run head-to-head against the Steam Deck. So that will hopefully give us an idea of where the Steam Deck falls in all of this. Obviously, I'd rather be testing the Steam Deck right now, but I don't have one. Wow, these are close. When we look at average frame rates, they're within about 1% of each other. Although I still consider this a win for Intel since their minimums didn't dip quite as low, though certainly this isn't as big a win as Doom Eternal was for AMD. As for the AYA Neo, its result of around 30 FPS seems to suggest that both of our win maxes could very well end up within striking distance of the Steam Deck. Though of course, it should be noted that these are both 25W TDP CPUs rather than 15W. Next up, F1 2021. We're running at native resolution, low settings, TAA enabled. Man, this is a really good looking game even at low. Oh wow, Intel is slaying it here. The 4800U in the AMD win max is already looking like it might end up competitive with the Steam Deck, maybe a little bit behind, but the Intel machine is running at 80, almost 90 plus FPS in some places. Like we could actually probably turn this up to medium. That is a big difference in performance. Whoa, that's not even close. Wow, Intel's a solid 30% ahead of AMD on this one. Then after that great showing, I managed to make it as far as the Prologue Cinematic and Halo 4, and I got a fatal error in the game, completely crashed. Come on, Intel graphics drivers. Like you guys are launching a discrete card soon. You got to be better than this. To be clear, I understand there's probably workarounds for just about all of this stuff. In fact, GPD even quotes performance numbers from Doom Eternal on their website that are much better than what we observed, but average users can't be expected to go find that stuff. This is not a great experience. Both of them are running at well over a hundo FPS here though. Oh, we see some dips. Very solid though, very solid. A thumbstick and two controllers at the same time would not recommend. They call me sticky man. So this is LittleBigPlanet. This is running in a PS3 emulator, RPCS3, and on the Intel system, I mean, we are getting a solid locked 30 FPS, which is what this game runs at, but you can see it's got some problems. Meanwhile, on the AMD system, we're getting frame drops. It says 29 FPS. I don't believe it. This is definitely not completely running properly, but we're getting far fewer graphical anomalies, although still some. Something to bear in mind though is that PlayStation 3 emulation is already very challenging because of the unconventional architecture of the PlayStation 3, and LittleBigPlanet in particular is quite demanding. Oh, wow. This is 60 FPS. Oh, oh, oh, oh, we got a see-through Sumo. You should check this out. Look at my see-through Sumo here. Knocked out, baby. I won. I just clicked A a bunch. This is totally playable. Oh, for sure. No, this is like perfect. This is totally usable. Wait a minute, his clothes appeared. Yeah, we just unlocked the frame rate. So my, oh, wow, the game speed is a little different, but assuming that the in-game physics is not tied to the frame rate because the developers have showed, this is a way of, wow, my entire character is missing. Yeah, this is very fast and very broken. I'm at like anywhere from 100 to 120 FPS. Like 90, but different map, but I imagine that's probably has to do more. The graphics, not the map. I guess if you want to play Tekken 6, it works pretty good. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend unlocking the frame rate, though. It seems a little more broken on the Intel one. Like I don't have that much stuff missing. Yeah. Oh, it's definitely more broken on the Intel machine, but it runs faster. Now, Markbench, our benchmark for Premiere, was designed for much more powerful systems than these ones, but it can still tell us a lot. So you can see here, we've got four separate 4K clips all playing back at the same time. And on our Intel system, it actually handles it and the transitions reasonably smoothly, albeit at 1.8 resolution. Meanwhile, on the AMD system, we go from usable but not perfect to not really usable. One thing that's nice about these that I didn't mention before is, if you want it, there is a trackpad. It's not the greatest experience ever, but there are times when it'll probably come in handy for you. All right, let's go ahead and start our encoding benchmark now. Yeah, I think our poor Intel system is just going to get slapped here. There it goes. It's just slow. Yeah, if it can manage a victory here, I'll be impressed. Wow, this 4K encoding benchmark ended up not even being close. The Intel machine's been done for a solid 20 seconds already, and the AMD machine is still finishing up, even though we started the Intel machine slightly afterward because I misclicked. So the big pattern that's emerging here is Tiger Lake and Xe graphics. When they work, they're fast, and when they don't, it sucks. Of course, one of the key benefits of going with the Intel version is that you're not necessarily married to the onboard graphics. Let's go ahead and dock it to this Gigabyte eGPU box here. It's got networking, USB, and of course, an RTX 3080 graphics card in it. Let's see if it just fires up for us here. Look at that! Just like that! Oh, we're going to need some drivers. Oh, look at that. Jake Preet set up the drivers for us. I need a mouse pad. LTTstore.com! Boom. I mean, let's see if it'll play Doom Eternal now. How do you like me now? It's got this. It's got this. Don't even worry about a thing. Another key benefit of Thunderbolt, I don't need my power adapter anymore. I can just get power from the Thunderbolt connection to my dock. Casual 100 plus FPS, Doom Eternal absolutely maxed out. It's actually running at that too. Like, this is very smooth. CPU's at 83 degrees. In terms of power, it's pulling anywhere from around 27 to 28 watts. So considering that we're not even touching the integrated graphics, that's pretty impressive. Like, just absolutely no stutter whatsoever. Butter smooth. Who needs stutter when you've got butter? Pfft. Now for Dirt 5, we got this cranked to ultra high. We're gonna turn on some ray traced vehicle shadows. Honestly, the car shadows are so soft because of the fact that the sun's behind the clouds, that I'm having a hard time telling if they look better because they're ray traced or whatever. Which is probably an indication that it's working. Yeah, this is not a trivial game to run, and it's like 55 to 60 FPS the whole time at 4K. Just, I keep watching these car shadows here. Yeah, it looks... Now that they're a bit harder, that is very, like, accurate. But something we haven't talked about up until now is what is the GPD Win Max even like to use as a controller? Right now, great. Everything feels accurate and responsive. The switches are all nice and clicky. But I also have the device resting on a table in front of me. If I had to actually hold it up, it's pretty heavy and the ergonomics are far from perfect. Compared to most controllers where you're kind of cradling them like this, and your thumbs have this great degree of movement, on the Win Max, they're kind of stuck like this and it kind of brings your elbows in sort of funny. So the design is only gonna appeal to people who want a gaming device that is also useful for other things. Because even though the keyboard, quite frankly, sucks for typing, it's obviously a lot better for typing than just not having one at all. What we can't fault is the performance. Despite the fact that neither of the 2021 edition Win Maxes have RDNA2 graphics, and not to mention that they're only running DDR4 rather than DDR5, they both get surprisingly close to where we're expecting the Steam Deck to eventually land. So as long as you don't find the form factor off-putting, you may not have to wait, although you will definitely have to pay a significantly higher price. What you won't have to pay for is our sponsor, unless you really like it, then you could pay for it. Thanks to FreshBooks for sponsoring this video. FreshBooks is a simple accounting software that's designed specifically with you in mind, the small business owner. It features built-in automation that allows you to spend less time tracking projects and more time building your business. So whether you're a tradesperson, creative agency, or a YouTuber, you can choose a plan that's right for you. They have an award-winning Toronto-based support team who is always happy to help you if you need it, and you don't have to take my word for any of this. You can try out FreshBooks for free for 30 days with no credit card required at freshbooks.com slash Linus. If you guys enjoyed this video, check out our first impressions of the Steam Deck, or maybe the full review of the Aeon Neo. Man, this handheld console space is really heating up right now. And that's not just joking about how the Intel one runs hot. Hey, got him.