MSI Claw claims up to 150% added performance from new BIOS and GPU driver updates — 28% improvement on average across 19 tested games

MSI has introduced two new system updates to its Claw handheld gaming PC to alleviate previously reported issues surrounding gaming performance. MSI has published a new BIOS update — E1T41IMS.106 as well as a new GPU driver update — 31.0.101.5445 for the Intel Meteor Lake-powered handheld that combined boosts performance by up to 150% in certain titles.

MSI shared a performance comparison in 19 titles comparing the new updates to the  Claw’s outgoing driver and BIOS revisions. Game performance improved by up to 150%, though the average performance improvement is much closer to 30%.

The games MSI chose to benchmark were 7 Days to Die, Monster Hunter World, Cyberpunk 2077, Grand Theft Auto V, Hunt: Showdown, MIR 4, BeamNG.drive, Fortnite, Lethal Company, Dead Island 2, Diablo 4, F1 23, NBA 2K24, Hogwarts Legacy, Rainbow Six Siege, Helldiver 2, Palworld, Stray, and Red Dead Redemption 2.

By far 7 Days to Die saw the largest performance uplift, featuring a 150% performance jump. Monster Hunter World, Cyberpunk 2077, and Grand Theft Auto V saw a performance uplift between 64% and 40% respectively. Hunt: Showdown, MIR 4, and BeamNG.drive saw a performance improvement of 35% to 28%. Fortnite, Lethal Company, Dead Island 2, Diablo 4, and F1 23 all saw performance improvements of 16% to 13%. The final set of games NBA 2K24, Hogwarts Legacy, Rainbow Six Siege, Helldiver 2, Palworld, Stray, and Red Dead Redemption 2 saw performance uplifts of under 10%.

These improvements should help alleviate the Claw’s performance problems against competing rivals on competing silicon. A few months ago, an early review of the Claw discovered that MSI’s handheld had noteworthy performance issues, making it much slower than the ROG Ally, especially at lower power levels (TDPs) which is very important for preserving battery life. Not only did the Claw have worse performance according to that early review, power consumption was also worse compared to the AMD’s Z1 Extreme.

MSI’s new updates probably aren’t enough to make the Claw competitive with the Z1 Extreme on all fronts, but it is a step in the right direction. If we’ve learned anything from Intel in the last year, it’s that it is more than capable of rectifying GPU performance issues through its driver updates. The MSI Claw is also one of the first handheld gaming PCs ever to use Intel Core Ultra processors rather than AMD’s purpose-built Ryzen Z1 series APUs, so it’s very reasonable to see teething issues occur.

Aaron Klotz is a freelance writer for Tom’s Hardware US, covering news topics related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.