Steam Deck Ray Tracing

it has about the same raw GPU performance per pixel when targeting 1280x800 as the Xbox Series X has when targeting 4K (slightly more actually).

The Series X drops down the resolution for many games depending on the scene.

Will the steam deck also get that kind of VRS support from developers 🤔
 
Well, many newer games support render scale. Even Dirt 5 has it enabled by default. So it should work fine with the Steam Deck.
 
Also, ray tracing is iffy on Proton right now
Ray-tracing support for RADV is improving quite a lot lately. It can render some games correctly now, although performance work is still necessary (currently about half of Windows performance).

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RADV-RT-Quake-II-RTX-Correct

Once RADV supports ray-tracing properly, I expect that Proton support for Vulkan ray-tracing will fall into place nicely, unlike with NVidia proprietary drivers. DXR (via VK3D) is probably some ways off.
 
raytraced reflections are certainly out at that performance level but I could see RT GI / AO happening in some games with upscaling in play as that requires a LOT fewer rays to begin with. If it's upscaling 960x540 or something up to native panel rez, that GPU could do some tracin.
 
Ray-tracing support for RADV is improving quite a lot lately. It can render some games correctly now, although performance work is still necessary (currently about half of Windows performance).

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RADV-RT-Quake-II-RTX-Correct

Once RADV supports ray-tracing properly, I expect that Proton support for Vulkan ray-tracing will fall into place nicely, unlike with NVidia proprietary drivers. DXR (via VK3D) is probably some ways off.
Yeah, I just saw that article. Great news. Sadly couldn't get the AMD Pro driver working on my rig, so no ray tracing for now. I'm glad to see progress is being made.
 
Good point. I think 800p would help, but I still feel like games like Control will be a struggle with ray tracing. Even on a desktop you kinda have to use DLSS to get decent performance.
 
Wonder how 720x480 looks with FSR?
That's probably the only way it's going to run decently.
 
on a 7" panel, probably surprisingly good if one doesn't place their nose against the screen.
Yes. The subtended angle per-pixel should be "just fine" for real human eyes, especially with scenes-in-motion.
This is setting aside "blind as a bat" OutOfPhase, but I feel I increasingly represent a buying crowd with my failing vision.

Also, visible pixelization is cool again. You just have to look like it was intentional. :D
 
If FSR is even in the ballpark of what DLSS achieves in the video... You may be playing max settings with ray tracing lol
FSR is really nice, but DLSS works better at low resolution. I actually played Control for about 1 hour at 540p (because I was doing testing and forgot I left the settings) and I didn't even notice anything was wrong for an hour.

FSR on the other hand works much better at higher resolutions, for example 1080p -> 1440p (or 4K). At 720p (or lower) internal render it tends to look too blurry. But if Steam Desk supports it, it still might be an okay trade to get playable FPS.
 
Well, that's about size of phone screen? When taco watch youtube:
144p really bad, nd only when slow internet.
240p is decent in slow scenes
360p is great!
480p is bloody fantastic!! But internet cnt keep up, so taco watch mostly 360p or 240p

720p taco cnt tell difference from 480p. So a 480p is great! If raytraced nd uoscaled from that resolution, should look ace! But am wondering, cn you notice Ray's at that small experience? Perhaps regular Baker in shadows nd lightnings are good enough?
Depends on the gamer. I would absolutely notice the difference but I have a keen eye for subtle lighting from years of doing natural-light photography and can't stand the lighting in most games. On the other hand some people claim they can't tell the difference even at high-rez on a full sized monitor.

I don't have time today, but tomorrow I'll make and upload some Cyberpunk 2077 screenshots at various internal resolutions scaled uo to 720P with raytracing on and off for folks to look at on their phone screens (I'm assuming many of us have phones that are close to 7"), could be interesting.

[edit: actually this will take like 5 minutes lol, doing it now]
 
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ok, so I forgot that my ini settings force RTX on always so no RT/non-RT comparisons (and no time to go back and redo today) but here's a few 720P images at various render rez. These are for assessing on SMALL screens, they'll look like garbage on laptop or monitor. I used FidelityFX instead of DLSS due to the DLSS being better at low resolution thing, didn't want to overstate the results. I haven't even looked at them on my phone yet but I have a feeling even 720P at 50% scale will look ok to me at 6.8" diagonal.

NativeRT.jpg


75%RT.jpg


50%RT.jpg
 
... I have a feeling even 720P at 50% scale will look ok to me at 6.8" diagonal.
looking at 'em on my phone now at the distance I would if i were gaming on a handheld, I can't tell the difference between no scaling and 75% scaling. I can tell that 50% scaling is more blurry but it would still be completely playable for me and I would take the extra FX over extra sharpness any day if that's the tradeoff.

If folks are genuinely interested in the "are RT lighting FX noticeable on a small screen" question, I can make more 'shots tomorrow :)
 
anyone see if these will have vsync or some form of anti tearing lol this surface pro 5 is trash intel drivers are useless for this thing. trying to test the Final Fantasy Remasters and i cant do it the tearing makes this unplayable.
 
anyone see if these will have vsync or some form of anti tearing lol this surface pro 5 is trash intel drivers are useless for this thing. trying to test the Final Fantasy Remasters and i cant do it the tearing makes this unplayable.
<edit: and again, I forget that these won't be running Windows by default>
I assume it'll be like any other AMD graphics where vSync can be forced per-game in the control panel. AFAIK the APUs still get the regular Radeon Software app
 
ok good long as i can fix that. think ill keep my deck OG on Linux as well no need to add bloat or more issues. plus its a way to force me to learn to fix any issues i encounter and eventually transition to linux as daily driver not just my test bench.
 
ill attempt linux on this once i figure out why the defualt resolution looks so off by default, which is the default for arch linux kde/gnome ?
 
That is the correct native resolution.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...features-42d321e4-52d6-dcb1-e014-9ffc76fbca14

You just probably want to set the scaling to 200% in the OS display options. It may be in a different place depending on what distro you are on.

In Ubuntu you can right click the desktop and choose display settings. On KDE I think it is in the options panel, so press the start key and type "display" you should find it.
 
Also worth noting that Cyberpunk use's AMD's older FidelityFX ContrastAdaptiveSharpening scaler. FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) looks allot better. Which with the recent proton fshack you can now use in Cyberpunk 2077 and allot of other games. Potentially making this little device even more appealing :D

https://wccftech.com/amd-fsr-can-be-applied-to-all-vulkan-games-via-protons-fshack/
Ya how's that for a turn right....
Windows waiting on developers to add FSR to games one a time.
Linux... well we're already feeding this through a translation layer, lets just FSR it. :) FSR library ALL. lol

Seriously though I don't know if these are really doing proper FSR. Seems to me like they are FSRing the wrong part of the pipeline. Having said that the theory is solid. I imagine Valve+AMD could implement this at the proton level as a system setting type option. As everything is being vulkaned anyway.
 
I haven't tried the FSR hack, but I saw some screenshots. It looked okay, even though it was a full screen effect, so text and UI were not handled properly. Still a decent option to have.
 
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So Valve has confirmed ray tracing support for Steam Deck.

https://wccftech.com/steam-deck-sup...pares-it-to-xbox-series-x-in-power-per-pixel/

Anyone what to guess the kind of performance we will see? 30fps or 60fps?

Also, ray tracing is iffy on Proton right now. So will Valve's modifications enable better ray tracing support for Linux PCs?
20 fps on medium

How do I know this?

My GTX 1060 has 4x the performance of Steam link, but even in an early, easy game like BF5 RTX, cranking thongs uo to ultra drops things down to 15 fps.

Medium is the only setting that seems to be viable (but even then it only bumps things up. to 40 fps!


For most games the RX 6700's RTX performance is slightly faster than original 2060, and according to Toms, the performance averages were:

DgY8tvoTYG99i78bhqqVLS-970-80.png.webp


Now take those numbers, and convert 40 RRDNA2 Compute units down to 8...and when you also taken into account the lower clock speeds, we're just going to adjust things downward for Steam Deck (say that 6700 XT exactly equals 2060)

Medium = 83 / 5 = 21 avg

High = 13 fps.

even with fsr, medium will limit you to 30 fps...and performance will only get worse with more challenge games
 
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I see what you are saying, but the Deck runs at 800p, so much less pixels, I think 30 fps might be possible with lower settings.
 
So has anyone played games with ray tracing on the deck? I don't own any so I haven't been able to test it out myself.
 
If/when I ever get one (supposed to be by end of Sept!), I can try it out.
 
So has anyone played games with ray tracing on the deck? I don't own any so I haven't been able to test it out myself.
So I can tell you that Chorus has a ray tracing option but it was greyed out on the Deck. Haven't gotten a chance to try other games with ray tracing, though.
 
A little bit of news on RT on the SD has come out recently. Performance is not great but maybe we'll start seeing some RT effects in easy to run indie games?

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022...fed-potential-borne-out-by-ray-tracing-tests/
Valve just enabled native ray tracing on the Steam Deck and it actually looks pretty wild
https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-just-...steam-deck-and-it-actually-looks-pretty-wild/

What business has the Steam Deck running the graphically intensive pretties of ray tracing? You may ask. But Deck developer, Pierre-Loup Griffais, who took to twitter to make the announcement has also demonstrated the performance of Doom Eternal with it enabled.

They posted a screenshot in the thread, confirmed to have been taken on the Deck, with a performance overlay enabled showing the frame rate at 35 fps, with an attendant frame time graph that is seemingly rock solid at that speed.
 
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A little gimmicky. It's a very performance heavy option which is less desirable in a mobile context. Most Steam Deck users aim for efficiency in regards to their rendering because it nets them the most visuals for the given battery life. Having said that, the option might be nice for people who have a power source nearby during their Steam Deck usage.
 
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