Steam Deck officially announced by Valve

I watched the steam deck teardown video where they disclaimed everything. in showing the 2230 M.2 drive, was there anything unique about it? they mentioned something about selecting it for thermals, etc. but shouldnt any 2230 m.2 drive work?
 
sc5mu93 said:
I watched the steam deck teardown video where they disclaimed everything. in showing the 2230 M.2 drive, was there anything unique about it? they mentioned something about selecting it for thermals, etc. but shouldnt any 2230 m.2 drive work?
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I think there was speculation that the "selected for thermals" means that it's a single-sided drive with low power consumption, but yeah it's standard and the afaik the upgradeability is only a grey area because Valve doesn't want to commit to providing a QVL and other support to upgraders.
 
NattyKathy said:
I think there was speculation that the "selected for thermals" means that it's a single-sided drive with low power consumption, but yeah it's standard and the afaik the upgradeability is only a grey area because Valve doesn't want to commit to providing a QVL and other support to upgraders.
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good point.
 
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zamardii12 said:
Cyberpunk 2077 running on Steam Deck.



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Definitely looks playable.

I thought my hype would've died down by now for this hardware, but I'm still feeling pumped. I was working a long shift yesterday and was thinking how much more enjoyable work would be with the Deck.
 
SeymourGore said:
Definitely looks playable.

I thought my hype would've died down by now for this hardware, but I'm still feeling pumped. I was working a long shift yesterday and was thinking how much more enjoyable work would be with the Deck.
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I can't justify a Deck in my daily life. It seems cool, but would end up being wasted on me. I have so many games between PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5, Series X that I already don't have time for. If I traveled a lot it would be cool to have one, but that's it.

Definitely surprised to see Cyberpunk running as decently as it is though. Can't wait to see what people get running on the Steam Deck in the future, but long-term support from Valve for this thing is concerning.
 
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I'm pretty sure I'll never see it due to the fucking stupid "checkout" they had when pre-orders launched. It kept trying to hit my CC everytime it failed to process the transaction and my CC thought it was a compromised card.
 
Stoked. For really no reason. I don’t have a gaming use case for this thing at all, it’s just cool.
 
I'm still on board for the cheap one. I'll crack it open and change the SSD one way or another. Affordable fun that's for sure.
 
LZ_Xray said:
Stoked. For really no reason. I don’t have a gaming use case for this thing at all, it’s just cool.
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Im in the same boat. Im going to play games on it "just because", but i really just want to try running a vr headset like a quest 2 with it as a monitor and walk around Snowcrash gargoyle style
 
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At announcement, I was skeptical, but valve is making me believe. You have to applaud Valve's focus. I guess being a private company with a money printing machine (steam), they can afford to focus for 10+ years on bringing games to a non-windows portable gaming machine. I'm really interested to see the software integration. Lots of companies can make hardware. the really successful ones do full vertical integration with the software stack.
 
This is sure getting interesting though. I'm starting to think that MS buying up tons of game studios is also partially related to this, at least taken as a whole. They're locking up a huge swath of huge game studios and that means they can make SURE the games require their own proprietary online launchers and anti-cheat that will never be opened to other platforms.

Provide the "game pass" at just good enough pricing to entice everyone to jump on board the "games as a service" and get them used to it... then switch Windows to a service because "the game service is affordable..." then jack up the prices of everything once the market share and monopoly is secured.

The battle now is going to become even more intense. Gamers are going to have to decide if they are willing to change the games they prefer to play in order to operate on the open source based platform Valve is trying to kick start. Frankly, I think Valve knows their long term survival is at stake.

What place does Valve, Epic, GOG, etc hold long term as a game sellers if MS, EA, Sony and Nintendo hold every single major game people want to play behind their proprietary as-a-service paywalls? The games will never leave their services and become sold through other services. That entire concept will go away. And their libraries will age out and they'll fail over the next decade or two if they can't entire brand new popular titles to ship on their stores.

I never really thought MS would follow through with going this far down the software as a service path. I thought the push back would make it take longer. But I suppose a large subset of the population is already at the bottom of the slippery slope and used to it.

We are about to enter interesting times for PC gaming. Times where maybe Linux/Proton or whatever it evolves into over the next few years has the potential to be MORE like what Windows gaming used to be like as an open gaming platform than Windows is now.
 
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Advil said:
This is sure getting interesting though. I'm starting to think that MS buying up tons of game studios is also partially related to this, at least taken as a whole. They're locking up a huge swath of huge game studios and that means they can make SURE the games require their own proprietary online launchers and anti-cheat that will never be opened to other platforms.

Provide the "game pass" at just good enough pricing to entice everyone to jump on board the "games as a service" and get them used to it... then switch Windows to a service because "the game service is affordable..." then jack up the prices of everything once the market share and monopoly is secured.

The battle now is going to become even more intense. Gamers are going to have to decide if they are willing to change the games they prefer to play in order to operate on Valve's more open platform.

I never really thought MS would follow through with going this far down the software as a service path. I thought the push back would make it take longer. But I suppose a large subset of the population is already at the bottom of the slippery slope and used to it.

We are about to enter interesting times for PC gaming. Times where maybe Linux/Proton or whatever it evolves into over the next few years has the potential to be MORE like what Windows gaming used to be like as an open gaming platform than Windows is now.
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Subscription services are the future for all these companies. They want us to own nothing and continue to keep paying forever. They starting to do it with cars having DLC now. We going to have to keep track of 100 different $5-10 sub services to continue to live our live somewhat like we do now.
 
You know, there might be some actual use for a control setup like that on a stream deck. Don't give Elgato any more ideas. ;)
 
Azphira said:
My Steam Deck finally arrived today.
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Advil said:
You know, there might be some actual use for a control setup like that on a stream deck. Don't give Elgato any more ideas. ;)
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I always upvote stReam decks. :)

I actually wish they would add a smaller non-LCD hardware folder recursion button ("one level up" and "home" key) so that you didn't have to waste an LCD array button for it. Not as annoying on the larger one but still seems like a waste to me, esp on the 15 key one.

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The stEAM deck looks neat but I don't really have a mobile gaming scenario. I use a laptop for portable / DTR gaming setup and I have a decent tablet with built in kickstand or a collapse-able metal art-easel like stand for media and browsing, chatting/communications, forums, etc on the go.

I was disappointed, even just window shopping/tire kicking, to see that the steam deck is only 60Hz and has no VRR and I would have hoped it was OLED. Especially considering that so many phones and tablets are available in 120hz (60hz toggle for power saving) and oled model options. (Both my phone and my tablet are 120hz capable, and my laptop is 165hz).

I read somewhere that they may use some of the steam deck tech for the untethered stand alone gaming functionality of valve's next VR headset (which also might have varifocal lenses by the way). I'm sure the steam deck hardware in the headset won't be at 60hz for VR so maybe the screen was a cost savings choice as the steam decks are relatively affordable. Still would have been neat if they had a higher tier one with 90 - 120hz + VRR for weak games that could benefit and for game streaming more demanding games from a stronger rig (like remote desktop/ streaming VR does). That and an oled screen for sbs per pixel HDR and inf black depth. It's only 720p ~ 800p though too and still gets like 48fps avg in some games (prob like 33fps < - > 60fpsHz peak), so it is what it is. What it does it seems to do pretty well, with the huge benefit of potentially having your entire steam catalog available I think via proton to make them work on it's linux os. That along with emulators.

I still wish the launch and life of the steam deck well, just not for me personally usage wise regardless of the hardware limitations I listed. I'll prob jump on their next VR headset though.
 
whateverer said:
I'm no surprise - my i5 6500 Skylake quad core can perform the same trick (2x native res smooth in most games)

Until it can run ps3, you're not doing anything special
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I used to run rpcs3 on a raven ridge igpu, and it worked fine, and the software has only gotten more optimized since then. I'm thinking the steam deck will be able to handle it for the most part.
 
sover said:
I used to run rpcs3 on a raven ridge igpu, and it worked fine, and the software has only gotten more optimized since then. I'm thinking the steam deck will be able to handle it for the most part.
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At above 30 fps? I thought you need 8 cores to achieve that?

The igpu of the Steam Deck is plenty powerful but the quad-core Zen 2 will likely limit you
 
whateverer said:
At above 30 fps? I thought you need 8 cores to achieve that?

The igpu of the Steam Deck is plenty powerful but the quad-core Zen 2 will likely limit you
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Yes, though now I have a discrete GPU with it. However, raven ridge 2400G does have hyper threading, though each thread is much slower than a zen2 thread.
 
sover said:
Yes, though now I have a discrete GPU with it. However, raven ridge 2400G does have hyper threading, though each thread is much slower than a zen2 thread.
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So you're saying this official benchmark no-loner applies a little over a year later?

RDR_CPU_CHART.png



For really easy games, 8 threads is ine, but if you're buying an unupgradable console, I would rather jump up to 6 + Zen 3 cores.
 
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whateverer said:
So you're saying this official benchmark no-loner applies a little over a year later?

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For really easy games, 8 threads is ine, but if you're buying an unupgradable console, I would rather jump up to 6 + Zen 3 cores.
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I wasn't playing red dead redemption, so I can't comment on that, but persona 5 and drakengard 3 played well.
 
sover said:
I wasn't playing red dead redemption, so I can't comment on that, but persona 5 and drakengard 3 played well.
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So, you're playing two 2d games running on a 3d system?

of course its going to be easy; given the pain-in-the asss it already is to find that "?perfectly stable config "in about every other PS3 game you try, I wouldn't want balancin into the equation dealing with 20 fps stock in most titles
 
whateverer said:
So, you're playing two 2d games running on a 3d system?

of course its going to be easy; given the pain-in-the asss it already is to find that "?perfectly stable config "in about every other PS3 game you try, I wouldn't want balancin into the equation dealing with 20 fps stock in most titles
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2d games? What are you talking about?

You seem so sure of yourself that I checked again, the only time performance dips (30fps cap) is when there's a shader compilation. Otherwise it runs the two games I noted great at native ps3 res with the vulcan renderer.
 
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