Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
Quote:
Originally Posted by
cheesemp
Unless I've missed a recent GPD release this is 1) Cheaper than a GDP 2) Has dedicated gaming controls rather than trying to use a tiny keyboard 3) Has more graphics power. I've looked at the GPD devices several times but could never justify the price plus figured gaming on a little keyboard is no better than a touch screen on my phone.
1) Yes, mostly. The XD is cheaper, though not entirely comparable.
2) Several GPD models have gaming controls as well as the keyboard, and at least one has just gaming controls.
3) Doesn't surprise me.
So yes, with all the above considered, I'm not surprised Steam is seeing if their version will do any better. It wasn't a criticism or an opposition. I hope they do well.
That said, I mostly play M&KB, so having only gaming controls isn't a selling point for me.
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kato-2
You have no proof valve isnt treating this like a game console, seeding dev kits to developers, ensuring future games have a Steam Deck profile.
There are more 'exclusive' games on PC then there are on the Switch which doesn't have the power to run them and the Switch is woefully out of date hardware wise but that hasn't stopped it from doing well.
If Valve have done their homework and put support teams behind this it could do very well.
I've not - other than they fact they are not already shouting about that with their reveal, and there have been precisely zero leaks from 3rd party developers, which is odd to say the least...I just don't think thats Valve's style.
I don't get the appeal of this when you think it through logically. The hardware is already out of date, the library of games that will work on this well is not as huge as you'd think, and newer ones are not likely to run well on this sort of device. There are some scary risks too if Valve decide they want to make it a success and release their upcoming games on this - ending up gimping HL3 or something to retain compatibility..but lets hope not!
We'll have to see, but personally i'm putting this with the likes of Stadia in the "nice idea, but not ready for prime time" box.
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
The GPU is RDNA2,so actually supports stuff such as VRS,and potentially FSR which can be used to improve FPS(it is only a 1280X800 display,so less than half the pixels to push than a 1080p display). At lower resolutions,you can get away with lower settings,and other tweaks to the image quality. It will be interesting to see if this has some Infinity Cache too,because if it does,it might have more grunt than initially appears. It already does have around 70% more memory bandwidth than the current AMD laptop APUs.
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
This was news to me this morning, this evening after work & after 45 minutes of steam misadventures I slapped my €4 down. I saw some outlets questioning why valve should bother with this when current streaming services can be run from mobiles etc but they forget some people have crap internet and physical controls beat screen controls 100% of the time. Also I have a largish steam library and will enjoy the challenge of getting it to work on this tiny PC.
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
Quote:
Originally Posted by
CAT-THE-FIFTH
The GPU is RDNA2,so actually supports stuff such as VRS,and potentially FSR which can be used to improve FPS(it is only a 1280X800 display,so less than half the pixels to push than a 1080p display). At lower resolutions,you can get away with lower settings,and other tweaks to the image quality. It will be interesting to see if this has some Infinity Cache too,because if it does,it might have more grunt than initially appears. It already does have around 70% more memory bandwidth than the current AMD laptop APUs.
Anyway, reasonably sure now that Valve didn't pay for a full custom design, so would expect this to be the rumoured van Gogh APU. Which has presumably been designed to be a cheap quad core to sell in large quantities.
Zen2 + RDNA2 is a strange choice in terms of being able to reuse parts for an eventual Zen3 +RDNA2 octo core high end APU though.
The keyword is probably "cheap" as in cheap to make, so would imagine no or very very little infinity cache.
If every mm² counts, I wonder if it even has a DDR4 controller? Soldered BGA APU with soldered LDDR5 might be popular with OEMs and box shifters but is not so good for the DIY market (-:
On the other hand with that bandwidth the iGPU should be a lot faster than the more expensive Cezanne with its faster Zen3 CPU.
Maybe once 3D cache and other packaging becomes widespread, it will be possible to have the strongest CPU, plus the strongest iGPU, plus a decent amount of cache in one product instead of all this confusing product map where parts keep leap-frogging each other with different advantages.
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
Quote:
Originally Posted by
kompukare
Anyway, reasonably sure now that Valve didn't pay for a full custom design, so would expect this to be the rumoured van Gogh APU. Which has presumably been designed to be a cheap quad core to sell in large quantities.
Zen2 + RDNA2 is a strange choice in terms of being able to reuse parts for an eventual Zen3 +RDNA2 octo core high end APU though.
The keyword is probably "cheap" as in cheap to make, so would imagine no or very very little infinity cache.
If every mm² counts, I wonder if it even has a DDR4 controller? Soldered BGA APU with soldered LDDR5 might be popular with OEMs and box shifters but is not so good for the DIY market (-:
On the other hand with that bandwidth the iGPU should be a lot faster than the more expensive Cezanne with its faster Zen3 CPU.
Maybe once 3D cache and other packaging becomes widespread, it will be possible to have the strongest CPU, plus the strongest iGPU, plus a decent amount of cache in one product instead of all this confusing product map where parts keep leap-frogging each other with different advantages.
4 cores would indicate this is probably a single CCX Zen2 design,so shouldn't suffer some of the latency issues associated with the 8 core Zen2 APUs. Maybe it's possible this could have kind of unified cache shared by both the CPU and GPU?? Since the console is only targetting 1280X800/1280X720 resolution you would need more than 16MB I suspect,as the 6600XT only has 32MB and its apparently targetted towards 1080p gaming.
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
It's now confirmed that all models have a 2230 m2 slot, not designed to be user serviceable but seems like it'll be possible to add storage to the base model and swap it out in the 256/512 versions.
I like the idea, I do miss my vita after all. Not sure I'd pay the asking prices though..
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
I feel very conflicted about this. I think it looks pretty tempting. Okay, it's not a budget item but it's not stupid-expensive either and looks pretty good value for what you get. If this gets Valve's full backing then I would expect game compatibility to be pretty good too, and they're apparently working directly with the developers of several top-ten current games to ensure no oopsiee's.
I also don't have a problem with the resolution, given the small size of the screen. It isn't supposed to be a replacement for a hairy-chested gaming mwga-rig with a screen the size of a wall. All told, and for the target market, I can see this doing really well.
I'm conflicted because, as regulars here may well remember from previous discussions) I just don't like the entire ethos of Steam, where I buy games and Steam decide if I can play then or not, and if I somehow, even accidentally, cross their T&C's they can 'terminate' my account' and completely invalidate all the games I spent loadsa money on. Well, for me, that ain't happening. My stance when Steam launched was 'not doing that', and it remains that way to this day, even if the result was/is never getting to play many leading games. And this device isn't going to change that.
So while I like both the concept and the device, well, it's Steam, innit? End-of, for me. I'll stick to DRM-free gaming. I get enough gaming that way to adequately scratch my gaming itch, and don't miss (because I don't pay attention to games until and unless they arrive on GOG, etc) anything on Steam.
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
From what I gather you can install other OSes,so in theory you could put Windows on it or another Linux Distro.
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
Quote:
Originally Posted by
CAT-THE-FIFTH
From what I gather you can install other OSes,so in theory you could put Windows on it or another Linux Distro.
From what I've seen, that's true, yeah. I'd need to be convinced it'll give me a capability that justified the price to get me to do that but yeah, it's a possibility.
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Saracen999
From what I've seen, that's true, yeah. I'd need to be convinced it'll give me a capability that justified the price to get me to do that but yeah, it's a possibility.
In my case its a case of too many things I want to get,and not enough justification,budget or time to effectively use it all!
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
Quote:
Originally Posted by
CAT-THE-FIFTH
In my case its a case of too many things I want to get,and not enough justification,budget or time to effectively use it all!
100% with you there. I have an "indulgence" list, and unfortunately, the sum cost of the items on it significantly exceeds the available budget .... though I could knock a couple of hundred million quid off that if I shelved the 200-ft yacht idea. :D
I would still come up way short of the current estimated total cost, though. Still, I did cross the "buy a NAS" option off my list recently. The downside is I crossed a good chunk off my budget at the same time;)
Good job I have priorities. :D
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rob_B
It's now confirmed that all models have a 2230 m2 slot, not designed to be user serviceable but seems like it'll be possible to add storage to the base model and swap it out in the 256/512 versions.
I like the idea, I do miss my vita after all. Not sure I'd pay the asking prices though..
Could be worse, but 2230 like 2242 or 2260 is pretty rare.
Rate = niche and expensive.
The numbers on the comparison sites trips the story:
Pcpartspicker:
2280 has 699 hits
2242 has 28 hits
2230 had no hits
Skinflint:
2280 has 535 hits
2242 has 16 hits
2230 has 5 hits.
Kioxia do a 1TB NVMe in 2230 but it is over £200.
Western Digital do NVMe in 2230 and the 500GB is around £95.
Better than nothing but there's really no excuse for not providing 2280. An extra 22x50x6mm (for s generous Z heigh) really isn't much space to find in such a device.
EDIT: made it clear that I mean the extra space 2280 would use compared to 2230.
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
Dell also do a 512 for £133 (!) which is still less than the difference between the lowest/highest devices (ignoring the different screen on the 512)
Not something for everyone but nice to know is not soldered on!
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
Quote:
Originally Posted by
kompukare
Better than nothing but there's really no excuse for not providing 2280. 22x50x6mm (for s generous Z heigh) really isn't much space to find in such a device.
Errm - it's 22x80, hence the name. But you need space for the screw and the connector, so it's about 95mm needed. That's quite a lot of space in a device this size.
2230 will get a lot more common as they use these drives in more devices. Once upon a time 2242 were nowhere to be found either.
Re: Valve announces the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC
Quote:
Originally Posted by
excalibur1814
-7-inch 1280 x 800px - Only just acceptable. At least it's not 1366x768 with dialog boxes vanishing.
-64 GB eMMC. Would be full within a month. Base Windows install and the next release downloaded = full.
I'm actually tempted.
"up to 8 hours of 30fps gaming" = 3/4 hours at 'standard' 60fps gaming? Who the heck wants to game at 30fps???
30fps is fine on the Switch, so I'd probably be fine with it on this. But I guess that's dependent on the game in question.
As for installing Windows on it, 10 would be fine but I can't see 11 working - along with the TPM requirement the 9" display as a minimum would lock this out, though the resolution is high enough that I'm sure there would be a good work-around.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rob_B
Dell also do a 512 for £133 (!) which is still less than the difference between the lowest/highest devices (ignoring the different screen on the 512)
Not something for everyone but nice to know is not soldered on!
But you'd lose the "Premium anti-glare etched glass" display upgrade. Without seeing them side-by-side it's impossible to know if it's worth the difference.
--
It's not for me but it's an interesting device and as a Switch & Game Gear owner portable gaming really does make sense. I think the big problem is the cost, as the base model just doesn't make sense for the same reasons that Microsoft's base Surface Go with 64GBemmc/4GB RAM didn't, vs the 128GBnvme/8GB RAM option. It's mainly to hit a price point that isn't the one you'd pay considering 4x the quantity and much faster storage isn't much of a price bump in absolute terms.
It'll certainly be interesting to see how this plays out.