Steam Deck ~ PC Switch

[Dycedarg]

64 gb, are they fucking kidding? That's not enough to install even a 1/5 of the last year's CoD.

It's amazing how Valve was able fuck up something so simple. Divinity Original requires 60 gb. Wrath of the Righteous, 50 gb. And BG3 demands 150 gb. If you install Windows 10 on this thing, you won't have enough memory to install any of those games.

 

[ADL]

256/512GB NVMe should've been the minimum given that you can buy a 512 for fifty bucks brand new off Newegg right now.
1TB NVMes are roughly $120 and 2TB NVMes are roughly $220. Doesn't seem like Valve is subsidizing the hardware like the consoles do which sucks because they're collecting the same 30% royalty as everyone else. Playing devil's advocate perhaps it doesn't make as much sense for them to do that since they allow developers to generate unlimited amounts of keys.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Sure as hell not something I need or even particularly want, but $400 price tag sounds pretty good. If you're exclusively a console player that would let you drop a console's worth of money on it for a self contained thing that'll let you play a bunch of PC shit and indies. And if you're a neckbearded PC master race you can throw emulators on it and do all kinds of shit with it.

Plus it's called a deck, which means the grim cyberpunk present is still catching up with fiction. Very schway of Valve, good to enjoy with your soykaf.

 

[Bad Sector]

It's amazing how Valve was able fuck up something so simple.

256/512GB NVMe should've been the minimum

Sure as hell not something I need or even particularly want, but $400 price tag sounds pretty good.

I'm certain they only did the 64GB version so that they can price it at $399 regardless of practicality as a lot of people will call it "a $399 device" even if the realistic options are at least $100 higher (...and much higher in the case of EU :-().

 

[Rahdulan]

Yeah, but what does

CPU: Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32)
GPU: 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.0-1.6GHz (up to 1.6 TFlops FP32)

translate to when it comes to normal specs?

What is it comparable to?

 

[ferratilis]

Yeah, but what does

CPU: Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32)
GPU: 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.0-1.6GHz (up to 1.6 TFlops FP32)

translate to when it comes to normal specs?

What is it comparable to?

PS4/base Xbox One

 

[ADL]

The GPU is about as fast in raw performance as a base PS4, but it's a much newer and more efficient architecture (the same as PS5/XSX), and it only needs to target 1280x800. In other words, 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 CPU is basically half a XSX/PS5, with slightly lower clock. 16 GB of RAM (really neat), 4x Switch, same capacity as PS5 Obviously there will be a bit of overhead (varying from basically nothing or even better performance to significant overhead) for running games on Proton compared to Windows, but this is the performance you should expect.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Well.. it's brave of Valve to try and compete with Nintendo in the handheld market. No one thus far has been able to beat Nintendo at their home turf and I doubt this will either, but good luck.

 

[ferratilis]

It has already beaten Switch, because the device (I'm deliberately not calling it a console) hasn't even come out yet and you have more games on it than you'll ever have on Switch. For many people, that's reason enough to buy it. It will never sell in numbers that Switch has, but it doesn't even have to. The more important thing is that it can open a whole new market of handhelds, Valve said all the software will be available to other makers as well. Valve wins either way, because they sell games.

Or it will fail miserably and be forgotten like the Steam controller.

 

[schru]

Is that supposed to be Mossman and Alyx?

 

[whydoibother]

Valve and Collabora have been working on resolving the anti-cheat problem for a while now by contributing to the Linux kernel and adding kernel-space emulation for anti-cheat Windows kernel calls.

The bot infestation of Team Fortress that killed the game came after it was released for play on Linux, right? In general, I think a lot of developers are staying away from Linux specifically because a lot of botters/hackers call it home. I hope they have the anti-cheat prepared in advance, before releasing this.

 

[Bad Sector]

Is that supposed to be Mossman and Alyx?

It is a recreation of the "it's a unix system, i know this!" scene from Jurassic Park. Not sure who (or if) the two characters are supposed to be in the Valve universe :-P

 

[Infinitron]

Well well:

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Valve and Collabora have been working on resolving the anti-cheat problem for a while now by contributing to the Linux kernel and adding kernel-space emulation for anti-cheat Windows kernel calls.

The bot infestation of Team Fortress that killed the game came after it was released for play on Linux, right? In general, I think a lot of developers are staying away from Linux specifically because a lot of botters/hackers call it home. I hope they have the anti-cheat prepared in advance, before releasing this.

Happened years after TF2 was already available.
Valve just doesn't care about TF2. If it was a real issue, CSGO would be plagued by bots. The fact that CSGO isn't means they just don't care enough to do anything about TF2's issues.
CSGO has some of the best anti-cheat protection on the market and all of it is done serverside, btw. They trained an AI to identify cheating behavior and it does so far better than human reporting could ever hope to accomplish.

 

[TemplarGR]

The only downside is that every gamer kid and his dog are gonna claim they are running Archlinux now.

 

[TemplarGR]

64 gb, are they fucking kidding? That's not enough to install even a 1/5 of the last year's CoD.

It has other larger internal options, plus microSD, and modern microSD have some insance capacities and speeds these days... Are you fucking stuck in 2000?

 

[TemplarGR]

~2 teraflops performance and 16 GB ram in a compact package with a 7 inch display is really brutal for just 400 dollars. It is like an overclocked PS4 with double the ram - not a single handheld on the market comes even close to how much power this thing has.

This is FAR, FAAAAAR more powerful than a PS4.

Teraflops is just a useless number, when comparing different architectures. PS4 was GCN 1.0 . Deck is RDNA 2. RDNA 2 is so far ahead in terms of efficiency it is not even funny. 1.6 Teraflops of RDNA 2 are like 4-5 teraflops of GCN, and i am being generous to GCN. If this had faster ram, it would be in PS4 Pro territory, but on a native resolution of 720p.

Not to mention 16gigs of ram instead of 8, and the most important part: 4/8 cores of Zen cpu cores. The jaguar cores in PS4 were fucking slow, and in lower resolutions cpu cores make a large difference.

This console is gonna be a beast, it can definitely run PS5 games at 720p, perhaps with lower settings. I definitely expect this to be able to run Cyberpunk 2077 at low settings.

 

[Wunderbar]

64 gb, are they fucking kidding? That's not enough to install even a 1/5 of the last year's CoD.

It has other larger internal options

yeah, you either go for a slightly cheaper option and suffer because of almost unusable 64gb capacity, or buy a superior 512gb option. Selling "wrong" and "correct" versions of a hardware is a fucking dumb move.

plus microSD, and modern microSD have some insance capacities and speeds these days...Are you fucking stuck in 2000?

microsd are slower than NVME.

 

[TemplarGR]

yeah, you either go for a slightly cheaper option and suffer because of almost unusable 64gb capacity, or buy a superior 512gb option. Selling "wrong" and "correct" versions of a hardware is a fucking dumb move.

There is no "wrong" version of the hardware. The main competitor, nintendo switch, is mainly for indies and ps3 era level of nintendo trash "exclusives". With 64gbs, you can get Steam which has far more and superior versions of indies plus you can play all the PS3 and PS4 level of games that are far superior to nintendo trash, more numerable, cheaper, and can work on your main PC as well.

How much internal memory does the Switch have? When people look at 400$ console, they compare to the Switch. What kind of games does the Switch install?

If you need something better, you pay more. If you always had to pay 600$ for the basic model, the general consesus would be "better than Switch but much more expensive, so i went with the Switch".

microsd are slower than NVME.

Oh really? So 100% of PC gamers are running all their games on NVME? You don't say? I am still on HDD and i can run even Cyberpunk 2077 just fine.

Just admit you are a Nintendo Switch fanboi faggot and drop the pretenses.

 

[Venser]

I am still on HDD and i can run even Cyberpunk 2077 just fine.

Ugh why would you do that to yourself? I even swapped the storage drives for SSDs and put a SATA SSD inside PS4. Once you try SSD you can't go back to HDD.

 

[TemplarGR]

Ugh why would you do that to yourself? I even swapped the storage drives for SSDs and put a SATA SSD inside PS4. Once you try SSD you can't go back to HDD.

It is not that bad, actually. I own a modern 2T drive i bought last September, it is plenty fast for my needs. I never noticed any serious loading times in Cyberpunk 2077 when i played it. I have an AMD FX 6300, 16gigs of 1600mhz ram, and an R9 380 2GB of vram gpu. And i could run 1080p Cyberpunk 2077 at low settings at around 30-35fps constantly.

The deck is probably far faster than my machine. It would run Cyberpunk 2077 and all other next gen ports just fine at 800p.

 

[ultimanecat]

For the price, this seems like it’s going to blow the market open for handheld gaming PCs, which until now have mostly been Chinese shit with varying levels of quality but nothing like this at this price.

I’m certainly interested but I’m also curious (ie ignorant) of how well Proton can run non-Steam shit, or if it’s WINE only for Windows programs outside of the SteamOS interface. I certainly have plenty of Steam games, and emulators and old ROMS shouldn’t be a problem, but I also have standalone stuff I still play that I’ve never got to easily work when I’ve dabbled in linux gaming.

 

[duke nukem]

Switch has optimized install sizes for its memory size. Steam deck uses pc installs, so they are huge. Not only that, but switch is a lot cheaper and has oled.

64 gb, are they fucking kidding? That's not enough to install even a 1/5 of the last year's CoD.

It has other larger internal options, plus microSD, and modern microSD have some insance capacities and speeds these days... Are you fucking stuck in 2000?

HAAHAHAHAH. Yeah, amazing speeds. Steam deck only supports UHS-I, meaning max read speed is 104 MByte/s. And ps4 has like 80-100 mb/s. So basically things load almost slow as ps4. Yeah..really fun watching 30-45 sec loading screen. Well, atleast this has better cpu, so it should load slightly faster.

 

[dacencora]

Finally a good handheld. The Switch is pretty decent, and the dock mode is great, but overall the 3DS is probably a better handheld, especially because it is much easier to mod.

This one will be able to run RetroArch from day one, so it beats out every other handheld IMO. I've heard good things about the WinGPD devices but this Steam device is actually cheaper than those, and looks like it's more powerful.

 

[ultimanecat]

Yeah, for emulation this thing should be awesome. There’s been kind of this gulf where you can get Chinese handhelds that reliably run emulators up to the PSX/N64 generation for $100 but then to get something that is really capable of emulating DC/GC/PS2 and beyond you’re looking at either laptops, or the handful of handheld PCs that start out at least at $600 and have actually been getting more expensive. If you only intended to play indies and older PC games with install sizes less than 5-10 gb and emulators, that $400 model is in a league of its own.