Valve Steam Deck • Hacker News Board

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#191

Post by dralley » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

boomboomsubban wrote: post #140

dralley wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They fixed the worst thing about SteamOS: It's now got an Arch base. I'm a little surprised they didn't go with something like Fedora. The kernel / drivers are kept just as up-to-date as Arch but the rest of the system is a little more stable.

Aren't up-to-date libraries fairly important for steam?

I said "a little" - Fedora is still more aggressive with updates than Ubuntu or Debian. Just slightly less than Arch.

The most important libraries for Steam are things like Mesa, which Fedora updates on a rolling basis along with the kernel.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#192

Post by ehnto » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

d7e7eyeudi wrote: post #145

ketzo wrote: post #44

There’s obviously a lot of people who like playing games in a more mobile format, as evidenced by the huge popularity of the Switch Lite / mobile gaming. Giving the PC games market access to that form factor seems, on its face, like an extremely good move. But we’ve seen products like this before — the NVIDIA Shield, for one. Pretty cool piece of tech, but didn’t exactly start a revolution. I guess the question becom…

Personally I find a lot of these devices backwards minded. I'd much rather just shell out for a service like Stadia (if the catalogue was larger) and turn my actual mobile device into something capable of playing pc titles. Especially if the implementation is platform agnostic like Stadia. Gaming devices of all stripes have become expensive enough that I'm more than happy to see cloud gaming takeover and leave hardwa…

Your phone lacks the controller interfaces these devices have though. I guess it depends on if you can hook up a controller to your phone, or if you're able to play the games you like without to much fuss on your phone screen.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#193

Post by ocdtrekkie » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

63 wrote: post #42

Sort of an unfortunate name since it's so similar to "Stream Deck." I imagine there might be some confusion between the two if this takes off.

I initially clicked this link thinking it was a Valve-branded Stream Deck. Only then did I realize it was a Valve-branded Switch instead. :P

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#194

Post by jimbob45 » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

Valve is like 90s id Software without Carmack. They understand business models. They know that the money is to be made in game engines and game platforms, not games themselves. However, they’ve never had the technical talent and vision to execute on that.

Half-life was supposed to be a demo for GoldSrc. It never took off and I can’t name a single 3rd party GoldSrc game. Likewise, Half-life 2 was supposed to be a demo to sell the Source engine but I’ve yet to see a successful Source title that wasn’t Valve-based.

They tried with the Steam console (the name of which escapes me) and I don’t know anyone who owns one (despite the excellent controller). Now we’re at them trying their hand at a Nintendo Switch competitor. Based on their past failures, I don’t see this being any more of a success.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#195

Post by criddell » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

User23 wrote: post #20

mikl wrote: post #17

Typo in the title. It’s “Steam Deck”, not “Steam Desk”. Interesting that Valve is diving deeper into hardware. Remember when they still made video games? Remember when there was still a hope they would some day release Half-Life 3?

My understanding is that their Index VR hardware is quite good too.

Does the Index VR work with the Steam Deck?

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#196

Post by floatingatoll » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

MR4D wrote: post #182

Uh, anyone else think this is poor (confusing) branding compared to the Stream Deck from Elgato? https://www.elgato.com/en/stream-deck

Never heard of it, so no. But I've heard of Elgato, and of Steam!

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#197

Post by ehnto » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #171

ketzo wrote: post #44

There’s obviously a lot of people who like playing games in a more mobile format, as evidenced by the huge popularity of the Switch Lite / mobile gaming. Giving the PC games market access to that form factor seems, on its face, like an extremely good move. But we’ve seen products like this before — the NVIDIA Shield, for one. Pretty cool piece of tech, but didn’t exactly start a revolution. I guess the question becom…

But we’ve seen products like this before — the NVIDIA Shield, for one Atari Lynx. Sony PSP. Sony Vita. Nintendo Switch. Any others I don't remember?

The inimitable Nokia Ngage!

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#198

Post by ds » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #80

Pretty nice specs for a handheld battery powered device... Processor AMD APU 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) APU power: 4-15W RAM 16 GB LPDDR5 RAM (5500 MT/s) Storage 64 GB eMMC (PCIe Gen 2 x1) 256 GB NVMe SSD (PCIe Gen 3 x4) 512 GB high-speed NVMe SSD (PCIe Gen 3 x4) All models include high-speed microSD card slot Though it does weigh 669 gra…

Im not sure how apples to oranges it is, but a GTX 980 (Released in 2014) has 5 TFlops. Genuinely curious how powerful this might be for GPU intensive games. (Call of Duty, Rust, etc..)

Maybe this is equivalent to something like a MX-150 or GTX1050?

Should be totally fine for Valves games though (CSGO, TF2, Etc..)

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#199

Post by tempest_ » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

caslon wrote: post #83

ketzo wrote: post #44

There’s obviously a lot of people who like playing games in a more mobile format, as evidenced by the huge popularity of the Switch Lite / mobile gaming. Giving the PC games market access to that form factor seems, on its face, like an extremely good move. But we’ve seen products like this before — the NVIDIA Shield, for one. Pretty cool piece of tech, but didn’t exactly start a revolution. I guess the question becom…

You have to consider that PC hardware is currently spiraling out of control in terms of price, and $400 for the specs it has presently is a fairly decent buy even if you don't care about the form factor.

A steam machine if you will

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#200

Post by nostromo » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

caslon wrote: post #38

First impressions: Really good hardware for the price. They fixed the worst thing about SteamOS: It's now got an Arch base. They're definitely overcharging for storage, but I imagine it'll be easy enough to modify one, so it probably doesn't matter much. Why is any company having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 these days? Going with a relatively low resolution compared to modern ones is actually a surprisingly smart mov…

> All models of Steam Deck support expanding your storage via microSD cards. Games stored on a microSD card will appear in your library instantly.

This makes buying the model with limited storage a bit of a no-brainer. I'm glad Valve supports external storage.