Live data from Hacker News

Valve Steam Deck

steamdeck.com

261–270 of 1001 posts

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#261

This is a pretty amazing. Given the ports on the back, will this support the Valve Index? I love my index, but having to boot up a PC and keep myself tethered to the desktop is a bit of an effort that I'd love to skip. EDIT: Found a half-answer to this: "Pierre-Loup Griffais: I mean, it has all the connectivity. You would need [a lot] to do that, but that's not really what we're optimizing the performance for." [1] […

I have a lot of doubt about it supporting the Valve Index. Mainly because it's a 15W CPU. Sure, you can optimize for it, but VR is extremely performance heavy as far as I can understand.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#262

And so, this is what Proton was for. Hope this is a success, as the success of Linux as a gaming platform is strictly linked to the success of this. It does look very appealing: it could become a Switch with the whole PC library available. Damn cool.

" PC library available"

That's the problem proton does not run all the games.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#263
post #135

From the FAQ [0]: - What OS is Steam Deck running? SteamOS 3.0, a new version of SteamOS based on Arch Linux. - Will people be able to install Windows, or other 3rd party content? Yes. Steam Deck is a PC, and players will be able to install whatever they like, including other OSes. [0]: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/faq

I’m super excited to see that they’ve chosen Arch as a base for SteamOS. I understand fully why they originally chose Ubuntu, but I feel like Arch actually hits a lot of sweet spots for consumer use cases and could be adapted for such use quite effectively. (To be fair, I feel similarly about Gentoo, which was similarly adapted for ChromeOS quite successfully.)

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#264
post #35

https://www.steamdeck.com/en/tech > Operating System: SteamOS 3.0 (Arch-based) > Desktop: KDE Plasma This is sure to excite the Linux community.

And they switched from Debian to Arch. Can't say I don't understand them, but I would have thought there would have been better bases than a rolling distribution (Gentoo, NixOS, Fedora).

Both Debian and Arch are very fine distributions. Your other three options aren't really good for what Valve is going for.

Gentoo is source based, and while distribution of binary packages is possible with it, why would they do that?

NixOs ignores FHS, and while it is possible to install a steam compatible runtime, why would they do that?

And Fedora belongs to RedHat, and why would they do that, when they actually try to switch away from a OS distribution controlled by one company?

I am not saying those distributions aren't good, just that it would not make sense for Valve to use any of those.

Debian (via Ubuntu) and Arch are probably the most well tested Linux distributions by gamers, that do not belong to a single company.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#265

The button placement seems really high, but it might be comfortable to play while resting the bottom on a table.

I just hit the site on my desktop. Like the steam controller before, it's got a lot of back buttons that you can likely remap (R1 to R4 and L1 to L4). So yes, the front buttons are backups.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#266

I don't see any mention of VR. I wonder if they will support plugging in a Valve Index. Seems like it should be possible through the dock. Oculus headsets wouldn't work though, since they don't support Linux. Unless you can install Windows on this thing somehow... Edit: Yes you can install Windows: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/faq This might be a good companion for an Oculus Quest headset. $299 for Qu…

Not a chance in hell that this runs SteamVR with acceptable performance, though. I'm not convinced that this will work as a VR rig at all.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#267

Anyone know what the story is for running non-steam games on this? I'm thinking 2000s win32 keyboard-and-mouse games, or even MacOS9 emulation.

It's a fully fledged PC. You can install anything you want. So if you can run the emulator on linux, you can do it on here.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#269
post #198
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..)

Switch is 390ish-500 GFlops (higher is when docked)

It’s about perf/watts

Post reply on HN