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Valve Steam Deck

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Re: Valve Steam Deck

#981

Post by beermonster »

Alupis wrote: post #781
l0b0 wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arch Linux is amazing. The biggest surprise for me was that it's more stable than so-called stable distros, probably because the various packages don't end up drifting several months from each other when keeping up to date. Hopefully this eventually results in more user friendly Arch Linux installers. The learning curve is an absolute wall when installing, even after several years on Linux, but after that it's pretty…

Ubuntu was likely too difficult for Valve to keep modified and up to date for their needs. Canonical doesn't have any reason to be friendly towards the specific features Valve needs to make SteamOS a thing, and Valve probably doesn't want to maintain their own fork of the entire Ubuntu distro. Not to mention, a default install of Arch is tiny and minimalist. It's the perfect base to apply your own packages on top of…

> Not to mention, a default install of Arch is tiny and minimalist.

I wonder if they considered alpine? Though arch is a fine choice and makes me want one all the more!

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#982

Post by beermonster »

christophilus wrote: post #616
l0b0 wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arch Linux is amazing. The biggest surprise for me was that it's more stable than so-called stable distros, probably because the various packages don't end up drifting several months from each other when keeping up to date. Hopefully this eventually results in more user friendly Arch Linux installers. The learning curve is an absolute wall when installing, even after several years on Linux, but after that it's pretty…

I share your feelings about Arch, but I'm still running Fedora mostly out of laziness. Still, I think Arch is an interesting choice for a console. I'd think you'd want stability (in the sense of very controlled changes / not requiring updates every day).

With just one hardware profile and their own upstream repos fed from Arch they’ll probably have best of both worlds.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#983

Post by ineedasername »

zzt123 wrote: post #945
ineedasername wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar: I have a Hades Canyon GH Nuc because I want a very low profile rig that can run older games on high and new games on low and throw it in a bag w/ power adapter & go. Not only does this accomplish the same thing, it runs Linux and means that if I'm just bringing something along for gaming it's completely self contained.

Specs say it’s a 15w unit (much lower than Hades Canyon), so I imagine the performance will be lacking as it appears to be a Zen 2 based APU. Would be interesting to see how this does on Zen 4 with the 5nm upgrade.

Sure: The Hades Canyon gets (for my benchmarks) something a little bit under a GTX 1060.

The fact that the Zen 2 is 7nm vs the Canyon's 14nm means the performance/watt will be much better. It also has significantly more RAM, and better quality: LPDDR5 instead of DDR4. This also lowers power requirements while at the same time that it improves performance.

But no, I don't think this will be as powerful as a Hades Canyon. Although it also won't have to push pixels to a 2k display like my Canyon does. It doesn't need to be nearly as powerful to provide a similar experience on a small display. (in terms of smoothness. Also higher quality gfx setting will be wasted on this display size, so there's no point worrying about it not running well on "high" textures when the difference between "medium" won't be noticeable on 720p @ 7")

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#984

Post by postalrat »

kart23 wrote: post #760
liminalsunset wrote: post #279

Can the 64GB version be upgraded DIY with a NVMe SSD? It claims to be a eMMC but goes on to clarify it is a PCIe Gen2 x1 connection. Does this mean it is just a m.2 card?

https://youtu.be/oLtiRGTZvGM?t=477 unfortunately, IGN's video says you can't upgrade the internal storage. I'd guess its soldered on.

You are making a lot of assumptions.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#985

Post by specto »

hyperpallium2 wrote: post #915

Deck vs OLED Switch: 40Whr vs 16Whr (3.7V * 4.310Ah) battery, to give similar 2-8hr vs 4.5-9hr, with 1.6TF vs 1TF GPU, weighing 669g vs 398g. Batteries weigh a lot. ARM-based Deck possible?

Probably not with the steam library

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#986

Post by liminalsunset »

Just in case anyone is Ctrl-F-ing this for NVMe M.2 M2 SSD upgrade slot support for the 64GB eMMC version, apparently, the base model does indeed have the NVMe SSD slot like the higher versions according to this:

https://twitter.com/RobotBrush/status/1416150442841628677

which would appear to imply you can upgrade the 64GB eMMC with a NVMe SSD by yourself.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#987

Post by wil421 »

NaN1352 wrote: post #957
pqdbr wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Mac user, I'm very interested as well. I don't play any games nowadays because I cant justify spending all that money for a latest generation PC, let alone the space it takes. If I can have a dockable PC that can churn decent frame rates, It's just a matter of switching the input on my monitor and switching the bluetooth mouse/keyboard to it. For me, the fact it's portable is just icing on the cake to be honest.…

Exactly. But I fear that 1280x800 won’t look great upscaled on my 1440p. That said for playing 2d or lighter indie games it will probably run fine at native 1440p... assuming with external display that you can use native res.

Can you explain what you mean? The output with the dock says up to 4K and 8k at different refresh rates.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#988

Post by vehemenz »

deeviant wrote: post #67

I really wonder what the point of this is. Mobile gaming is a meme at this point. It's a thing but phones and tables have it well catered too. We don't need another mobile gaming thing that will surely be in the bargain bin in as couple years.

I wonder if you read literally anything about this product before commenting on it. Because I immediately understood what it was and who it was for.

This is a portable PC with a built-in screen and game controls. It's much closer to a laptop than a "gaming thing".

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#989

Post by rasz »

kiriberty wrote: post #560

The display specs seem very mediocre: Resolution: 1280 x 800px (16:10 aspect ratio) Type: Optically bonded LCD for enhanced readability Display size: 7" diagonal Brightness: 400 nits typical Refresh rate: 60Hz I feel like they dropped the ball on d

Integrated graphics wont let you go higher with resolution. The big question is if the display supports variable refresh - by guess is not, and This is the big ball drop.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#990

Post by jhanschoo »

superkuh wrote: post #82
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #56

Gotta admit, I never saw that coming. I thought SteamOS was dead after the failure of Steam Machines and Valve was only continuing with their Linux efforts because it's still a useful hedge against Microsoft locking everyone in the App Store. I totally did not expect them to copy the Switch use-case with it. I'm anxious to see how this turns out. Valve's history with hardware is not so great, so it could go nowhere l…

I love Valve but it seems like they create these hardware projects to occasionally remind platform owners like microsoft/playstation/nintendo that they can't completely abuse their users and software devs (Win10 store lock-in, etc) and retain all of them. Valve just wants to protect steam and credible hardware platform competition is how they do it. I don't think they have any real plans to produce and support hardwa…

I think it's reasonable to think Valve is more committed with this. Valve now faces more competitors in game distribution than ever and it's a good way to shore up their value proposition in a way that is not easily replicated by its PC-only competitors.
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