Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

igalia.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 327 posts

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#101

Post by richardwhiuk »

RandallBrown wrote: post #89
l11r wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no ARM chips with enough power. They have said many times that they are not interested in minor performance improvements but rather want a leap. The Snapdragon X2 Elite chip is the leader (I cannot count Apple; they won't share their chips, obviously), but it doesn't even match AMD with their RDNA 3.5, and who knows when they will (or even if).

Do you mean there's no ARM chips that they can buy? Surely the ARM chips in Apple's devices are powerful enough aren't they?

You can’t buy an M3 chip on its own

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#102

Post by jsheard »

torginus wrote: post #99

Considering all this work is open-source, could some third party make a Qualcomm Snapdragon based handheld console, if Valve decides not to make a Steam Deck Mini? I really loved the idea of the Steam Deck, but I'd prefer to play something that's more like the size of a PSP or a Switch Lite at most.

There's already a ton of Snapdragon based handheld consoles, they're mainly marketed for retro system emulation but you can do whatever you want on them. They usually run Android out of the box though, not plain Linux.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#103

Post by [deleted] »

l11r wrote: post #71
rpmisms wrote: post #43

It's incredibly obvious that they're trying to make Steam Deck 2 ARM-based. That's the generational change Valve is waiting for. This is gonna be fantastic.

There are no ARM chips with enough power. They have said many times that they are not interested in minor performance improvements but rather want a leap. The Snapdragon X2 Elite chip is the leader (I cannot count Apple; they won't share their chips, obviously), but it doesn't even match AMD with their RDNA 3.5, and who knows when they will (or even if).

[deleted]

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#104

Post by mikkupikku »

jsheard wrote: post #90
tapoxi wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. Don't forget the part where they're encouraging kids to gamble with real money on Counter-Strike skins. They rely on an API that Valve freely provides and makes no effort to curtail. But they like Linux and give refunds so they get a free pass.

> and give refunds so they get a free pass. They only begrudgingly conceded refunds in 2015 after the no-refunds policy they had maintained for 12 years was found to be illegal in Australia.

Whatever the reason for their policy, it provides a nice sense of safety to Linux gamers. They can buy the game without worrying about compatibility; if the game doesn't run then its two clicks for an automated refund.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#105

Post by jsheard »

nananana9 wrote: post #96
jsheard wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and give refunds so they get a free pass. They only begrudgingly conceded refunds in 2015 after the no-refunds policy they had maintained for 12 years was found to be illegal in Australia.

They made the new refund policy worldwide, which they absolutely did not have to.

Sure, but I imagine they saw the dominoes falling and realized that the optics of going down kicking and screaming in endless battles against basic consumer rights would be exceptionally bad. If they hadn't fully conceded then the EU would have been up their ass too before long.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#106

Post by bauble »

stavros wrote: post #4

I don't play games almost ever, but I'm going to buy all the products Valve releases soon, just to support their OSS efforts. They seem to be the only vendor that's opening stuff up, rather than locking it down.

I'm staring at the EOL of Windows 10, which I use on my game machine. I'll happily get one of the cubes for my next box. I'd like this to be the end of my Windows usage.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#108

Post by MindSpunk »

fidotron wrote: post #2

> This is a very difficult combination to achieve, and yet that’s exactly what we’ve done for Valve with Mesa3D Turnip, a FOSS Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno GPUs. Look at that. Something Qualcomm should have been doing. Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS.

Qualcomm's Vulkan drivers are hot garbage, so I'm not surprised Turnip was seen as more desirable. I work with mobile GPUs for , have direct contacts with Qualcomm, and the drivers still find ways to disappoint even with my low expectations.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#109

Post by MindSpunk »

l11r wrote: post #71
rpmisms wrote: post #43

It's incredibly obvious that they're trying to make Steam Deck 2 ARM-based. That's the generational change Valve is waiting for. This is gonna be fantastic.

There are no ARM chips with enough power. They have said many times that they are not interested in minor performance improvements but rather want a leap. The Snapdragon X2 Elite chip is the leader (I cannot count Apple; they won't share their chips, obviously), but it doesn't even match AMD with their RDNA 3.5, and who knows when they will (or even if).

Taking games designed for desktop GPUs and running them on mobile GPUs with tile-based-deferred-rendering hardware will be a disaster. Mobile GPU designs will choke on modern games as they're designed around hardware features that mobile GPUs either don't have, or that run very slowly.

Peak theoretical throughput for the GPUs you find in ARM SoCs is quite good compared to the power draw, but you will not get peak throughput for workloads designed for Nvidia and AMD GPUs.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#110

Post by torginus »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #18
stavros wrote: post #4

I don't play games almost ever, but I'm going to buy all the products Valve releases soon, just to support their OSS efforts. They seem to be the only vendor that's opening stuff up, rather than locking it down.

The steam deck, especially the low-spec variant, was sold at very low, likely negative margins. They make huge profit on their games, but if you don't buy the games... They've implied that they're not going to sell the Steam Machine at a low margin because they're worried about people buying the Steam Machine for general purpose computer use without buying games. I'm not sure that's a rational fear. If you subtract t…

It's a somewhat justified fear - the box screams 'home server' to me. Then again a Mac Mini is just $600
Post reply on HN