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Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

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Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#301

Post by stubish »

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).

The bit about FEX is interesting. Taking x86 code and running it on ARM. The most important thing for Valve to do is pick what instruction set to use, one you can run natively or native hardware, or efficiently and reliably through translation on alien hardware. ARM might be a great choice, as hardware exists at scale on mobile devices, and emulated on other devices even if the CPU happens to be Intel or AMD. Valve is then in control, rather than Intel or Apple or Microsoft.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#302

Post by stubish »

Uvix wrote: post #78
atrus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam DRM is entirely optional. Blame the publishers for DRM.

Valve doesn't disclose ahead of purchase whether a title has Steam DRM or not. So even if publishers don't take the option, I have no way to know that. Which means the option effectively doesn't exist.

The publisher could certainly mention it in their product blurb or in the additional notes under system requirements, if they thought to or thought the market would care.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#303

Post by majormajor »

cassepipe wrote: post #240
rpdillon wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though I am not outspoken about it, I think individuals need to come to terms with telling themselves no. This really resonates with me. I feel like self-control has gone out of fashion, but it has a lot of merit.

That's because it mostly doesn't work long term. Depending on how your brain got wired, self-control condemns you to a life of misery while not being exposed allows you to live a normal life. Of course you cannot ask for societal experience to be tailored just for you but there seem to be a consensus on protecting the most vulnerable people from the most destructive habits. Where to draw the line is for everyone to f…

Huh?

Most people have perfectly well avoided blowing all their money on baseball card packs or whatever other random "box of randomized items" without enduring a life of misery...

It's not that hard.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#304

Post by conorcleary »

jefftk wrote: post #152
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I say a lot. Valve isn't even remotely close to having clean hands here. They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. It's just that the bar is so INSANELY low - it's probably somewhere deep in the earth's core at this point - that valve looks like a fucking angel by being only VAGUELY greedy on occasion. When your competition is EA... it's not hard.

What's wrong with hats?

lice

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#305

Post by patmorgan23 »

ndriscoll wrote: post #242
jakeec wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because in practice that "always-on DRM" is actually just purely an advantage for the customer with zero downsides. It only sounds like you're making a good point when you frame "provides the best shopping and library experience in gaming" in the least charitable way possible. The Valve hate-boner is so weird.

There are disadvantages. e.g. if you don't want to update a program (maybe the new version breaks your modded setup), too bad. Or if you need Windows still for compatibility, it no longer supports Windows 7, so you have to go hunting for old versions of the client and fiddle with it to prevent updates (if that still even works), at which point you'd might as well just mod it to remove the DRM instead. Basically, it c…

Can't you run old versions by setting the version in the game properties?

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#306

Post by patmorgan23 »

aaarrm wrote: post #278
xinayder wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And loot boxes in Valve games never bothered me, because if you want a particular skin you can just buy it off the market. I can't remember being angry at Valve for having loot boxes. All other games require you to keep opening loot boxes to get what you want.

Well not with their battle passes in Dota. They employed a lot of FOMO tactics where you had to spend hundreds to guarantee a set that you'll otherwise never be able to get again.

But again, those are just cosmetic items and there's still a market place for them.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#307

Post by safety1st »

afiori wrote: post #265
safety1st wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is hiding anything. No one is pretending to be something they're not. Life is not a Saturday morning cartoon. There are no good guys vs bad guys. There are just businesses trying to earn more profits. Valve is a business. When Microsoft introduced a Store they threatened Steam's market share. In theory Microsoft could one day update Windows so that it's hard to buy games through non Microsoft stores. Valve res…

The discourse is not valve good others bad, rather it is consumer/product focused good and next-quarter/short-term-profit focused bad. With the context that a lot of modern enshittification, outsourcing, layoffs, anti-consumer practises follow from these short term approaches

My point is that is a shallow and not especially productive discourse. Companies respond to market incentives. If they have to compete for their market share they'll do stuff consumers want. If they don't because they have no competition, they'll focus on maximizing their profit margins at the expense of their customers, suppliers and everyone else.

These responses to incentives are in the DNA of every corporation and any solution which ignores that will fail. Competition for the consumer's dollar is the key and what you need to promote. These are basic economic principles that go all the way back to Adam Smith, a lot of problems would be solved if more people were aware of their significance and considered restoring competition to markets where it has been eliminated a main function of our government.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#308

Post by david-gpu »

stubish wrote: post #300
david-gpu wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. What incentive does Qualcomm have to open source their code? Or NVidia, for that matter. And what are the risks? OSS isn't this caricature good-vs-evil situation people sometimes imagine, it is all about economic incentives.

I think this is the wrong way around. There might be an economic incentive to keeping something closed source, for example having licensed other closed source code. And remaining in control without oversight also might be an incentive. But the incentive to making something open source is that someone might improve your work, making your product better. It is somewhat arrogant to assume that nobody else out there coul…

Speaking from the perspective of somebody who used to do this for a living.

> But the incentive to making something open source is that someone might improve your work

Device drivers, particularly on mobile, aren't evergreen sorts of software. New hardware is released several times a year, and maintenance after shipping is limited to critical issues. By the time it hits the market, the people who developed that driver have moved on to newer products.

> It is somewhat arrogant to assume that nobody else out there could possibly improve this code or add value

Whatever they did would have completely missed the release schedule. It may provide value to people who want to keep using a 10 year old phone, but how does that benefit a company that only makes income when they sell new models?

> Just like it is arrogant to assume that your competitors don't already know your 'secrets' and haven't reverse engineered anything they found interesting.

This made me laugh. You would be surprised by how minimal reverse engineering goes on in this space. It boils down to the same reason as before: by the time you have made any progress, the product you are reverse engineering is semi obsolete. The vast majority of the time it makes more sense to invest those resources into developing your own stuff.

That's my $.02 from having worked for four major GPU vendors out there. Upper management knows what they are doing, even if outsiders don't get it. The incentives simply aren't there for most GPU vendors most of the time.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#309

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

stubish wrote: post #300
david-gpu wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. What incentive does Qualcomm have to open source their code? Or NVidia, for that matter. And what are the risks? OSS isn't this caricature good-vs-evil situation people sometimes imagine, it is all about economic incentives.

I think this is the wrong way around. There might be an economic incentive to keeping something closed source, for example having licensed other closed source code. And remaining in control without oversight also might be an incentive. But the incentive to making something open source is that someone might improve your work, making your product better. It is somewhat arrogant to assume that nobody else out there coul…

Large companies can employ people to make their code better in ways that they care about. They really don’t need random outside developers.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#310

Post by magicalhippo »

throwaway314155 wrote: post #266
swiftcoder wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with the general point, this statement is factually incorrect - apple's most powerful laptop GPU punches right about the same as the laptop SKU of the RTX 4070, and the desktop Ultra variant punches up with a 5070ti. I'd say on both fronts that is well above the average.

That simply isn't true. I have an RTX 4070 gaming PC and an M4 MacBook Pro w/ 36GB shared memory. When models fit in VRAM, the RTX 4070 still runs much faster. Maybe the next generation M5 chips are faster but they can't be 2-4x faster.

GP said laptop 4070. The laptop variants are typically much slower than the desktop variants of the same name.

It's not just power budget, the desktop part has more of everything, and in this case the 4070 mobile vs desktop turns out to be a 30-40% difference[1] in games.

Now I don't have a mac so if you meant "2-5x" when you said "much faster" well thdn yea, that 40% difference isn't enough to overcome that.

[1]: https://nanoreview.net/en/gpu-compare/geforce-rtx-4070-mobil...

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