@JaxonH I don't think the battery life seems dramatically different to the Win 3. Certainly, when The Phawx tested both devices, he got them to go flat in 90 minutes when running at their default power consumption, and also drew them out for around six hours when playing Dead Cells, which barely uses the GPU. Given that we know that their battery capacities and total system power are about the same that's no real surprise. Valve and GPD have to obey the same laws of physics after all.
Rather, the advantages for the Steam Deck are going to come in the middle of the curve with games where it can get a comparable frame rate to the Win 3 but at a much lower power draw thanks to the having a GPU that's a generation newer. We already know that a Win 3 running in TDP Down (for about 15W total system power) can play games like RDR2 at 30fps for three hours, so getting four hours for the same out of the Steam Deck (at about 10W) doesn't seem unreasonable.
Anything where it's got to run at full power just to hit 30fps is still going to flatten it in 90 minutes though. There's no getting around that.
@Matt_Barber
I don't think that's entirely accurate.
While it's true the device can be sucked down fast in certain scenarios (it was a controlled test under unrealistic conditions that it only lasted 90 min) and it's true both devices can last long for undemanding games, the Steam Deck is FAR more efficient in the 10-15W power draw range, as shown in just about every test and comparison in the video.
Whether it's 50% more power at the same battery life, or 50% more battery life at the same power, that efficiency will be realized one way or another.
So thankfully, because it's using the newer, more efficient RDNA2, there isn't really any game where it'll take full power to hit 30fps.
If Control and Forza Horizon 5 are getting 4 hrs, pretty much any game will. And you won't have to jump through power limiting hoops and tricks to do it, barring using the frame limiter.
All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans
God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John
@JaxonH The quoted 90 minute battery life for the Win 3 is under the same conditions though. I.e. Package TDP at around 20W and uncapped frame rates.
It can do better by employing much the same strategies as the Steam Deck. You're just unlikely to push the Win 3 below 15W - at least for anything that uses the GPU much - because the performance of the i7-1195G7 drops off a cliff at that point. That still gives you about three hours though, thanks to it having a slightly larger 44Wh battery, and that's considerably better than the 90 minutes for all AAA games that you initially said.
The Steam Deck will certainly do a lot better in the 10-15W range, but that really only equates to about an extra hour of battery life, i.e. it'll give you four hours where the Win 3 might only manage three. When you account for the slightly smaller battery in the Steam Deck, that's your 50% efficiency improvement. So, no disagreement really; I just thought you were overstating the gains.
While I don't think there'll be many games where the Steam Deck has to run flat out just to hit 30fps, I'm sure there'll be at least some. There are already a few where AMD's latest desktop APUs struggle and the Steam Deck has considerably lower clocks and TDP. We've only seen a scant handful of games and I'm pretty sure Valve have picked what can be shown to show the system in the best light, so you can't necessarily expect the same performance gains to apply across the board.
That said, it's half the price of most of its competitors, typically outperforms them, and I'm pretty sure that - unsupported games aside - it's not going to run anything worse. There's plenty to be optimistic about.
Proton 7.0 released, which should fix Persona 4 Golden compatibility!
All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans
God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John
All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans
God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John
Seriously, it's early days yet. Most of the games that work are simple 2D ones and few 3D ones it runs all seem to suffer from glitches. You're much better off with the real thing for now.
He says demand is much higher than expected. That's good to hear.
@Matt_Barber
Ya, it has stuttering and, Switch already runs most 1st party exclusive games at 720p 60fps anyways (barring a few exceptions). There's just no reason to try to emulate Switch if you own a Switch.
PS3 also had some stuttering issues in Persona that aren't present when using say, a PC with 2080 ti.
GameCube, Wii, PS2 and PSP is the sweetspot.
All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans
God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John
After seeing the reviews, I am glad I didn't impulse buy in the end. It is a very nice bit of kit but there are obvious improvements that can be made. Hardware-wise a better screen with smaller bezels and a rework of the paddles.
Software-wise it looks like it is still in a beta stage with many obvious things missing/half working. The main problem though for me is preset settings for games. Having to fiddle with settings for 30 minutes before you start a game, then finding out that in more complex areas of the game you need to adjust again really takes away from the pickup and play experience. Nvidia solved this problem on PC years ago, I really expected this to be a feature of the Deck, at least for the games valve has verified.
It is a nice product, but one for enthusiasts in its current state. Kinda like buying an Alfa Romeo.
Looking it at from the Nintendo perspective. To me it has created a minimum baseline on what I would expect from the eventual Switch successor/upgrade. The Deck is fairly powerful for a handheld (seems to be a bit less powerful than a PS4, but due to the lower resolution it performs even better), but as a PC device it doesn't leave me impressed. I think it will struggle with newer games aimed at the new consoles.
@Madao
I don't think that's a realistic portrayal of the experience.
You shouldn't need to fiddle for 30 minutes. Any verified or playable game should simply play. It takes 2 seconds to turn the 30fps cap and FSR setting on (its built right into the menu pressing the ... button) and that's it. You're good. Turn settings on low or medium preset in game, maybe change resolution lower IF you want longer battery life (FSR will upscale), and you're good. There is no adjusting halfway through.
I certainly won't be adjusting halfway through games. I'm setting the 30fps frame limiter on permanently, FSR on permanently, and every game is going to 600p and letting FSR upscale it. Medium Settings. Done and done.
After seeing the reviews I'm quite glad I did preorder, actually. This thing exceeds expectations. There's always improvements that could be made. Smaller bezels, maybe an OLED screen. But I didn't let any of that stop me from enjoying Switch the first few years, and it will be no different with SteamDeck.
The only real downside is incomplete game compatibility. But just 1 month ago there were barely 50 games verified. At launch, over 800 games are verified. By the time my Deck arrives in Sept/Oct, there could be 5,000 games verified (which is more than the entire Nintendo Switch library to date, for comparison).
As long as you're playing verified games, the experience should be extremely smooth. So much thought went into this thing, like microSD being hot swappable (no need to power off, just pop sd1 out and pop in sd2, which makes it so much easier to keep a large library across multiple sd), having cloud saves across Deck and your desktop gaming PC, a quick sleep and resume function like Switch has...
It's definitely not a device for everyone. But I don't think it will struggle to run new games, given the fact it's already running new games. Elden Ring confirmed running already, for example. In fact, there isn't a single game to date that hasn't been able to run (provided its compatible). It's amazing what 720p on low-medium settings can do. Render at 540p to 600p and upscale with FSR... this thing should handle any game from now til the PS6.
As a habdheld PC I find it incredibly impressive. It's 1.8x as performant as GPD Win 3 or Aya Neo. And those things were beasts, at $1000-1500 price points.
That said, Deck 2 will eventually release in a few years. And I very much look forward to it. But by the time that happens, Switch 2 will be out, and the need for a device like this will be greatly diminished. I'll still buy one, but I think Deck right now is much more impactful than a Deck 2 will be a few years from now.
All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans
God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John
All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans
God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John
@JaxonH From what I saw in the DF review, system FSR should be a last resort for the best experience possible. There are games that are more demanding at times, not something you would be able to see when initially selecting the settings. I am mainly a PC gamer and I do spend time finding the best possible settings for my setup. Nvidia has mostly fixed that for me with the preset settings, but I still do some fine tuning afterwards. I guess if you don't care too much about having the best possible experience you can just set everything to low as you said and go for it, but it is not how I do things on my PC and not how I would do them on the Steam Deck either.
Elden Ring is still a PS4 game so I am not surprised it can run on the Deck. The good part of the chip shortage is that the vast majority of games are still made for last gen consoles. Eventually though games will be current gen exclusive, which will bump the minimum requirements for PC as it always happens with every generation. When that happens, I think the deck will start struggling.
@Madao
Only a "last resort" if the game doesn't have FSR natively, which, most games don't. Since it's relatively new. But even then, while it is technically worse than native FSR, due to scaling text and UI also, it's by no means "bad". It'll still look better than 600p native, and 600p native looks pretty dang good to my eye on a handheld.
Eventually the day will come when games start struggling but I don't foresee that being any time soon. Cyberpunk 2077 runs on the Deck, and that game is a hog. The best part about PC gaming is scalability. And PC games have always had options to scale down to lesser hardware. The biggest chunk of performance for current gen games is going to Raytracing, not polygons. And that's a very simple fix for Deck, as Raytracing has always been optional.
The fact games like Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, etc are hitting 40-50fps at native 800p res, means there's tons of wiggle room if capping to 30fps and rendering at 540p to 600p.
All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans
God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John
Does anyone have info if some RTS/Strategy games are playable like Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Empires, Empire Earth, Zeus & Poseidon, Pharaoh + Cleopatra, Caesar III ?
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