Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2022]

[PSman1700]

The steam deck is more capable than the switch lol. More then the vita and ds aswell.
Handheld console quality gaming, it came quite early, considering. Some speculated Sony or MS doing this just before the ps5/xsx announcements, but its coming from a different angle now. Not everyone’s going to like that, but it is what it is.

 

[Dampf]

The Steam Deck could be able to play true next gen games as well (not only last gen and cross gen games), but sadly I don't think it will for long, given it only has a 4core Ryzen CPU. That is the main bottlneneck as I see it.

A 6c/12t Ryzen would have been so much better for futureproofing.

 

[Arwin]

The battery use is enough of a stretch as it is. It has been the pitfall of many a powerful handheld before, a battery that in best case lasts 2-2.5 hours and then quickly degrades from there.

And yeah it would have to be an NVME based version for the properly next gen games. In practice it will be PS4 era mostly I’m sure.

 

[Cyan]

lots of technical capabilities in such a small device, also it's not that far from a GTX 1050Ti. My next device is going to be a portable one, although I am leaning towards a laptop.

Alas, Richard couldn't use Windows yet. After using Linux exclusively during 4 months past year I came to the conclusion that no device of mine will ever be used for gaming if Linux is installed:

- lots of tweaks (that I like and can accept)
- performance is usually slower than native
-SteamDB is a big lie, games marked as gold crash a lot into the desktop at random times, usually in short periods
- more disc space is needed if you want pre-loaded shaders
- also you usually need several Proton distributions for different games, which means quite a few GB of data
- 80% to 90% games of my Steam account didnt work out of the box
- Steam's installation is easier on some distributions but can be a pain in others where components might not work

Being a Steam machine, their engineers can do great stuff, but they won't do miracles, and they admitted themselves that the % of games working out of the box is yet impossible to detail. Also some games that work "out of the box" crash (Bioshock series is an example of that) in Linux

 

[Arwin]

Couple of positives from that:

If popular, Steamdeck may finally trigger Linux support to be more standard

Also gyro aiming should become more popular and more widely supported if Steamdeck takes off. Which for me is a win.

 

[iroboto]

Also gyro aiming should become more popular and more widely supported if Steamdeck takes off. Which for me is a win.

I do wish Xbox adopted it. Just having another option for controller players is ideal. I know it’s still not perfect compared to mouse and keyboard; but it’s a decent bandaid solution.

 

[PSman1700]

lots of technical capabilities in such a small device, also it's not that far from a GTX 1050Ti. My next device is going to be a portable one, although I am leaning towards a laptop.

It for sure is impressive for being a handheld device. Its practically a small portable pc which packs a punch. It wont be long before the community/modders open up this thing more in the future. A steamdeck 2 could have even more impressive hardware. Also, i think this device is mostly intresting to the pc gamers market, not so much console users (as evident in this forum). But who knows, we will see the statistics later on i suppose.

 

[see colon]

Here's the interesting thing, however. Once Microsoft's direct storage is finally out and in a useable state, we'll get to see what effect a current gen storage solution (NVME SSD + revised I/O stack) and current gen CPU combined with previous gen GPU performance could have.

At that point the only "spec sheet" major deficiency would be the GPU. But then the GPU is also driving lower resolutions.

On top of that is the potential for universal upscaling via either AMD's FSR or Intel's XESS.

Granted for 3rd parties, this will rely on them actually using Direct Storage well, but hopefully some of Microsoft's internal studios will do it proper justice. Assuming Direct Storage is any good, of course. And of course, Windows will eat up more of the CPU resources, but it has that in abundance compared to GPU resources.

At that point we could potentially see something approaching current gen console quality on a handheld albeit at lower resolutions (540p upscaled, 720p upscaled or native 800p). Of course, this is with a NVME version of the Steam Deck, eMMC wouldn't be able keep up.

Regards,
SB

This assumes Direct X's storage enhancements are integrated into the Linux based Steam Deck's OS so you can use both Direct Storage and the universal scaler.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The steam deck is more capable than the switch lol. More then the vita and ds aswell.

Of course, but relatively is it any more or less capable compared to PS5 than PSP was compared to PS2/PS3 or Vita was compared to PS3/PS4?

 

[PSman1700]

relatively is it any more or less capable compared to PS5 than PSP was compared to PS2/PS3 or Vita was compared to PS3/PS4?

No idea about that one. The PSP was quite capable i think, almost what a PS2 was, if i remember correctly. Never had it myself but played on one for a couple of times. Its more important on what valve, devs etc are going to do with it. If i recall correctly, the PSP, vita needed their own games and ports, while the steamdeck just runs all steam (and probably pc) games. Having that much (relatively speaking) power becomes rather intresting then. In special if we can use emulators and install our own OS's on it, which is likely going to happen, officially or not.
Now the steamdeck is the most capable handheld 'console' (or what to call it) out there, it should be intresting to see what comes out of this project.The switch was quite capable at its release relatively, but its mostly nintendo exclusives, its not that comment to see PS4/oneS games it, aside from some impressive ports like Doom.

It's largest downside is the 4 core zen2, but it remains to be seen how it will hold up. If it doesnt i can see Valve coming with a more powerfull steamdeck variant if the steamdeck is going to be popular. GPU/CPU are going to be most important so the CPU would optimally have been a 6 or even 8 core. On the other hand, requirements are very low, often aiming 30fps and low resolutions and settings. Its a handheld device where these things dont have much priority. Still, it handles games quite well, to the point im impressed already so far.I wont be getting one since i prefer a laptop, but maybe a future more capable variant might be intresting.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

At that point the only "spec sheet" major deficiency would be the GPU. But then the GPU is also driving lower resolutions. On top of that is the potential for universal upscaling via either AMD's FSR or Intel's XESS.

The spec sheets comparisons really aren't representative of
It's not the spec sheet, it's what Steamdeck is actually delivering on its battery with its very average screen. I expected the SteamDeck - with its RDNA2 1.6Tf GPU to be delivering at least 1080p as PS4 performance but its below that nine years after the PS4 launched. The form factor and battery is holding it back. As many have reported, many games at around this performance level will get unto 1.5 hours. You can crank the settings down but then you aren't even getting close to 2013 console performance.

I am definitely not buying hardware on the potential of what might be possible. If AMD and Valve can show off decent FSR to compensate for these issues I'll take another look.

 

[SmooTh]

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Alex sounds so sad and disappointed. :|

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Hmm, maybe it's because I'm using a GTX 1070 that I'm quite happy with 60 FPS (1440p) in Elden Ring?

Performance seems fine. Cranking up the settings does seem to do a number on performance, however.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Hmm, maybe it's because I'm using a GTX 1070 that I'm quite happy with 60 FPS (1440p) in Elden Ring?

Are you not experiencing try the shader compilation hitches that Alex mentions? Maybe you don't care. I am very tolerant of framerate blips.

 

[Shortbread]

I'm surprised to see the PC edition analysis out before the console edition analysis. The console review must be huge...

 

[Shortbread]

Alex sounds so sad and disappointed. :|

Once From slaps full RT in it, he'll get over it.

 

[techuse]

I had no idea it was capped at 60 fps. That's awful.

 

[Shortbread]

I had no idea it was capped at 60 fps. That's awful.

https://github.com/uberhalit/EldenRingFpsUnlockAndMore

 

[Remij]

Another good video by Alex. And yea.. he's probably getting pretty tired of ANOTHER game with hitching and stuttering issues on PC... as most of us are.