Comparisons with the Switch will certainly be popular and I am looking forward to seeing them, but one thing that became immediately clear is the Steam Deck does not operate under the normal mobile circumstances. I believe the lowest TDP you can set for Deck processor is 5w and total system power draw would be a few additional watts. This would be considered pretty high for a mobile device. The Switch has a 16Whr battery and the original model lasted about three hours, so it pulled just a bit over 5 watts total, and this was considered to be marginal battery life at the time. The newer Mariko X1 Switch units last about 4.5 hours, total system power draw would now be under 4 watts. The Deck basically wont turn on and run with power draw this low. Deck has a much larger form factor and much larger battery at 40Whr, it will absolutely thump the Switch in every way when battery life is not a concern, but what if we are trying to match the battery life of the current Switch? What will it take to get 4.5 hours of battery life on the Deck? Can it get there while still producing visuals that are significantly superior to Switch? Im not knocking the Deck, I think Valve made decisions that will be preferable with their target audience, but when I start to think about what Nintendo can offer with a Switch 2, it becomes very obvious that its not the simplest thing in the world to offer a portable device that offers lots of performance when operating on just 5-8 watts.
Steam Deck - SteamOS, Zen2 4C/8T, RDNA2 1.0-1.6 TF, 16 GB LPDDR5 88 GB/s, starting at $399 [2021-12]
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Comparisons with the Switch will certainly be popular and I am looking forward to seeing them, but one thing that became immediately clear is the Steam Deck does not operate under the normal mobile circumstances. I believe the lowest TDP you can set for Deck processor is 5w and total system power draw would be a few additional watts. This would be considered pretty high for a mobile device. The Switch has a 16Whr battery and the original model lasted about three hours, so it pulled just a bit over 5 watts total, and this was considered to be marginal battery life at the time. The newer Mariko X1 Switch units last about 4.5 hours, total system power draw would now be under 4 watts. The Deck basically wont turn on and run with power draw this low. Deck has a much larger form factor and much larger battery at 40Whr, it will absolutely thump the Switch in every way when battery life is not a concern, but what if we are trying to match the battery life of the current Switch? What will it take to get 4.5 hours of battery life on the Deck? Can it get there while still producing visuals that are significantly superior to Switch? Im not knocking the Deck, I think Valve made decisions that will be preferable with their target audience, but when I start to think about what Nintendo can offer with a Switch 2, it becomes very obvious that its not the simplest thing in the world to offer a portable device that offers lots of performance when operating on just 5-8 watts.
I would certainly imagine that if a developer took the steam deck , limited its soc output to 5w and focused on tweaking the game for that device it would result in better visuals and performance than the switch.
It would certainly be interesting to see someone try it with the steam deck.
Remember the switch is a quad core cortex a57 @1.02ghz . 4 gigs of ddr4 @1.331ghz (25.6gb/s @1.6ghz docked) and 256 cuda cores at 307mhz based on maxwell cores . This is of course un docked .
The steam deck is a quad core zen 2 with 8 threads clocked 2.4-3.5ghz , RDNA 2 8cu 1-1.6ghz 16GB of ddr 5 ram @ 88gb/s transfer . The steam deck apu is capable of using as little as 4 wats and I am assuming that would be the zen 2 @ 2.4ghz and RDNA 2 at 1ghz.
So yea the steam deck even using the same power constraints will stomp a switch. No doubt in my mind and with 4 times the ram you can provide much better textures and visuals vs what the switch can do.
I will be interested in someone like Digital Foundry taking a game like doom eternal and witcher 3 and trying to match the fidelity of the switch port on the deck and see what battery life and power usage is like .
Dedicated port plus a huge patch for the game and you can even configure a bunch of settings on switch. It can't maintain a stable 30 docked and is closer to 20 undocked dipping to the low teens in some place with a dynamic 720p docked and dynamic 540p undocked
I think the Switch is out of gas , just look at how many games require streaming on the switch. One of its two greatest strengths (the other being nintendo ip) native portable gaming is already reaching the end for new games and it will only accelerate as games shift to take advantage of next gen systems . There will still be a lot of people ready to purchase new switches for sure since it has a great library . But there are many like me who had a switch from launch and are ready to get a better experience. For me if I get 2-4 hours in games I want to play I am happy. my switch launch day unit got 3 hours or so at launch with breath of the wild. Now I'm lucky to get 2 1/2 hours. I was happy then and I will be happy now. When I commute to work I have a battery pack to charge my phone or surface or switch when its not in use. Same for flying and even when I'm at the beach or disney. I don't know the last time when I went more than 4 hours without having some source of power to charge a device with. I also don't know the lst time I used a portable console for more than 3 or 4 hours without taking a break to do something else. Maybe my last flight to italy
That's a perk of consoles compared to PC's, consoles can have low level optimization that doesnt happen on PC.
No question the Deck has a far superior APU to the Tegra X1 powering the Switch, however, it cant reach anywhere near its top level of performance on just 4 watts of juice. The Deck APU set to 4w TDP would still deliver higher performance than the Tegra X1, but this is where the low level access on Switch can close the gap a bit.
The fairest comparison is to line up the battery life, current model Switch offers 4.5 hours of life. Switch has a little 16Whr batter compared to Decks 40Whr, Deck is able to pull more than twice the juice while still offering the same level of battery life. Although Joy Cons do have their own batteries so that that helps a little. When I watch these Deck videos and they are running these games at 540p on Deck and still only getting 3.5 hours of battery life, it leaves me a bit skeptical that Deck will produce results that blow away Switch when we align battery life.
Doom Eternal would make for a good test. Switch runs it at a constant 30fps while rendering it at 540p for 4.5 hours on a current model Switch. Will Deck be able to jump to 60fps 540p with 4.5 hours of battery life? Or 720p 30fps with medium settings? The point is we still haven't seen a good showcase for what to expect in terms of performance when prioritizing battery life.
I realize this is the only comparison that I can suggest for Switch vs Deck that has even the slightest chance of not being a complete blow out, but seeing as how Deck is the only fun topic to discuss in gaming right now and the comparison with Switch videos will be abundant, its fair to ask the question, what can Deck do while still getting 4.5 hours of battery? So far, I am skeptical that the difference will be night and day, but we will see soon enough.
I agree that the Switch is getting long in the tooth from a hardware perspective and I too eagerly await a successor. That has been a main reason I have been so interested in watching to see what the Deck can do and specifically do on lower power draws. Switch 2 likely wont be using a processor node any smaller than what the 5nm Deck is using, so there isn't going to be any great power savings to be had from moving to a smaller process. Switch 2 is going to need to operate on 5-8 watts at the most. Deck gives a lot of insight on what to expect under those power draw limitations.
On the flip side the Switch can't run some of those games. You can't run Forza 5 or control on the switch. The best you can do with control is to stream it to the switch
As for doom eternal the switch port in hand held mode it has frame pacing issues with cut scenes dropping to 20fps and it renders at 360 to a maximum of 612p. DF only tested the first level or so it seems so who knows how bad it really gets in more demanding areas of the game. We would have to also sit and match settings from the pc version to the switch version as best as we can. it will be a very lopsided loss on the switches side
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...om-eternal-switch-the-most-ambitious-port-yet
there are tons of draw backs to the switch port even compared to the image quality on a base xbox one.
In regards to battery size and battery life what does it matter ? The steam deck is $400 vs $200-$350 for the switch. At the end of the day the consumer wont really care what size battery is inside of the systems. They will ultimately care about what is on the screen. I'm not sure how similar you can make these in terms of visuals but to match the switch you'd need to have a 360-612p scaling renderer and the settings as close to what is on that console. I think the deck would fair a lot better than you might imagine in terms of battery life . heck you might even be able to turn on some ray tracing for doom eternal
The Deck is on 7nm not 5nm. Who knows what a switch 2 will get or when it comes out. It may be competing against a steam deck 2 .
As for me the deck is interesting because I can play my library of steam games on the go vs having to buy for a console who's creator is notoriously bad for backwards compatibility .
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https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1675180/view/3113680526234449023
Shame the dock is delayed. But it is what it is
Shame the dock is delayed. But it is what it is
Battery size the consumer wont care about, but battery life is a different story. My entire comparison revolves around what a consumer can expect in terms of performance upgrade over the Switch the Deck offers while retaining the 4.5 hours of battery life the Switch currently offers them. You may not care about that, and hell, I probably wouldn't either if I bought a Deck. I would probably average 2 hours of battery life because I wouldn't prioritize battery life. So why do I care? Because Switch 2 will be under these constraints and Deck gives us a glimpse of what to expect when running on 5-8 watts of juice. Im observing Deck because it gives me an idea of what to expect from Switch 2, but evaluating Deck at 25 watts of power draw doesn't tell me anything, Switch 2 will be less than half that.
The switch oled is like 4 months old why are we comparing the deck as an upgrade to it and not a direct competitor ? If I just bought an oled switch on release date I'm not looking to upgrade it and if I am then the switch was a horrible choice to start with. The launch switch has as low as 3 hours of battery life which seems to be about the range of what you will get with the deck.
Take myself as a reference. I have an original switch that got roughly 3 hours with breath of the wild at launch and Now it would be under 2 1/2 hours. My options are to purchase a switch oled for $350 have the same experience but with a nicer screen and better battery life. So I could drop $350 to double my battery life from 2 1/2 hours to 4 1/2 hours.
The steam deck on the other hand is $400 its battery life seems to be around 2-4 hours. But on the flip side it offers the ability to play games that aren't available on the switch or are only stream able on the switch. So my steam deck will allow me to play dying light 2, halo infinite , elden ring and so many more games. It also through the power of emulation allows me to play the switch games and play them at higher resolutions and frame rates vs what is on the switch itself .
We don't know the actual hardware that will be in a switch 2 or if nintendo will stay with 5-8 watts of power. You can at other companies like aya and onexplayer who are using amd apus that use more power than the steam decks apu with similar sized batteries. Nintendo could choose to go with a larger more power hungry NVidia soc witih a larger battery in a switch 2. nintendo could also choose to go in a competely different direction and there might not be a switch 2 . God only knows with them. Also Nintendo keeps saying the switch is at its half way point in life. So we may not even see a switch 2 until 2024/2025 in which case we may also have a deck 2.
The better battery life started in 2019, so you could have a 3.5 year old Switch that still gets over 4 hours of battery life. Someone who purchased an OLED Switch might still be interested in the Deck. I purchased an OLED Switch for the better portable experience and better battery life, but I kept my launch Switch, jail broke it so I could overclock it for a better docked experience. Plus it provided an additional Dock to keep hooked up in another room.
Both platforms have a unique library of games that will be attractive to consumers in different ways. Regardless, this is turning into debate on why choose one product over the other and that was not my intention. If you want to play those games you listed then the Deck is a fantastic option. Unfortunately for many consumers who might be interested in the Deck, its not really an option because availability is going to be terrible for the foreseeable future. They have preorders that aren't expected to ship until the second half of the year. While we don't know what the volume is for those preorders, lets me honest, if it were hundreds of thousands Valve would be talking publicly about the demand for the Deck. Deck is meeting and exceeding their sales expectations, but the numbers would likely be abysmal for a product from Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft.
My question about what can Deck do with 4.5 hours of battery life remains unanswered. This isn't to persuade anyone from buying a Deck, but to highlight the fact that its simply still very difficult to offer high end performance when trying to keep power draw low enough for long battery life.
1) Better battery life started in 2019 but you'd already be in your 3rd year with the system which means battery life would have dropped.
2) If someone has an oled switch and is interested in the deck wouldn't they be looking at it for different reasons ?
At the end of the day be it 2 or 3 or 4 hours your going to be recharging it anyway. Both systems can recharge off a power bank that you can get 20,000MaH for $20 bucks. The majority of people will carry one around for their phone.
3) The steam deck plays switch games , the switch can only play switch games. So with a steam deck you get access to both libraries if you wish.
4) Valve has close to a million preorders spread across $400-$650 dollar skus. I think they have enough demand for the item and It seems like going into this holiday it shouldn't be as supply constraint as it will during q1/2/3. Valve doesn't really need to sell a 100m of them. They just need to get the device out there and selling.
Valve has something Nintendo doesn't and that is that previous games work on multiple platforms. I can buy and play steam games on my tablet or pc and now steam deck. I have all my games from 20 years ago on steam still. People who buy a steam deck will likely buy a steam deck 2 because their games just move over.
If you want to know what the steam deck can do at 4.5 hours just wait for the embargos to end. Mine doesn't come till some time in Q2 but if its unanswered still I will gladdly run doom eternal at 320p at the lowest settings to give you an idea of what it can do vs the switch.
You still approach my post with the interpretation that I am trying to persuade your or anyone really that Deck isnt a good product or that Switch is a better choice. Im not doing that.
Yes battery life for a Switch that is over three years old wont still be 4.5 hours of life, but what do you think is going to happen to the Decks battery after a couple years with users running it hard and only getting 2-3 hours of run time?
Where did you find that 1 million preorders figure? Do you have a link you can share? That is far higher that the 150k unit number that reported early on.
Deck doesn't support Switch games natively. Yes there are emulators out there, but this is not a practice that all users will feel comfortable with for a variety of reasons. Also not sure how online play would work.
Now that the embargo is up we will certainly see somebody do a comparison to see just how much better games look on Deck compared to Switch while still getting over 4 hours of battery life.
1) having changed a switch battery and watching a steam deck tear down , the steam deck is a lot easier to do , so i'd just change it
2) They had over a 100 thousand preorders for just the combined 256/512 models in just the first 90 minutes arstechnica has an article . Remember those numbers are just the first 90 minutes and doesn't include the cheapest sku.
3) It's a computer it runs everything natively. People are already running everything from the atari to the switch on their steam decks.
4) Yes DF has an article out that goes through a lot.
Control - enhanced console settings 720p and zero issues holding 30fps +
Shadow of the Tomb Raider high settings 800p running above 30fps
Death Stranding default settings 720p 47fps average
Horizon 5 high settings 4xmsaa 720p 35fps average
Horizon zero dawn 720p original settings (matches ps4 settings) 40 fps average
Days Gone - optimized settings 800p - challenge areas with horde is really bad 18fps average with big hords
He compares it with a ryzen 4900hs which is a 35w machine but the deck can out perform it by 61%.
They then picked god of war since it had a great pc port and uncapped. Ps4 1080p hits 35fps average , steam deck 39fps @720p and 36fps @ 800p at same quality settings. 21fps at 1080p.
in death stranding @ 720p you get the same performance as a 1050 @1080p. Steam deck in doom eternal is faster @720p with ultra nightmare textures vs the 1050 @ 1080p.
Shadow of the tomb raider highest settings steam deck is faster at 720p vs the 1050@ 1080p
Maximum watts used was 27watts with a 40watt hour battery. So roughly 1h 30minute battery life at the worse .
God of war unlocked performance 25.2w/ 1:28 projected battery life
God of war system level 30fps cap/ 18.4w/2:03 projected battery life
Cup head over 6 hours of battery life
2) They had over a 100 thousand preorders for just the combined 256/512 models in just the first 90 minutes arstechnica has an article . Remember those numbers are just the first 90 minutes and doesn't include the cheapest sku.
3) It's a computer it runs everything natively. People are already running everything from the atari to the switch on their steam decks.
4) Yes DF has an article out that goes through a lot.
Control - enhanced console settings 720p and zero issues holding 30fps +
Shadow of the Tomb Raider high settings 800p running above 30fps
Death Stranding default settings 720p 47fps average
Horizon 5 high settings 4xmsaa 720p 35fps average
Horizon zero dawn 720p original settings (matches ps4 settings) 40 fps average
Days Gone - optimized settings 800p - challenge areas with horde is really bad 18fps average with big hords
He compares it with a ryzen 4900hs which is a 35w machine but the deck can out perform it by 61%.
They then picked god of war since it had a great pc port and uncapped. Ps4 1080p hits 35fps average , steam deck 39fps @720p and 36fps @ 800p at same quality settings. 21fps at 1080p.
in death stranding @ 720p you get the same performance as a 1050 @1080p. Steam deck in doom eternal is faster @720p with ultra nightmare textures vs the 1050 @ 1080p.
Shadow of the tomb raider highest settings steam deck is faster at 720p vs the 1050@ 1080p
Maximum watts used was 27watts with a 40watt hour battery. So roughly 1h 30minute battery life at the worse .
God of war unlocked performance 25.2w/ 1:28 projected battery life
God of war system level 30fps cap/ 18.4w/2:03 projected battery life
Cup head over 6 hours of battery life
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Yes but it comes with the same draw backs and benefits of pc gaming
Updated picture of the dock
Which is why (and so many) love this device. Without its drawbacks, the platform probably wouldnt be as open which would defeat the purpose of pc gaming. Though, valve would maybe need to come with upgraded/more powerfull variants, whenever next generation ports and games release. Or can this thing run CP2077 any reasonable? What about UE5 games later on, or ports from PS5 games?
Someone, probably on aliexpress, gonna release a cleaner looking dock.Yes but it comes with the same draw backs and benefits of pc gaming
Updated picture of the dock
Something with a flap to hide cables like nintendo switch dock, maybe.
arandomguy
Veteran
This is going to be contentious but based on the current information/impressions so far is it really "Portable PC gaming" or "Portable SteamOS and Steam store gaming." PC gaming to me has to include non Steam store bought games even if we want to ignore the Windows/Linux issue.
My understanding is also there is no Window's drivers available and I'm guessing no comment yet as to what the situation will be with respect to that. So while they're technically correct in that it's an open platform that you can install another OS on from an actual usability stand point it'd mean Windows is not an option.
Does anyone know if there is any coverage so far of what the situation is at the very least if trying to play non Steam store games? Ars Technica's coverage (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022...k-what-you-need-to-know-what-currently-works/) did briefly go into "Heroic" and "Lutris" and seems to say the current situation is not "ideal." But I'm not personally familiar enough with Linux gaming in general to I have an idea of how it'd be in practice.
The problem is I'm likely very early in the queue. So either I take a huge risk or end up having to wait to Q4 if not later.
An 18w one should drastically increase the battery life.
I haven't seen a review with anyone using a battery bank yet but it will be interesting to see what the results of different models are. To be honest I have a pc with a 3700 and a 3080 so at home. On the go I can't really see when I would use the deck for more than 2 or 3 hours at a time. So there would be plenty of time to let it slow charge off a battery bank. Been obsessed with Rogue Tower , I think I will get 4-5 hours playing that along with most of my other indie games. I always keep a portable battery on me when traveling anyway.
Of course , It's why I love it also. For next gen games I am sure it will run UE5. Its a quad core zen 2 with RDNA targeting 720p. The series s , series x , ps5 are also octo core zen 2 with Rdna targeting 1440p-4k. Your most likely going to have to lower some settings vs the next gen consoles since they have twice the cpu cores and obviously more gpu cus. But they should work reasonably well.
If we look to the future as I've said many times , a zen 4 + rdna 3 steam deck in 2025 or 2026 would most likely be on par with the series s or better. Only thing lacking would most likely be bandwidth but even then you could always put 64megs of infinity cache , if its only a 720p -1080p screen than you could get away with 32 megs of IC to help with bandwidth issues
There are already good 3rd party hubs out there. I don't need one , don't really plan on using this on a tv. With the usb on top its not even a quick stand charger for the deck. I haven't taken a good look at the case but a feature i would have loved is a pass through for a usb c cable like the xbox elite 2 cases so you don't even have to remove it from the case to charge it.
D brand has a case coming with a rubber cover to protect the full face of the console that is also kinda nice.
For everyone here is a 2 hour stream from Phawx
He has windows running but no gpu drivers yet. You can see it running in his video. It's the first few minutes of the video , he even get s a freeze in windows. The bios is pretty nice and easy to get into. You can choose the boot drive. He also plays elden ring , although the game needs serious work on the pc to begin with.
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I could easily see the power system only be designed so it needs to feed the entire system on external power and use the surplus for battery charging.
Being able to supplement external power from the battery would require extra care during design and probably a custom microcontroller switching controller instead of something off the shelf. But I don't know the market space for USB-C laptop power management ICs so I could be wrong.
anyone using the deck for remote play is overkill but it is nice indeed to play while lying on bed, while in the toilet, etc. At least that's my experience with remoteplay to switch.
Btw have anyone tried force installing incompatible gpu drivers?
Btw have anyone tried force installing incompatible gpu drivers?