Steam Deck - SteamOS, Zen2 4C/8T, RDNA2 1.0-1.6 TF, 16 GB LPDDR5 88 GB/s, starting at $399 [2021-12]

big boy

 

Maybe older Steam games and ROMs are good enough, but I really advise against trying to run modern games out of a UHS-I microSD card.
I say that because I've been doing exactly that on my work UMPC. It's an Ice Lake G7 with just a 256GB NVMe, so I got myself a Samsung EVO Plus 512GB which is about as fast as a UHS-I card can be:



Loading up e.g. Battlefront 2 to the start menu it takes like 3 minutes, and then loading the actual levels it's another 2 minutes. I'm always the last guy getting in on the fight..

I agree that some Valve's hardware didn't get very long lifetimes, but it's not like Valve cut the rope on them that early IMO.

- The Steam Machines were never actual Valve products and Valve went with a hands-off approach to them. Which in hindsight was a mistake because what system sellers did was to simply charge premiums over their existing platforms with a new paint job and no Windows license. They all thought of the opportunity as means to make a quick buck instead of trying to build a customer base out of the world's largest PC gaming platform. And Valve's reputation got hurt by it.

- The Steam Controller was introduced for the failed Steam Machines but even despite that, it lasted for a whole 4 years, during which it got consistent firmware, driver and feature updates. I guess after 4 years they figured out people preferred to use the Xbox controllers for better XInput compatibility.

- Steam Link's existence made sense in 2015 because at the time the ULP hardware capable of fast H264 decoding + WiFi AC was very limited. It was discontinued in 2018 because in that year most Android boxes could do the same job or better with the Steam Link software, and they released the software for the Rasp 3 which was equally cheap but more flexible. So I think it was short-lived but it played its part pretty well.

- Valve's VR headsets are pretty well supported even today. I don't think there are many complains in there.



Finally, since this can use Windows 11 and it'll get AMD driver support, it doesn't really matter if Valve stops updating the platform after ~3 years. Most probably after 6+ years AMD will still include Van Gogh's iGPU in the same list of game optimizations as all the other RDNA2 GPUs.

Furthermore, they already said they'll let OEMs use their SteamOS 3.0 platform to make other PC handhelds.
They claimed they're using Steam Deck as a launchpad for a family of products that will hopefully be coming from major manufacturers like HP/Omen, Dell/Alienware, Razer, etc., similar to what Microsoft did with the Surface line. This probably means they'll let other manufacturers make similar handhelds that use the same button layout, dual touchpads, IMU integration, etc.

Yes. Check the video at timestamp.


RT and VRS confirmed, mesh shaders are definitely there, too.
Considering Van Gogh's presence in the leaked roadmaps, I think it's safe to say it's using an iGPU with the same instruction set as the PC RDNA2 GPUs.

To be honest, I think Valve might be taking a conservative stance with the iGPU and memory clocks. They seem more worried with battery life than maximizing performance. The LPDDR5 is downclocked from the standard 6400MT/s to 5500MT/s, and 1.6GHz is pretty low for a RDNA2 GPU.
I wonder if the console's power distribution and cooling systems will be able to let us overclock the GPU towards >2GHz and the LPDDR5 towards 6400MT/s. It could be especially useful for playing in docked mode, or for those not bothered with playing with the console connected to an external battery.

 

The specs are great but it's too big and too heavy. It's basically a mini laptop with integrated pads.

- The pad handles are too big and don't seem confortable (the sticks don't seem very accessible). I don't see people holding that thing for long while using those sticks before getting tired.
- Why there is so much unused space around the screen?

Vita is still the best designed mobile hardware ever. Too bad there aren't many compelling games on it.

 

Seems a bit premature to take a view size/weight/control positions until there are people using it in the wild. Those big handles probably help and it's not heavier than a Pro tablet.

 

Beaver pricing: CDN$ 499.00, CDN$ 659.00, CDN$ 819.00

 

What has Valve dropped support of ? Steam machines that never took off ? They still support the steam controller (I have one and the wife uses it to play civ on her machine in the living room) It released in 2015 and was discontinued in 2019. Steam link was released in 2015 and was discontinued in 2018 but still support it and have released mobile apps to allow other devices to function in the same way. The index released in 2019 and is still being sold and supported.

Even steam machines were sold from 2015 to 2018

Yea micro sd is enough for switch games and it seems to run anything on my pie 4 up to ps2 games rather quickly. But those machines were tied to dvd drives of their times. I tried using a micro sd to play games on my surface but unless they were older (pre xbox one generation) load times were pretty bad.

Like I mentioned in another post. I want to see how well usb hard drives work on this. You can get a 1TB 3rd gen nvme drive for about $100-$120 and an enclosure for $20. If its plug and play and without issues Then the 256gig would be the best value. Unless that carrying case is amazin lol. Also nvme drives should continue to drop in price.

 

To be fair, even Google keeps products around longer than that lol

If they're not selling at all though then I can see why they would discontinue them.

 

Apple does the same thing. Looks like all of Valves products made it at least 3 years. That is longer than apple produces iphones generations for.

So you can see most iphones are sold for 2-3 years. But people buy iphones cause apple will continue to support them on the software side.


I also would be more interested in this than an aya or gpd win. Valve will support the deck longer than either support their products and those are the only other companies that are producing a high end portable gaming hand held.

 

Interesting video by gamer nexus

 

That's a silly comparison. New phone models are continually pushed each year or so because they want their users to continually upgrade to the newest version and drew in new users. Valve weren't replacing their products with a new version, just ending them. This is about the "product" as a whole, like an iPhone is a product which has many revisions over the years but it's still the same product.

Note that I'm not dissing Valve for discontinuing the products. If they're not selling in any sustainable numbers it means the consumers don't really want the products. That's fine.

 

Size-wise, the Steam Deck seems to be closest to the One XPlayer:










They're actually two very similar devices. The Deck is wider but shorter, the XPlayer is narrower but taller. It also seems the XPlayer is considerably thicker, but it's hard to see for sure because Valve measures thickness with handgrips whereas One measures without.
The SoCs are pretty similar in specs:

CPU:
OneXPlayer: Tiger Lake / Willow Cove 4c/8t @ 1.7-4.1GHz
Steam Deck: Zen2 4c/8t @ 2.4-3.5GHz

GPU:
OneXPlayer: Xe 768 ALUs @1.1-1.3GHz: 1.69 - 2 TFLOPs (I'm expecting it to be on the lower end because it's a 15W configuration):
Steam Deck: RDNA2 512 ALUs @1-1.6GHz: 1-1.6TFLOPs
(Note: Xe doesn't support VRS Tier 2, Ray Tracing, Mesh Shaders or Sampler Feedback, but it'll be very interesting to see how these iGPUs compare)

RAM:
OneXPlayer: 16GB LPDDR4X 4266 128bit = 68.3GB/s
Steam Deck: 16GB LPDDR5 5500 128bit = 88GB/s

Screen:
OneXPlayer: 2560*1600 8.4" 100% RGB. People aren't saying great things about brightness so I'm assuming it's ~250nits
Steam Deck: 7" 1280*800 (literally 1/4th the resolution), 400nits.

Storage:
OneXPlayer: one M.2 2280 slot + microSD card.
Steam Deck: Soldered eMMC 64GB / NVMe 256/512GB + microSD card

I/O:
OneXPlayer: 2*USB-C with USB4 + Thunderbolt 4 (eGPU supported) and DP header, 1*USB-A 3.1, WiFi AX
Steam Deck: 1*USB-C 3.1 w/ DP header, WiFi AC.

Battery:
OneXPlayer: 59W.h
Steam Deck: 40W.h

Cost:
OneXPlayer: starts at ~800€ with 512GB NVMe
Steam Deck: starts at 420€ with 64GB eMMC


In the end, it looks like the OneXPlayer has the best and no-compromise hardware for volume shipping in early Q3 2021, whereas the Steam Deck is a product where Valve fought really hard to hit that $400 / 420€ price tag.
With the 16GB LPDDR5 on all SKUs, it also looks like Valve has the very clear goal of providing 9th-gen console graphics for a 1280*800 render target. I think I get that, as well as their goal of standardizing the gaming experience under the Deck's name, but I'd still prefer an option with a 1080p screen.
It'll be very interesting to see how e.g. UE5 games run on the Deck with say a 960*600p internal render + TSR to 1280*800p.

Yes, but IMO this is going to sell ridiculous amounts of units.

 

Think he missed, unless I misheard, that the dock doesn't connect through the base. There's a cable that plugs into the top USB C.

 

I could have this as my HTPC if it were cheaper but right now I just don't see the appeal of it. The specs obviously can't be too high as long as it's portable, but it's still a PC and I don't see this having good performance long term, especially due to only 4C/8T CPU. Whereas eg ports to the other consoles and even Switch can get lower-than-lowest on PC if need be.

 

At this dimensions its hard to called it portable handheld, its more for playing laying on coach etc

 

In the case of some products yes they just end them most likely because there wasn't demand like the controller or steam machines but with others like steam link they made it an app and you can use the functionality on your pc or streaming stick or android device (not sure if its on ios). I think the appeal of needing to buy a steam link which was only use full for streaming from steam vs a fire stick or shield or using an older cell phone made the product redundant.

The one x player is very nice but expensive $800 starting makes it hard to justify vs the $520 (lets be realistic since the 64gig will be very niche) . The biggest things going for it are the higher res screen and m.2 slot. But even if you want to compare 512gig vs 512gig your still spending another what $150 to get the higher res screen .

I certainly think that Valve should have scrapped the 64gig version and instead had a non soldered m.2 bay. Sell a 128gig nvme model for $500 and a 512gig for $650. People who want to upgrade the drive could just buy the 128gig and do the upgrade. Or even have an enthusiast model at $400 where you can put your own drive in.

Linus has a video of the one x player and he tried getting some games working. It seemed to be a mixed bag for me


It also has 2 squirrel fans to keep it cool

I'm not sure. I think missing a usb port on the bottom is a miss for sure however even just when playing while plugged into an external battery pack its more natural to have the usb c at the bottom

Right now this is the best price to performance out of any of the hand held gaming pcs.

The aya neo is $800 I believe for the 512 gig and uses an amd 5 4500u which is a 6 core zen 2 with a vega graphics core and 16 gigs of ddr 4

The gpd win 3 with the 1135G7 16 gigs ddr 4 and 1TB m.2 is $850

The steam deck should be faster in games than both of them and starts at half the price.

 

Aw yiisss I secured a pre-order for the 512GB version!

To anyone hoping to get a unit in December, you have 4min left until the pre-order event ends.

Completely agreed. I didn't put up that comparison as suggestion that the OneXPlayer is a better choice. I don't think it is.
Though performance-wise we're yet to see how the Deck behaves.

 

Got the 256 GB secured. Pain the butt lol so many challenges getting my order through.

 

can't get a pre order through so i might sit it out since its now saying q1 2022

it will be interesting to see how the two stack up. But for the higher end onexplayer i can buy a steam deck and then a steam deck two most likely

Looks like they might already have over 50 thousand 512gig preorders


edit - finally able to get a reserve for the 256gig one

 

Well yes from the consumer perspective that's beneficial, but from the business side up selling on storage and memory is where the margins are at. How many laptops, tablets, etc. don't carry huge premiums for higher storage?

The $400 model is both there to have a low starting price to market while also giving everyone enough pause to want to pay the premium for the higher ones.

Would anyone pay how much they're charging for the higher storage if the that $400 no drive SKU was available? I really only want to pay the base price, but usability concerns scare me away from it.