Valve introduces Steam Deck

hog cranking frog said:
Can't explain it but as soon as I had cash for a game system as a kid with some lawn mowing money I bought a Gameboy color. Didn't even consider a Game gear. Didn't cross my mind.

Every kid had a Gameboy. I think it was that simple. It just took over the market first and fast.
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GBC was 1998 - 2001. Game Gear had already failed and the last game for the system came out in 1996.

You're right everyone had one at the time, it was the pokemania era.
 
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Baraka Obama said:
GBC was 1998 - 2001. Game Gear had already failed and the last game for the system came out in 1996.

You're right everyone had on at the time, it was the pokemania era.
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I recall seeing one GameGear outside a Sears and it was a boyscout trip and the rich kid brought it. Everyone made fun of all the attachments and no one played it.
 
There Is Light At The End said:
So, I have been using steam deck for almost 2 months. It's great so far. Even pirated a few games like cyberpunk and elden ring. They run pretty good. And that's because Valve used common sense in design - you don't need super-duper mega HD resolution with 6 gorillion Hz on such small screen. I'm old enough to remember that lowering resolution improves framerate
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It's fucking incredible man. I've owned one now for 2 months as well (1TB OLED) and it's absolutely incredible. I barely play games on my PC now except for really demanding titles with super high graphics. Been binging FF7 Remake, Postal 2, Signalis, GTA 4, Dead Space (remaster), F.E.A.R and old console games that don't really work well with mouse/keyboard.

Have you installed EmuDeck yet? I just got mine up and running and have Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal and Metal Gear Solid 2 & Snake Eater downloaded from Vimm's Lair. The Steam Deck is actually so unbelievably awesome for its value, especially Desktop Mode (I am literally writing this from my Steam Deck btw).
 
Flabba Wabba Jabba said:
Been binging FF7 Remake, Postal 2, Signalis, GTA 4, Dead Space (remaster), F.E.A.R
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How is FEAR on the deck? One I've been meaning to play for a long time but found FPS games on the deck can be hit and miss and depend on how good the controller support and settings are.
 
Stasi said:
How is FEAR on the deck? One I've been meaning to play for a long time but found FPS games on the deck can be hit and miss and depend on how good the controller support and settings are.
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You know you can make your own control schemes right? But I assume it would work just fine

You can also make scheme's with 0 controller inputs technically, and all keyboard and mouse mapped to the steam deck buttons
 
Valve Fremont Spotted With Custom AMD Hawk Point 2 SoC: 6 “Zen 4” CPU Cores, 16 MB L3 Cache, 4.8 GHz Clocks & Radeon RX 7600 “RDNA 3” GPU

There have been rumors of a Steam Box coming with Zen 4 cores and a dGPU, now it's revived with this Geekbench score.

What would make this setup interesting: they use the 7545U/8540U with 2x Zen 4 cores and 4x Zen 4c cores, but disable the graphics. This would allow them to use the cheaper yields of the Phoenix2 or the main Phoenix die. They could put that on a board with the Navi 33 graphics die and add a custom cooling solution to make it compact.

You're looking at about double the CPU performance with a 7545U vs. the Steam Deck APU, so anything that was CPU-limited could get up to double the FPS, while running at higher than the Deck's 720p resolution.
 
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The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
Valve Fremont Spotted With Custom AMD Hawk Point 2 SoC: 6 “Zen 4” CPU Cores, 16 MB L3 Cache, 4.8 GHz Clocks & Radeon RX 7600 “RDNA 3” GPU

There have been rumors of a Steam Box coming with Zen 4 cores and a dGPU, now it's revived with this Geekbench score.

What would make this setup interesting: they use the 7545U/8540U with 2x Zen 4 cores and 4x Zen 4c cores, but disable the graphics. This would allow them to use the cheaper yields of the Phoenix2 or the main Phoenix die. They could put that on a board with the Navi 33 graphics die and add a custom cooling solution to make it compact.

You're looking at about double the CPU performance with a 7545U vs. the Steam Deck APU, so anything that was CPU-limited could get up to double the FPS, while running at higher than the Deck's 720p resolution.
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That thing is going to be better than my diy Steam box i'm going to be making from leftover parts.
 
Xarpho's Return said:
If you compare the Game Boy to its competitors at the time, the Sega Game Gear and the Atari Lynx, it won on the form factor alone. Both the Lynx and the Game Gear ate up AA batteries like they were going out of style and the screens had a lot of issues with ghosting.
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People completely forget that you didn’t have chargers everywhere and AA batteries weren’t that cheap. Having to replace batteries often was a big deal
 
George Lucas said:
People completely forget that you didn’t have chargers everywhere and AA batteries weren’t that cheap. Having to replace batteries often was a big deal
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My parents purposely game rechargeable batteries for the damn thing and every time of charger (wall and car) you could get. I liked it since I didn't have a Genesis so it was my only Sonic fix but man it was stretch to consider the game gear "mobile".
 
The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
Valve Fremont Spotted With Custom AMD Hawk Point 2 SoC: 6 “Zen 4” CPU Cores, 16 MB L3 Cache, 4.8 GHz Clocks & Radeon RX 7600 “RDNA 3” GPU

There have been rumors of a Steam Box coming with Zen 4 cores and a dGPU, now it's revived with this Geekbench score.

What would make this setup interesting: they use the 7545U/8540U with 2x Zen 4 cores and 4x Zen 4c cores, but disable the graphics. This would allow them to use the cheaper yields of the Phoenix2 or the main Phoenix die. They could put that on a board with the Navi 33 graphics die and add a custom cooling solution to make it compact.

You're looking at about double the CPU performance with a 7545U vs. the Steam Deck APU, so anything that was CPU-limited could get up to double the FPS, while running at higher than the Deck's 720p resolution.
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Wasn't the Steam Deck thst showed up on Greekbench at first ultimately lower power then the one we got?

Ultimately I would love a Steam Console to hook up to my TV with a library of 20+ years of gaming along with a easy way to throw emulator on it.
 
George Lucas said:
People completely forget that you didn’t have chargers everywhere and AA batteries weren’t that cheap. Having to replace batteries often was a big deal
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Looking at old ads, a two-pack of batteries at Pathmark in 1988 cost 79 cents. So extrapolating for the time and place circa 1990-1991 anywhere in the country that's 50 cents a battery. But with the Game Gear using up six of those in around 4 hours that's going to add up fast. The Lynx ate it up even faster. (In comparison, Game Boy used four AA batteries but lasted up to 30 hours).

If you used your handheld four hours a week a Lynx or Game Gear would be $12 a month in batteries, a relatively small but not insignificant cost in middle-class families. A Game Boy's budget is a dollar in a two-month time span.
 
Back me up! said:
Wasn't the Steam Deck thst showed up on Greekbench at first ultimately lower power then the one we got?
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I didn't pay attention to it at the time. Any number of reasons could cause a low score, like bad cooling.

They were testing a Picasso APU year(s) before they stumbled on the unwanted custom chip that made it.

 
Baraka Obama said:
GBC was 1998 - 2001. Game Gear had already failed and the last game for the system came out in 1996.

You're right everyone had one at the time, it was the pokemania era.
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The original Game Boy had games compatible for it for the next DECADE, which was unheard of when consoles went out of style in 5 or 6 years. From what I could find, the last game that was Game Boy-compatible was Ronaldo V-Soccer which was released in summer 2001, and by that time the Game Boy Advance was out, which could play the small handful of GBC-exclusive games that were out (personally the only one that really stood the test of time was the Zelda Oracle series, though Super Mario Bros. Deluxe and the GBC port of Donkey Kong Country were great for their time).
 
Xarpho's Return said:
The original Game Boy had games compatible for it for the next DECADE, which was unheard of when consoles went out of style in 5 or 6 years. From what I could find, the last game that was Game Boy-compatible was Ronaldo V-Soccer which was released in summer 2001, and by that time the Game Boy Advance was out, which could play the small handful of GBC-exclusive games that were out (personally the only one that really stood the test of time was the Zelda Oracle series, though Super Mario Bros. Deluxe and the GBC port of Donkey Kong Country were great for their time).
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Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 (great game) has it beat releasing Sept 2001 although the JP version came out earlier in the year, plus there was a One Piece game released in 2002.
 
One of the main reasons (the other being cost and utility) why I don't have a Steam Deck is I'm just to apprehensive about the weight. My retro handhold of choice, the 3DS, is much heavier than the Game Boy Advance SP. My hands are bigger and my eyes worse than when the GBA SP was my bestest friend years ago, but its light form factor made playing handheld games fun.

Of all the games I've played on my 3DS the last 18 months the one that took up most of my time was the SNES version of Super Tetris 2 + Bombliss and even accounting for other games, I've noticed my hands will start cramping up after a while, long before the battery runs out, and the 3DS is heavier than the GBA SP. I haven't held a Steam Deck before but I can imagine that it would really uncomfortable really fast.

When it comes to my Game Boy Advance SP, one game that I've never known how to play effectively on any other system is WarioWare Twisted! due to its gyroscope feature (trying to play with a D-pad doesn't work because the perspective is SUPPOSED to change, and while I found WarioWare Gold INCREDIBLY flawed for a bunch of reasons (part of the issue was how poorly a lot of the minigames were ported) but games from Twisted! especially suffered because the game relied on the Game Boy Advance being very light, as opposed to the much heavier 3DS, and even if the Steam Deck had gyroscope-style compatibility it would still be a pain to play based on sheer weight alone.

I'm sure that there's some chink handheld that has the light form factor that can play GBA games but I also like devices that can play anything you can throw at them, one of the reasons I gravitated toward PCs in the first place.
 
Xlibre can now be installed on Steam OS, and provides a very noticeable improvement in battery life

making a steamos install script here is my work so far...
Bash: 
#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e

# --- Elevate privileges at the start ---
if command -v pkexec >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    pkexec bash -c "$0 $*"
    exit $?
elif command -v zenity >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    PASS=$(zenity --password --title="Authentication Required")
    echo "$PASS" | sudo -S true
    unset PASS
else
    sudo -v
fi

# --- Ask GUI question for Gamescope session ---
ask_enable_boot() {
    if command -v zenity >/dev/null 2>&1; then
        zenity --question \
            --title="Enable Gamescope Session" \
            --text="Do you want to enable Gamescope session on boot?"
        return $?  # 0 = Yes, 1 = No
    elif command -v kdialog >/dev/null 2>&1; then
        kdialog --yesno "Do you want to enable Gamescope session on boot?"
        return $?
    else
        read -p "[?] Enable Gamescope session on boot? (y/N): " ans
        [[ "$ans" =~ ^[Yy]$ ]]
        return $?
    fi
}

echo "[+] Adding XLibre binary repo to pacman..."
sudo pacman-key --recv-keys 73580DE2EDDFA6D6
sudo pacman-key --finger 73580DE2EDDFA6D6
sudo pacman-key --lsign-key 73580DE2EDDFA6D6

echo "[+] Updating /etc/pacman.conf with xlibre repo..."
if ! grep -q "^

\[xlibre\]

" /etc/pacman.conf; then
    echo -e "\n[xlibre]\nServer = https://github.com/X11Libre/binpkg-arch-based/raw/refs/heads/main/" \
        | sudo tee -a /etc/pacman.conf
fi

echo "[+] Syncing pacman databases..."
sudo pacman -Sy

echo "[-] Removing old Xorg packages..."
sudo pacman -Rns xorg-server xorg-server-common xorg-apps xorg-xinit \
    xorg-xrandr xorg-xinput xorg-xset xorg-xprop xorg-xev xorg-xhost

echo "[+] Installing XLibre packages..."
sudo pacman -S --noconfirm \
    xlibre-xserver \
    xlibre-xserver-common \
    xlibre-xserver-devel \
    xlibre-xf86-input-libinput \
    xlibre-xf86-video-amdgpu

echo "[+] Installing gamescope-session-git from AUR..."
cd ~
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/gamescope-session-git.git
cd gamescope-session-git
makepkg -si --noconfirm --needed

echo "[+] Creating XLibre .desktop entry..."
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/gamescope-session
cat <<EOF > ~/.local/share/gamescope-session/xlibre.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=XLibre
Exec=/usr/bin/X
Type=Application
EOF

echo "[+] Setting XLibre as default Gamescope session..."
mkdir -p ~/.config/gamescope-session
echo "xlibre.desktop" > ~/.config/gamescope-session/session

if ask_enable_boot; then
    systemctl --user enable gamescope-session.target
    echo "[✓] Gamescope session will start on boot."
else
    echo "[i] You can manually start it with: systemctl --user start gamescope-session.target"
fi

echo "[✓] Installation complete. Reboot or start Gamescope session manually."
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Stasi said:
How is FEAR on the deck? One I've been meaning to play for a long time but found FPS games on the deck can be hit and miss and depend on how good the controller support and settings are.
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I burst out laughing when opening FEAR, because there is a community controller layout made by this hyperautist that made a full blown, back buttons included layout that works beautifully.

The controller layout is fantastic, you will need to turn off gyroscopic aiming though, which is enabled by default on the default community controller layout. You'll also need to get equipped with moving the cursor with the trackpad, but then left click by squeezing the right trigger. The back buttons have things like martial art jump kick and slide kick, quick switching like use of heal stims, quick save, throw grenade, activate special abilities etc. It blew me away how good FEAR was on the SD.
 
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