Valve introduces Steam Deck

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Spooky Space Kook said:
Hopefully valve releases some more vr games to go along with the new vr headset. I have a quest 2 but stopped using it after the vr gimmick wore off and I ran out of good VR games to play.
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I bought a quest 3 and it came with batman arkham VR, I was amazed and excited at the prospect of playing so many games. Turns out there's fuck all and nothing was better or even a full game like Bamham. I shan't learn my lesson though, and I will hope this Valve headset pairs nicely with my Gabecube and I can finally play a world of VR games that don't feel like gimmick bullshit, or at the very least, HL alyx.
 
Hot takes from MLID:


* FSR4 could help bridge the performance gap between Steam Machine and PS5.
* Uses "Hawk Point 2" (2x Zen 4 cores, 4x Zen 4c cores) with none of the console-specific accelerators, so not much better/worse than PS5 if trying to get >60 FPS.
* The Steam Deck APU was an unused cast-off originally intended for a Microsoft Surface laptop. Microsoft backed off, Valve got a great deal.
* The Steam Machine specs seem weird because it uses cheap unsold Navi 33 / 7600M and Phoenix/Hawk 2 with iGPU disabled.
* He estimates the BOM cost: $298 for Steam Deck LCD (256 GB), $425 for Steam Machine (512 GB).
* His price guess is $449 to $600, depending on how aggressive Valve wants to be, and if they stockpiled RAM ahead of time, etc.
* Addresses the Valve quote about it being priced like an "entry-level gaming PC". People think that's $800, it's more like $500 to $800, depending on the source.
* Also brings up the Minisforum Neptune I linked somewhere (6900HX + 6600M) which is $600 or less on sale.
* Valve might price Xbox out of gaming. Steam Machine is at least double the performance of Xbox Series S at similar pricing. Microsoft needs to think long and hard about how they want to price the PC-like Xbox Magnus.

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I already have a living room PC with Linux installed so unless the price point is incredible don't think I'll get the Gabecube.

Will almost certainly get a controller though. Don't think a lot of people realise just how useful the steam deck track pads and their button mapping functionality in general is for games. Especially older games where the controller support is a bit jank or non existent. I managed to play through Morrowind on the deck with a few custom key binds and shortcuts on the track pads.
 
Ice Gun Ninja said:
Steam Machine only has 8GB VRAM. Considering how un-optimized the games are, they should have gone with 12. A lot of indie/AA games also take need more than 6GB even at lowest settings.
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They should make it modularly upgradable but very :optimistic:

If the Deck is anything to go by it will be a fucking emulation beast and that excites me more than the Steam games almost
 
Nick Gars said:
There's a fair deal of good VR games these days, and several that are quite expansive, but it has the same issue a library like the Wii has. Theres an ocean of shit to wade through.

The biggest advantage to the Frame imo is the direct integration with your Steam library (fuck you Occulus and your proprietary software fucking bullshit). Not needing a computer for all your games is also a big plus. Depending on how comfortable it is after extended periods, that feature to use it as a personal screen for nonVR games could be pretty useful in several use cases. You can do something similar with most headsets, but a lot tend to suck ass to wear for too long, especially when staring at a static screen in VR space.
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Elite dangerous in VR is absolutely lit. Also I play No mans sky in VR.
 
taktion said:
I'm guessing that the Steam Deck 2 will use an ARM CPU like the new Steam Frame.

Better battery life and less heat.
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I wouldn't be so sure. In fact I wanna see - just out of pure interest - how they're gonna handle the x86_64 to arm transition. Apple could pull it off unscathed because they controlled the silicon and could afford to put in dedicated transistors for that. That plus their legendary vertical integration in rosetta2 (no care about graphical APIs because it's Metal, and they can afford to have a recompile step on first run due to ABI compat)

Valve doesn't have this luxury. They already talked about FEX which means they'll be live emulating x86_64, that's not a good start, then there's wine/proton... That's a lot of cruft you gotta carry forward on a mobile device. I wanna see how they handle it.

On the other hand they are going forward with this, which means they had to have it in a somewhat workable state. Either that, or they'll start accepting native arm64 builds of games and promote the shit out of them
 
Battlefield42 said:
No Mans Sky didn't like my RX 6600. Game is pretty heavy even on flatscreen.
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How much Ram you got?

I got a geforce 40xx. 12 GB ram.

There is some setting you have to do to keep it smooth I think it was the hz.

For NMS you have to have it at 80.
 

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What im curious about is the Frame, I hope with it running SteamOS it puts incentive to make SteamVR much better considering its a bit of a shitshow at the moment.
 
What is the estimated performance gain they get from foveated rendering (streaming only?). I thought I heard "10x".

Depending on how large the number is, the implications could be profound.
 
Bunkerhousing said:
How much Ram you got?

I got a geforce 40xx. 12 GB ram.

There is some setting you have to do to keep it smooth I think it was the hz.

For NMS you have to have it at 80.
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I now have RX 9070xt so it isn't a problem anymore. Already had 64gb of system ram before upgrading.
 
When the Framework Desktop got released, it was of very poor value, mainly due to high price, soldered on CPU and RAM, no PCIe. For something similar to a Steam Machine it would cost you $1277 USD, assuming we're taking the most similar components:

ComponentSteam MachineFramework Desktop Max 385
CPUCustom APU
Zen 4 with 6C/12T		Ryzen AI Max 385
Zen 5 with 8C/16T
GPUCustom APU
28 RDNA 3 cores
8GB of VRAM		Radeon 8050S
32 RDNA 3.5 cores
Uses shared-VRAM
Memory16 GB (expandable)
8 GB VRAM		32 GB (non-expandable)
Storage1x NVMe (512 GB)
microSD slot		2x NVMe (512 GB, empty slot)
microSD slot (with the appropriate card)
ExpansionøUSB4
Networking1 Gbit Ethernet (probably Realtek?)
2x2 Wi-Fi 6E		Realtek RTL8126 5Git Ethernet
AMD RZ717 Wi-Fi 7
Video1x DisplayPort 1.4
1x HDMI 2.0		2x DisplayPort 2.1
1x HDMI 2.1
Pricehopefully under $ 650$ 1277
If it manages to reach the same level as a Framework Desktop for less than half the price, then they have something good. Mind you, I assume they'll sell this for the same price as the 1TB Steam Deck. It might not be the best value, but compared to the Framework it's night and day.
 
Computer Guardian said:
What losses? they practically own the PC gaming market, they can charge $600 or even $1K for what amounts to a low-end Mini PC easily and not worry about losses because Steam will make it back instantly in a day.
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When the Deck was released, Gabe himself said that the price point was secondary and painful”. Either it was sold as a loss or barely made a profit. But Valve knows that it helps promote their OS and can make it up on game sales.
 
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