good, I’m sick of companies being like “hey here’s the new version of insert product that worked in every category here, as such as are not supporting the old device anymore, but don’t worry the new version has sparkles on the menus!”
Too true
It makes total sense. Just a bit of a bummer when looking at the reality of devs being awful/not caring about optimising their games. The Deck is just barely hanging on with this year’s big titles.
Thankfully, there’s plenty of older and/or more lightweight options out there.
Many people are still playing with a PS4. And generally consoles last several years.
If we can move the optimisations more to the PC world that would be also nice to keep devices running in the longer term.
What I don’t think is going to happen is a future steam deck running a native resolution at 1080p requiring much more GPU PWR.
Maybe they’ll add 1080p or higher resolution screen and start using more the upscaling.
But running a future GPU bound game natively at 1080p will make any medium term upgrade more like a downgrade.
Mind if I ask something?
What is the origin of always wanting higher and higher definitions lately?
It comes to a point where it makes no objective difference between resolutions for the human eye.
And I’ve seen TVs advertised as being “sharper and brighter than real life”. The only thing the image made for me was getting my eyes sore after staring at the screen for a few seconds.
I’m still from the time when the graphics on the cover were better than the actual graphics and that is something I don’t miss but come on… when is enough enough?
The origin for me are the guys who generally demand that the SD should have higher resolution than 720p (approximately).
I personally think the display PPI is good enough in the original Steam Deck. So I wouldn’t raise the resolution a lot. Especially when some games struggle to keep 30 FPS.
Of course, the eye to display distance matters a lot for this and that’s a bit more subjective.
I with you. With the exception of UI scaling and readability of some text, I have almost zero reason to want more than he resolution on the deck. Heck, it’s not even the res. Trying to squint at mini maps, even if the Deck were 4K, wouldn’t really solve the issue. It’s a little screen and unless I’m going to do that weird competitive gamer thing where you put your nose on the screen there’s no value in upping the resolution but still requiring that I resolve better than an arcminute to read it. My gaming PC is hooked to a 55" 4K HDR screen. I play in 1080 and, honestly, don’t notice any gameplay difference at 4K when sitting on my couch less than 10’ away. I don’t know why I would even want FHD on a 7" screen at a comfortable 18" distance.
It’s easier to sell honestly. It’s a concept most people understand at a base level at least so it’s marketable.
At first it made sense because it gave you more detail but I think 1080p or 1440p is the perfect resolution for consuming media from a monitor or television.
For VR headsets I think it makes more sense because you need more pixel density
I don’t buy new screens but my work had a 4k in the break room and it gave me an uncanny valley type feeling.
That’s probably the framerate smoothing rather than the resolution.
4K TVs ship with that on, because otherwise nobody could tell the difference, at least for TV and movies. HDR is nice, but the extra pixels aren’t that noticeable.
For games, sure you can see the difference, although the prevalence of upscaling tech even on PC makes me wonder just how much extra detail you can really benefit from.
Don’t play big titles on the Deck. That’s not what it’s good at. Play Fez or Tunic or something. There’s a near infinite list of great games that are not technically demanding.
I’m not sure the Steamdeck was created with the latest AAA games in mind.
BG3 co-op slows my PS5 to a crawl. People gotta be chilling with their expectations of what a £350 handheld can do.
To be fair, the Deck is underpriced for its power level. I unfortunately can’t find the quote but if memory serves they were planning to achieve a 30fps target on the device for a few years, which obviously hasn’t quite panned out. Given that this year has been notorious for badly optimized games, I would personally attribute the problems the device is having to that, rather than the Deck itself being too weak to keep up.
I’m not sure recent games are badly optimised. Just that they’re now going for PS5 levels of power as a baseline, rather than PS4.
You can always cut back a bit on the GPU requirements for lower resolutions and removing raytracing, etc, but the CPU requirements can be pretty rigid.
This is likely to be where the SteamDeck falls short and gets less FPS than expected.
I just want to be able to use a password manager with Steam for online games.
Uhm… and what’s stopping you? Like I had keepassx on it.
I want it to work in game mode and the last time I tried, copying the PW didn’t persist when swapping between the app and screen. If that’s working now, I would be so pleased.
Uhmm 🤔 now I don’t remember. I did add it on Game mode… and I remember running but yeah not sure about the copy paste stuff. Tbh I haven’t touch the steam deck in a long time (and I got two 😅).
That’s good. A Steam Deck 2 might make sense once there’s an APU with double the performance at the same 15W.
Current APU’s are faster per watt, but only at higher power consumption. This means either the battery life sucks, or the handheld is too heavy and expensive with a giant battery.
The current handhelds by other manufacturers are faster, but only a bit. 120Hz are nice, but I don’t even reach 60fps on most titles and it consumes too much power. Games might perform a bit better but everything is still also playable on the SD, so there’s no real point in releasing a second generation. All these devices fill the same niche.
What I expect is a refresh of the SD with an OLED display. Maybe even with VRR and HDR, now that SteamOS has support for it. Farther down the wish list are hall effect joysticks.
I’d like similar things to you as well, which is for the the Deck to get more efficient per watt. On my wishlist:
- VRR
- better display
- lighter and thinner
- better airflow / cooler and quieter (but keep the new fan smell)
- better battery life without compromising size / heat
5a. alternatively, make the battery detachable so we can carry multiple around.
I want long lasting fan smell as well, i was like a feline on catnip the whole first months
However the size is fine for me, but the battery needs a serious buff
Better screen will impact the battery unfortunately
Give us a little tank that we can fill with liquid so the fans stay smelly.
High refresh rates and VRR go hand to hand, so you’d still want that if you want VRR. You just limit the framerate to 60fps or lower if you don’t want the hit to battery life.
Its fast enough just give me some usb4 so I can use an egpu.
they’ll most likey fix screen and battery issues first along with stick drift.
Good. Two years is too short of a time for a hardware generation.
I agree, and tbh everything I throw at my deck, it just handles it, a play things like oxygen not included and modded minecraft, I love my deck
Tech has been pretty stagnant lately anyway.
But what about that NEW BATTERY TECH that’s coming out soon…
They used the same definition of soon as this sentence: Fusion power will soon be available.
I’m not after a Steam Deck v2, but I’d love a v1.1 with Thunderbolt support. I’ll buy a Steam Deck the moment it will happily play with an eGPU without a Dremel getting involved.
Currently the ROG Ally is the only one of these with eGPU support, right? And it’s still only for their proprietary ones?
There’s so many. And GPD devices even have native pcie out via oculink
Holy shit that would be amazing.
I’d seriously regret buying mine if that came out.
That said, I play mine so much the plastic is getting smooth haha.
This is good news for my wallet I guess, although it makes me wonder what’s up with that “Sephiroth” APU that showed up in the Linux Kernel. I’m so happy with my current Steam Deck that I don’t really need another iteration on it right away anyway.
I think this is healthy. People (including myself) are easily sucked into consumerism instead of sustainability.
Better to have a good device that is highly repairable, upgradeable, and modable. That way you can make small improvements and add some high quality accessories without just trying to force everybody to buy the newest shiny device every 18-24 months.
Unless you’re only playing the latest AAA games, the Deck will perform great for many years to come.
I got sucked down the hype/consumerism hole for many years after college, and I blew so much money on buying every new PC part and accessory even though I didn’t need any of them.
Apple has a new event and a new phone and a new watch EVERY YEAR. aren’t we obligated to buy all this shit every year?
Nope, my phone is 5 years old and it is nice to be able to wait for the latest release to get something brand new instead of a year or two old.
And for some reason Gucci keeps making new belts. It’s weird because it’s like, doesn’t that older belt work just fine?
i learned when i was maybe 16, 17, you can just ask a guy who works with leather – “can you make a belt that will hold my pants up” – the dude was so confused and so happy to help me and it did not cost very much. that guy was so nice.
Username checks out
My deck is about to reach it’s final form and I need a few years out of it. So far I’ve done
2TB ssd hall effect joysticks Transparent green shell front and back. played around with undervolting/ over clocking replaced screen with anti glare (only because I broke it)
I’m waiting on a beefier heatsink and I’d like to find some cool buttons.
The only other thing left to do would be try the 32GB RAM swap that some madlad did. I’m not really interested in the deck HD screen but could get behind a 800p or 1600p OLED panel.
What do you think of the Hall effect joysticks? I was thinking of getting some, but been kind of turned off by reports of the square shaped output they have making rotating worse
They seem fine to me. Definitely a square profile if I run the test, but feel fine during gameplay to me. Probably the least worthwhile mod I’ve done though. The dbrand thumbstick grips are worth it.
We all know there won’t be a Deck 3. So I hope they take their time on making the second one perfect.
- 2025: Steam Deck 2
- 2045: Steam Deck 3
- 2050: Steam Deck Eternal
2048: Steam Deck
What about Deck 2 Revision 1 & 2?
Steam Deck: Alyx
I don’t have a steamdeck, so I’m allowed to ask the question: Why not?
It’s in reference to Valve being unable to count to 3
Valve only releases two games in a series and stops before a third.
On everything, it’s basically a meme at this point about valve not being able to count to three.
Steam Deck: Alyx
And it’ll be a pre-built desktop, or something.
Rofl
They just call it “4” just to fuck with people
Steam Deck ][
I can’t imagine they’d be able to use an off the shelf processor for the next one. The performance at lower wattages on the deck is so much better than current laptop processors or the Z1.
Of fucking course not. They are taking a bath internally on every single one.
