• @[email protected]
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    62 years ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 years ago

      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

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        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.

  • @[email protected]
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    192 years ago

    I wonder whether, when the faster Steam Deck 2 comes, it may have ditched the x86 architecture altogether and leapt to a high-performance ARM CPU, yielding more power per watt and generating less heat. If so, that would presumably require Proton to be supplemented with a Rosetta-style translation engine that can convert x86 machine code into ARM.

    Currently, outside of Apple’s proprietary M/A-series CPUs, there don’t appear to be high-performance ARM CPUs that would fill such a role, though this probably won’t still be the case in a few years.

    • @[email protected]
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      92 years ago

      A few months ago I remember they hired a contractor for arm development, I think they were a member from the Asahi Linux project

      • @[email protected]
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        52 years ago

        That Asahi team have done some amazing stuff, especially on the graphics front. They’ve put out a fully conformant OpenGL driver for the M1+2, something even Apple themselves haven’t done for their own hardware.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      with a Rosetta-style translation

      Apple fans before their favorite binary translator came out: qemur? Eww… ELBRUS with lintel? Ewwwwww, you suck in past century!

      Apple fans after their favorite binary translator came out: We have the Never Seen Before™ technology that was pionered by company we mindlessly praise.

      outside of Apple’s proprietary M/A-series CPUs, there don’t appear to be high-performance ARM CPUs that would fill such a role, though this probably won’t still be the case in a few years.

      They exists for many years. There are HPC cores in Cortex-A, entire Cortex-X and super HPC Neoverse cores, but they are rarely seen outside of datacenters.

    • @[email protected]
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      192 years ago

      I’d say while it’s possible it’s unlikely, remember that they’re running PC games, all based on X86, the work needed to make Wine/Proton run all of that well on a different CPU set is significant, and would likely break compatibility in unexpected ways, effectively bringing all the recent wins moot and bringing Proton backwards. Definitely something that will likely happen, but more of a long-term goal (unless it’s already in progress and with advances, no idea, but we would all have heard of it already if it was a thing)

      • @[email protected]
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        2 years ago

        There allready is a transition layer that can be used so they wouldnt have to start from scratch. Box86/64

      • Natanael
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        62 years ago

        With the timeframe this is likely to happen over, it might be RISC-V instead of ARM since that’s an open source hardware platform and ARM seems to be joining enshittification trends (starting with worse licensing terms)

    • kib48
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      62 years ago

      there already is a project for x86 to ARM translation on Linux called box86, and there’s another one for x86_64 called box64 havent heard about them in a while but I remember seeing a video of someone playing doom 3 on a raspberry pi with it so it seems very promising

    • @[email protected]
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      122 years ago

      I heard they tried to buy some panels from Samsung but they wanted such a huge amount per product that it would’ve raised the steam decks price way beyond of most consumers product. You can make more money by selling a cheaper product to more people rather than a premium product to a select few.

      • StarDreamer
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        2 years ago

        I’m not familiar with the topic but couldn’t they cut straight to the source and directly contact Corning? Or alternatively, one of those Chinese high end OLED knock offs? I’ve heard they’re basically less than 1 generation apart in terms of quality.

        edit: alternatively, I assume all cables/connectors are standard. What’s preventing Jim next door from starting a group buy to manufacture replacement OLED screens/upgrade kits?

  • GreenAlex
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    292 years ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      32 years ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
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      192 years ago

      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.

      • GreenAlex
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        32 years ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 years ago

          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.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      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.

      • qyron
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        82 years ago

        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?

        • @[email protected]
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          22 years ago

          It’s easier to sell honestly. It’s a concept most people understand at a base level at least so it’s marketable.

        • Overzeetop
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          12 years ago

          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.

        • HubertManne
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          22 years ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]
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            32 years ago

            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.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 years ago

          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

        • @[email protected]
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          2 years ago

          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.

  • Pika
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    262 years ago

    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!”

  • Chewy
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    402 years ago

    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.

    • xep
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      2 years ago

      I’d like similar things to you as well, which is for the the Deck to get more efficient per watt. On my wishlist:

      1. VRR
      2. better display
      3. lighter and thinner
      4. better airflow / cooler and quieter (but keep the new fan smell)
      5. better battery life without compromising size / heat
        5a. alternatively, make the battery detachable so we can carry multiple around.
      • @[email protected]
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        82 years ago

        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

    • @[email protected]
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      32 years ago

      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.

  • spiderkle
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    2 years ago

    they’ll most likey fix screen and battery issues first along with stick drift.

  • @[email protected]
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    992 years ago

    We all know there won’t be a Deck 3. So I hope they take their time on making the second one perfect.

  • @[email protected]
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    42 years ago

    I’m so happy to hear this. I’m getting a steam deck next week and have been wired that a faster version would be right around the corner.

    • arefx
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      22 years ago

      The deck is amazing you’re gonna love it

      • @[email protected]
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        32 years ago

        Yeah, I’ve been salivating over it for months. But I’m such a cautious spender. I’m not replacing another joycon, and I’m so happy it’s a repairable machine. I’ll upgrade the ssd down the line.

        I’m honestly just so psyched.

  • AphoticDev
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    262 years ago

    Good. Two years is too short of a time for a hardware generation.

    • @[email protected]
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      102 years ago

      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

  • @[email protected]
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    142 years ago

    Honestly this is a good thing, IMO. If we ever want devs to optimize for a given device, they need to know that it won’t be obsolete immediately. Hopefully seeing that Valve isn’t rushing to make a new device will give them confidence in that.

  • @[email protected]
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    1342 years ago

    The Steam Deck adds something incredibly valuable that the PC market has never had: a consistent target spec for minimum hardware requirements. Upgrading every couple years would create confusion for which version for developers to focus on. They are treating it like a console, not a PC.