Stampela

Comments here are fun, seem a 3 way split between people thinking it’s GeForce Experience, game stream, and finally the actual cloud streaming service running your own Steam games.

Uh, I feel like this is better taken with a low level of enthusiasm: reading the article there’s no mention of how it’s supposed to improve battery, it’s mentioned how it’s AI based, and most concerning for us, both the Ally and Go use the Z1/Z1 Extreme… that have a 10 tops npu.

And then there’s me, who got a new laptop a couple of days ago after looking into things, and the pre installed Windows worked perfectly to test the hardware worked fine… before being replaced by Linux.

Wow, wtf? So far Sony’s been good to the Deck, and while I don’t mind the psn requirement (when it’s upfront!) this seems either dumb or somewhat of a slip up. Hopefully someone will fix this (either Sony with an update to lose the Windows dependencies, or Valve with Proton sorcery). It is after all in Sony’s best interests to not encourage people to use systems from their competitors, so supporting Linux would make sense…

AND they like to yellow at the speed of light. My brother got a nice, transparent cover for his phone “it’s going to look awful in a few months” and sure enough a few months later he had a different one precisely because of that.

#2 in Italy, 4.8 stars.

Honestly the reviews are a mix of 5 stars from 4 years ago and a 1 star from last year that seems to like the app but not the people... there's a virtually uninterrupted 1 star streak for the last year, but those 5 stars are the "most helpful" and show up at the top.

Select is the one exclusive for Amazon, my understanding is that it’s meant to help with counterfeit ones, as only Amazon has them. Very good cards either way.

Not sure how it compares price wise right now, but look at the Amazon basics ones too: they’re made by the same company that bought Lexar and makes the emmc inside the 64gb Deck. Mine has been going strong for about a year now. Speed wise they’re essentially the same: the standard used in the Deck tops out at 104 megabytes per second, so any claims of extra speed are just marketing.

That or adding to all the games from the same publisher that are verified a badge meaning “has intentionally made become games unsupported in the past”

It’s even more incredible if you consider what they came from, Joe Danger, to a large game. Being a fan of Joe Danger I didn’t fall for the hype, as it seemed way too ambitious of a game. And then? It’s 8 years of free updates adding content even beyond what was initially promised.

Aside from the over promising at the beginning, or rushing the game launch depending on how you want to see it, it’s really great stuff. I cannot think of any other game starting as overwhelming negative, forcing Sony to work proper refund systems, to absolutely beloved by everyone.

At the beginning, remember that it's a game console: play games with it! Have fun! Later on you can explore the whole "it's just a handheld computer" thing, but start with the chill gaming part :)

My brother had a moment like that as a kid. He had a phone and put it in a locker when he went to gym (kids stuff, you know. Get them active, get them tired) and… the locker wasn’t locked. Plus having the pin enabled was annoying so he didn’t have that either. Yep. He learned that lesson…

Some games don’t really use it in a meaningful way, others make it a key component of gameplay. Sometimes gimmicky, obviously. For example I tried Mario Galaxy on the Deck, there’s a puzzle that requires finding the right spot with the HD rumble. The Deck has the same kind of haptics, but it didn’t translate at all into something meaningful, so that one puzzle cannot be solved. Old school rumble is ok and nice, but modern devices (Steam Deck, Switch, PS5, something like last 10 years of iPhones, obviously the Steam Controller) have proper haptics and can really do weird things. Click on the trackpad of your Deck when it’s off. The click is faked with haptics, so there’s none when it’s off! Main problem is that both Microsoft and Nintendo are strikingly dumb, so Microsoft is still clinging to 30 year old tech with the classic rumble, and Nintendo has HD Rumble only on the real Switch… so developers can’t expect everything to have proper haptics, and fall back to rumble.

I'm going to add that the math about the Deck having a 5200mah battery and thus with (let's say) a 25000mah powerbank it's easy to think that 25000/5200 almost 5 charges... that's wrong. The Deck has 7.7v battery while powerbanks normally are 3.6 so things don't translate directly.

Fastest way to know? https://www.steamdeck.com/en/tech/ The Deck has a 40Whr battery, a 20000mah powerbank should be around 74Whr and there the math is clear: less than two charges. Usually on the bottom of a powerbank there's the specs, should have that value too.

Right? When it started I felt it was a lose-lose situation: I might enjoy Apple products, but I do see the need to open them up at least a bit, so them winning would not be good. Epic winning on the other hand would give Epic something to stand on to criticize the greed of the 30% cut of Apple and Google, while apparently being fine with the same for EGS or consoles…

Not a brilliant move. Weekend sale, Twitch rewards… let’s touch the one thing designed explicitly to keep people from playing right when there’s a chance of new players!

Not Deck related, but I hope it will also fix whatever the heck is going on with my desktop: still in act 1, but (I think) there's a memory leak that causes it to stutter more and more, to the point where it can actually decide to take a second off between frames. Multiple times per minute. I don't get it on Deck, so I get to choose between loud fan and modest graphics, or quiet 4K glory with a reminder I've been playing for a while... lol

Yeah, I don’t see any reason to upgrade either of mine. Really not worth it.

Nah, Cyberpunk runs well. 30 to 40 in my experience, the real issue is the fucking tiny text that can be barely big enough to be readable, that red font isn't helping either. I think my time with it is split roughly in half between my desktop and Deck. You do need to try find good settings, but I mean it's a handheld so some effort is required.

Baldur's Gate I also play on either system, but I get the bit about it being blurry. I took a fair amount of time figuring out how to get rid of it, I can go grab a screenshot or two with my settings if anyone wants them. It keeps at 30 more or less reliably... but it's important to mention I'm still in act 1. The super weird part is how for some reason it's less buggy on the Deck! Very puzzling. On the desktop it seems to leak memory and that ends up in horrible stuttering, then with some bad luck it can stop accepting inputs aside from menu stuff and movement, and this one seems to be fixable by loading the save on the Deck.

Edit, screenshots:

It’s not a subscription plan with games, it’s a cloud service running the (supported, stuff about licensing) games you already own on Steam.

Depends. I have a good desktop gaming computer and a 4k monitor. DLSS makes the two work together nicely... and yet, sometimes I just want to play on the Deck. A big upside is how the entire system uses up to the same power as my gpu does at idle, and I don't have to add the heat generated by the monitor: brilliant way to keep the room temperature in check.

Being able to play anywhere I want (couch? why not) is a great motivator.

AFAIK Rosetta deals with Intel Mac apps, not Windows. If this handles Windows games like Proton does… pretty big news!

32... that's a sweet split of 16 for the vram and 16 for the ram. Supposing it works well it can completely fix any memory issues with any current games!

This has a nasty side effect barely related to the family features… it killed the Family View pin. The only thing that could coax bloody GeForce Now to sync with Steam cloud instead of killing the session instantly as you quit the game. There’s no other feature that can lock games from running like Family View did, isn’t there?

I’ve got a 90 degree adapter, and made myself a brace of sorts to keep it from wiggling and stressing that precious usb c port… https://www.printables.com/model/292752-steam-deck-usb-c-right-angle-adapter-reinforcement

Not my case, fortunately. Yes, I've got the official dock. Yes, I've moved from 512 to 1tb microSD. Yes I've pushed the 64gb ssd to 256 and today 1tb, but that's it. No screen protectors, skins, case, controllers, power banks.

I'll admit that I don't like screen protectors and skins, already have a badass power bank and multiple gamepads lol... plus for a limited amount of things I've got a 3d printer, so that's another way around the issue.

Steam allows you to stream from another computer you have, GeForce Now is cloud based and depending on the subscription it can have a 4080 equivalent gpu.

Cool stuff!

You know, upon further reflection you’re right. I can see some mini dv cassettes that look like they are just off the factory floors, countered by the cover of my old iPhone 5 that’s sewage colored so that’s probably what comes after yellow, my old G-Shock is yellowing and that’s impressive given it’s dark gray, but the box for the Swatch Beat is crystal clear.

40 is a sweet spot between 30 and 60: feels much more smooth than 30, is much less demanding than 60. And by the way, 30 is acceptable too as long as it’s stable. Sure it will almost certainly feel less smooth than other options, but especially as you say you’re playing on console mostly… chances are you are already used to 30 fps. I, for example, feel the difference between 30 and 60 in Forza Horizon 5 (and the magic 40) but that’s not preventing me from doing well.

The one thing that I’m not sure has been mentioned yet, is that the Steam Deck targets 720p. The screen is small enough for that to work out fine.

Yep, he’s an architect and the choice of nice and transparent cover was purely cosmetic. I don’t think he really cares what other people think, but going from nice to yellowed is another matter.

I have a similar attitude towards colors as you do: if there’s one that costs less, I’m going for it. Once found a gimbal that somehow was half the price in the pink variant: I now have a conversation starter that when folded, thanks to the gentle pink hue and the overall shape, looks like a dildo. The really, really amusing thing in all of this is that my computer is fully white. The case was slightly less expensive in white. The psu was on offer in the white variant. Towards the end of the gpu shortage one of the few available, the least expensive one, was white… it sits under the desk, with the glass panel towards the wall. XD

My understanding (potentially obsolete!) is that the integrated gpu of the Deck isn’t supported by, uh… whatever the AMD equivalent of Cuda was called, also there’s a chance you’d have to install it manually too.

Little known thing, Netflix offers free mobile games to subscribers, and one of them is Into the Breach. https://apps.apple.com/it/app/into-the-breach/id1616542180?

Last time I checked it had no cloud save though, but still it's a great way to decide if you want to buy it or not!

True! But this was near the end of the gpu shortage, no price made sense. Hell, there was a 3060 sold and fulfilled by Amazon that was priced over 4K euro! They didn’t care when I reported the price error. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The main thing I can see being wrong with my idea is that, if enough publishers do it, it’s going to be a pointless badge.

Lately, not really. But I’m in a weird mood: I mostly play on the PS5 (the same thing I’ve been playing for most of the decade), stream an even older game with GeForce Now on my Mac (instead of playing far more recent stuff that has a Mac version), my gaming pc sits idle, and on the Deck obviously I play Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League when I feel like it.

Yeah, weird mood.

Not much. On one hand, I don’t want to get too used to something that isn’t available anywhere else (controllers with back buttons are usually just able to be used as double for the face ones) and on the other hand… my main use is, as I found out, better to be avoided on the Deck. American Truck Simulator. Right now I don’t remember what I set them to, but I certainly have some cruise control options there. But the problem is that, if I’m tired at all, using the Deck if I end up doing a delivery at night, I fall asleep lmao. Learned that I am in fact not capable of shrugging off drowsiness while driving, glad I found out with a game…

Seconded. Between American Truck Simulator and Snowrunner I went through… I think Star Trek Voyager, Charmed and unavoidably something else too. Both games run well on the Deck (ATS has a Linux version: pick the Windows one, it’s far more optimized)

Edit: and Forza Horizon! Can’t forget that.

Like, they’re cool and tempting. But not anywhere near the price of a full unit when I have an already perfectly functioning one! If I could say swap the panel on the Deck (with relatively little effort), I would likely consider buying an upgrade kit but that’s not possible. Same thing with the PS5: if I could just buy the new gpu and replace the old one, I probably would. Never mind that it’s an apu so in this instance it’s really replacing the entire guts of the device, that’s a minor detail XD

The thing with “AI” or better still, ML cores, is that they’re very specialized. Apple hasn’t been slapping ML cores in all of their cpus since the iPhone 8 because they are super powerful, it’s because they can do some things (that the hardware would have no problem doing anyway) by sipping power. You don’t have to think about AI as in the requirements for huge LLM like ChatGPT that require data centers, think about it like a hardware video decoder: This thing could play easily 1080p video! Or, going with raw cpu power rather than hardware decoding, 480p. It’s why you can watch hours of videos on your phone, but try doing anything that hits the cpu and the battery melts.

Edit: my example has been bothering me for days now. I want to clarify to avoid any possible misunderstanding that hardware video decoding has nothing to do with AI, it’s just another very specialized chip.

Yep. The os isn’t tiny, plus there’s all sorts of extra stuff. For example 1gb is gone on every Deck because that’s reserved for swap… and then shader cache sneaks in and depending on the game you might run out of space in no time.

Exactly, that’s why the Deck has as the default option to never shut down no matter how long it’s been inactive

/s