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Valve Claims Steam Deck Can Run Entire Steam Library Within Performance Target

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Valve has recently stated in a recent interview with IGN that they haven't encountered a single Steam game that could not run on the Steam Deck at their performance target. The performance target set by Valve is 30 FPS at the device's native resolution of 1,280 x 800 and according to Valve developers, this was achieved with new and old titles. The Steam Deck is powered by a custom AMD quad-core Zen2 SoC with RDNA2 graphics which is paired with 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory.

Valve said:
All the games we wanted to be playable, it's really the whole Steam library there. We haven't really found something that this device couldn't handle yet,



View at TechPowerUp Main Site
 

Space Lynx

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I wonder if the Steam deck utilizes Freesync? because if so that would be a game changer... full on smooth gaming...
 
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Can run entire library*

* only those games, that Proton supports.**
** but we are working on expanding number of games supported by Proton***
*** we aim to have entire library run on Proton by the end of 2021 ****
**** we are also good at over promising so take it with a grain of Half Life 3
 
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But, can it run Crysis?
 

Space Lynx

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it does not use it

hmm that alone makes me want to cancel my pre-order. no reason for freesync not to work on this... it works just fine in linux these days.

freesync especially on a device where you will get a lot of frame drops on AAA titles would have made this device much nicer...
 

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Ima install Windows on it.
 
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"Valve has recently stated in a recent interview with IGN that they haven't encountered a single Steam game that could not run on the Steam Deck at their performance target. The performance target set by Valve is 30 FPS at the device's native resolution of 1,280 x 800 and according to Valve developers, this was achieved with new and old titles."
I hope the device does turn out to be good for those who want it, but let's not oversell it. The "100% catalogue compatibility" is nonsense for several reasons:-

1. No Freesync means either stutter or tearing because even a stable "locked in" 30fps is unlikely on a low powered 15w (shared between CPU & GPU) chip. Merely looking at Youtube vids of how 15w APU's perform (eg, 4500U), there's going to be a LOT more sporadic frame-rate drops all the way down to 15-25fps even on lowest possible settings (vs 65w APU's that are already 720p/30 limited in the newest titles).

2. Steam certainly doesn't have 100% native Linux support and plenty of "Protoned" games are rated less than Platinum. Many have increased "glitchiness" vs Windows versions whilst others need community mods to function. Eg, Thief 2 is rated Silver on ProtonDB because it works well but needs a community mod (TFix) to do so. How are you going to add this on the device? How to add "annoyance removal" mods to Fallout, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, or WAD files to Doom 1-2 or are you strictly limited to "vanilla"? Can you mod any game at all? What about the performance drop seen in SteamOS vs Windows due to lack of driver optimisations on Linux?

3. Many older games that "technically run" in terms of horsepower are obviously keyboard + mouse centric, lack controller support or will have non-scaling UI's where UI elements become unusably small on tiny 7" screens. Eg, Doom 1-2 plays very well via excellent native Linux source port (GZDoom) but significantly worse as to how its sold and packaged by default (a DOSBox wrapped title complete with no mouse-look or controller support, can't look up or down, etc...), so you have to add it in (as you do with Windows too). But how on this device? Then there's Dragon Age Origins, which works well via Proton on a large monitor but has a non-scaling UI and is definitely keyb + mouse centric so toolbar buttons are absolutely tiny (unusably small) on a 7" screen unless you install mods like FtG UI. So how will games like these work on the device? What about titles that have only partial controller support (in-game controls but not in menu's so you can't select "New Game" with only a controller present...)? Or the thousands of pre-2001 PC titles with no controller support at all? Claiming the "entire Steam library runs well" doesn't pass the smell test at all when 7" Windows tablets have been around for years that could also run Steam yet despite many games being able to technically "run" on it, the device isn't pleasant to play on if they were designed for keyb + mouse and no controller, and all you have is the exact opposite.

What I've really been interested in is a modern 10" Netbook (like those old EeePC's) that were even smaller than Ultra-Portables but priced far more like Chromebooks, but were fully moddable, had upgradable full sized storage drives and if you want a portable controller you can pair an ultra-compact pocket sized BlueTooth one like the SN30 Pro. As someone who plays a lot of classic games, unmoddable "controller only" handheld computers boasting "100% library compatibility" is an obviously false claim though.
 
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Can run entire library*

* only those games, that Proton supports.**
** but we are working on expanding number of games supported by Proton***
*** we aim to have entire library run on Proton by the end of 2021 ****
**** we are also good at over promising so take it with a grain of Half Life 3
You can manually enable Proton on unsupported games and in my experience, it almost always works if anticheat is not involved.

that will just make your games run slower. windows overhead will take more of the limited CPU resources than Steam OS 3.0 will.

Proton overhead will be more noticable than windows, usually. Unsure if maybe AMD is the exception because OSS drivers...
 

Space Lynx

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You can manually enable Proton on unsupported games and in my experience, it almost always works if anticheat is not involved.



Proton overhead will be more noticable than windows, usually. Unsure if maybe AMD is the exception because OSS drivers...

either way, I don't think I am ready to go from 165 fps 1080p 165hz gaming to 30 fps gaming without freesync...

I really really want to give it a go... but that freesync is a deal breaker, and so is the last gen APU... they really should have figured out a way or delayed it by 6 months and made it a 3rd gen APU.
 
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Can run entire library*

* only those games, that Proton supports.**
** but we are working on expanding number of games supported by Proton***
*** we aim to have entire library run on Proton by the end of 2021 ****
**** we are also good at over promising so take it with a grain of Half Life 3
That explains. I am doubtful if this can really run games like CyberPunk 2077 at the target resolution though. How about Microsoft Flight Simulator? If these games were part of what they tested and confirmed that it runs at 800p @ 30FPS, I think there will be a lot of caveats, i.e. very low graphic settings or something along the line.
 
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Well, in the end it doesn't matter because Valve isn't selling to my country.
1. No Freesync means either stutter or tearing because even a stable "locked in" 30fps is unlikely on a low powered 15w (shared between CPU & GPU) chip. Merely looking at Youtube vids of how 15w APU's perform (eg, 4500U), there's going to be a LOT more sporadic frame-rate drops all the way down to 15-25fps even on lowest possible settings (vs 65w APU's that are already 720p/30 limited in the newest titles).
To be fair, the APU is miles ahead in terms of iGPU vs the 4500U. The CPU side of this APU is really weak and likely there's significantly less TDP allocated to ir vs the 4500U(less cores and considerably lower clocks) or other APUs. In addition to significantly higher memory bandwidth, keeping in mind that this is a big reason why some APUs underperform as OEMs might just put single channel memory(with also slower frequencies) to it.

We will have to see how it goes, but I don't think that it will be as bad as you say.
 

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30 FPS is ok with a lot of games but not shooters.
 

Space Lynx

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30 FPS is ok with a lot of games but not shooters.

there are some games like Skyrim, I imagine it will be able to run at 60 fps just fine, and games like that have a 60 fps cap anyway... so in scenarios like that i could see steam deck being good.

but I am not 100% sure it will run skyrim at 60 fps
 
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either way, I don't think I am ready to go from 165 fps 1080p 165hz gaming to 30 fps gaming without freesync...

I really really want to give it a go... but that freesync is a deal breaker, and so is the last gen APU... they really should have figured out a way or delayed it by 6 months and made it a 3rd gen APU.
?! What last gen Apu shipped with 80+ GB per second ddr5lpr memory support?!, The cores are the only old bit.
 
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perhaps I underestimate what it is capable of... hmm. still wish it had freesync.
Me too maybe external monitors are supported, not quite good enough but it is something.
 
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The only title that would pose a problem at 800p is CP2077 and whilst a Vega-based DDR4 APU might struggle, GDDR5 and RDNA2 should manage - though I suspect only on low graphics details.
 
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Hi,
Looks too small to me.
 
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I'm disappointed Freesync/VRR support isn't being talked about or promised. I'd like to know what reasons they could possibly have for omitting it, seems like a no brainer in a device that targets below 60fps.
 
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Can ya plug this in to TV/monitor? usb-c maybe?
 
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Could steamOS run on a desktop PC using similar hardware to the Deck?

Sounds interesting if they're going to fix compatibility with Proton and all steam library.

Looking for a way out of Windows as much as possible.
 
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