|OT| Valve's Steam Deck - OLED refresh shipping to folks

Knurek

OG old coot
Oct 16, 2018
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Then there’s the 120hz display. There is no way it’s ever gonna play a game at 120hz with the specs without having one of ASUS’s proprietary eGPUs clunked on to it.
Actually, I wouldn't mind a 120 Hz display for Deck 2.
60 fps games with BFI would sing on it, any 2D scrolling games on Deck 1 are painful to watch.
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
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Questionable hardware aside, I kinda do hope the Ally becomes a success. Establishing this form factor for PC gaming was Valve's goal, ultimately.
But the device should be well-designed. If people buy this thing thinking the Deck is underpowered in comparison, then have a miserable experience thanks to the battery life and the fact that 120hz isn’t happening on the kinds of games they hope it will, it may cause more harm than good.

I’d hope that more restraint would be shown when making these things. I think a good price plus eGPU support is enough of a selling point on this - we don’t need a 1080p display or 120hz. It’s just setting bad expectations and the wrong sorts of precedent about what these handhelds should be.
 

Mivey

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Sep 20, 2018
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But the device should be well-designed. If people buy this thing thinking the Deck is underpowered in comparison, then have a miserable experience thanks to the battery life and the fact that 120hz isn’t happening on the kinds of games they hope it will, it may cause more harm than good.

I’d hope that more restraint would be shown when making these things. I think a good price plus eGPU support is enough of a selling point on this - we don’t need a 1080p display or 120hz. It’s just setting bad expectations and the wrong sorts of precedent about what these handhelds should be.
That's the job of good reviews. You'll know pretty quickly what games it can play, with what power draw and thus can conclude what battery life to expect. Maybe for some this will be something they mostly use to replace a lower-end gaming laptop and use it stationary most of the time and with only occasional use as a handheld that's not plugged in.
 

yuraya

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May 4, 2019
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A 120hz display and 1080p screen may seem like a giant waste...but at the end of the day its better to have the option than not.

There are so many indie games on Steam that can easily push 120fps with this set up. Forget the 1080p...I would just play everything at 720p regardless. But that 120fps option is massive.

Just take Rogue Legacy 2 from last year as an example.

With the Deck I played it at locked 60fps with 4-5hrs of battery life.

With the Ally I would be able to play it 120fps with lets say 2-3hrs of battery life. And lets be real 2-3hrs gaming a day is plenty of time before you can start charging it again. The smoother experience will always be worth it. And again its all about having the option.

There is a lot of overhead on the Deck today and you can't really make use of it in handheld mode. And its not just indie games either its any old game pre 2014 that would be able to push 120fps assuming they weren't capped. A 120hz display is gonna be a must for the Deck 2 so I hope Valve doesn't cheapen out in favor of cost cutting or wtvr. I don't really care about the display resolution and I'm not familiar with current battery tech. But unless some big improvement is coming on the horizon its probably just better to leave it 720p for the Deck 2. Unless Valve is able to find millions of 900p display somewhere ofc. I would love to see how the battery life would do with that.

But yea I'm not gonna buy the Ally. Its probably gonna be at least like 700$ after tax and its just too much. Still I'm excited to see the benchmarks with the Ally and I hope people turn down the rez to 900p to see how it performs with the battery life. It might just be a good compromise/solution to not have the battery life die too quickly.
 
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Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
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You don't release that shit before July Valve !
I have... a GPU to pay :grimacing-face:

...
Before anyone conclude otherwise, I'm joking and know that it's not a Deck 2 or even a revision yet.
 
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Pixieking

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Dec 7, 2018
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Looking at getting a Deck, but kicking myself I missed the birthday discount. When’s the next major sale? Summer? Not sure if I want to cling to the hope that there’s a discount on it again if I’m waiting that long.
 
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Knurek

OG old coot
Oct 16, 2018
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Looking at getting a Deck, but kicking myself I missed the birthday discount. When’s the next major sale? Summer? Not sure if I want to cling to the hope that there’s a discount on it again if I’m waiting that long.
I wouldn't count on Deck being discounted each major sale if I were you.
 

Arc

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Sep 19, 2020
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If the leaked ROG Ally price (699 for the "Z1 Extreme" model) is correct, that's very competitive and lower than I expected.

Still not sold on the ergonomics or the battery life impact of the HW choices, but that's a nice price.
It's an extremely competitive price. I wonder if Valve will respond in any meaningful way, such as a Deck price cut.
 

Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
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It's an extremely competitive price. I wonder if Valve will respond in any meaningful way, such as a Deck price cut.
Doubt, if anything the best way for them to compete would be to expand into more regions with a combined announcement between SteamOS 3.6, SteamOS standalone release AND the region expansion.

Deck's price I think it's quite perfect so not really need to lower it down too often as it would create false expectations and perception of the main price.
 

Durante

I <3 Pixels
Oct 21, 2018
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I think they won't reduce the entry-level price (most likely by far the hardest to hit), and they probably don't have enough of an incentive to reduce the price of the higher-end models either. I could potentially see the latter happening though, but not by much. Perhaps we are also more likely to see a moderate discount in future Steam sales if there is more viable competition.

But there isn't really for the base model, and it's also the one which is at best barely profitable.
 

Mivey

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Sep 20, 2018
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I wonder if Valve really sees this as "competition". They aren't in the business of making money from selling hardware. They are in the business of being the place where you buy the games to play on whatever hardware you may have. Even with Gamepass, and other services, a big chunk of Ally owners will still want to play their Steam games on there.
I guess having more SteamOS users is also a long term goal, since it ensures that Steam is less dependant on Windows as a platform. To make that happen they would need to work on making Steam OS easily available on more devices, though.
 

Amzin

No one beats me 17 times in a row!
Dec 5, 2018
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The other thing about making it a console-game-focused Windows device is a number of those games appear to run better on Linux than on Windows nowadays thanks to questionable optimization and engine wonkery.

I'd never buy a PC handheld without trackpads after using the Steam deck, and honestly the battery life is my only complaint so far (performance wise if you sacrifice the battery you can have great graphics on the screen), so while options are nice I just don't see the Ally being a great one for the masses.
 

Spookyfriend

Junior Member
Jan 27, 2019
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I purchase the steam deck today and seller help me install window for dual boot
After I install a game got the following error when I boot up my deck
How do I fix this? I am still able to boot into Steam OS if I press on Volume Up and power button


Pasteboard - Uploaded Image
 

Phoenix RISING

A phoenix always RISES!
Apr 23, 2019
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www.geeksundergrace.com
When the Deck has so much influence on the industry that MICROSOFT wants in on your platform.

My goodness!



I just came in here to say that I now have remote play from my PS5 to my Deck using Chiaki or something like that. And I loaded EmuDeck, but I have not uploaded any bios or roms yet. That sounds time consuming, dragging and dropping from USB to each folder.


Really, just wanna play some Mario Galaxy (2) on Dolphin, but I have not downloaded any ROMS in like, 10 years and wouldn't even know where to find that kind of stuff anymore.

And I'm not gonna be arsed to dust off my copies of Mario Galaxy and trying to rip them. Those days are behind me.
 

Amzin

No one beats me 17 times in a row!
Dec 5, 2018
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I purchase the steam deck today and seller help me install window for dual boot
After I install a game got the following error when I boot up my deck
How do I fix this? I am still able to boot into Steam OS if I press on Volume Up and power button


Pasteboard - Uploaded Image
You could try just selecting the "repair" option (you'd have to connect a USB keyboard I assume), but if you really want to get a Windows experience out of it you'd probably be best off getting into a more technical dedicated forum because Windows is going to be janky and buggy on the Deck until there's official support for it. Many games run faster or at least as fast in Linux/Proton anyway at the moment so it depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

There is a dedicated subreddit for it: r/WindowsOnDeck

Keep in mind that people trying to use Windows on Deck is probably less than 1% so there are going to be way fewer resources
 

LEANIJA

MetaMember
May 5, 2019
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When the Deck has so much influence on the industry that MICROSOFT wants in on your platform.

My goodness!
Im note sure if this was adressed in this thread (I think it was mostly discussed in the main Steam thread): this report is a bit misleading.
Since this isnt in active development. It was a hackathon project that never went anywhere, according to the dev.

He posted on Reddit:

I started this hackathon project and it didn’t go much of anywhere, but this article uses wording to make it seem like it’s something under development. Problem is - We just didn’t have the right engineers to do a lot of what we wanted to do in the short hackathon project timeframe. Maybe this odd article can help me pitch this to Microsoft again. Phil Spencer was very nice and tried to drive me to some people that could help, but everyone was tied-up at the time.

The goals would be to smooth over hardware issues (real controller drivers, better support for that odd portrait screen, etc), a gaming shell and tools to get you in and out of all games quickly (regardless of the store), and other refinements to areas of Windows that still don’t perform very well on a screen this size.
Source & more: reddit
 

FunnyJay

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Apr 6, 2019
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Yesterday I felt like continuing my Pathfinder: Kingmaker playthrough, and I tried installing it to the Deck!

Now this feels like a game that was made for the Deck!
The gamepad controls worked excellent!
I love when developers go the extra mile and both add specific gamepad controls AND a specific gamepad UI to a game!
 

Pixieking

MetaMember
Dec 7, 2018
82
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Is there a better site than ProtonDB for Deck specific settings? It seems a bit hit-and-miss on whether users there post TDP/FPS/graphics options. :/

Edit: Also, yes, finally got one. One of the second-hand stores here had the highest spec model for less than the Steam Store, and with a 12 month warranty, so had to bite. :D
 
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yuraya

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May 4, 2019
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Had my Deck for nearly a year and finally decided to get into emulation on it. Mostly just messed around with GBA stuff on it for now.

But I gotta say after going into a little rabbit hole on Deck emulation via Youtube.... yea its kind of mindblowing how good this thing is for emulation. Everything from Switch to PS3. And Emudeck etc. Even 360 emulation is getting impressive results. Seems like many apps are constantly updated and things are improving. Also love how holding start just gets you into desktop/gaming modes controls.

I did a lot of emulation on a samsung tablet buying attachments n all not that long ago. That was really the only time I did in a handheld/mobile way. But with the Deck its such an impressive leap as this is an actual gaming device unlike tablets. The convenience and overall experience leap is pretty big lol. Like jumping several generations ahead.
 

thekeats1999

MetaMember
Dec 10, 2018
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So, had my Deck for a while now and just starting to hit an issue. I only have 4.53gb free on the main drive. I have the entry level model (still need to get a new ssd and do the swap over) so install everything on the SD card instead. Other than the OS there should only be the shader cache on there. I only have indie games on there and nothing that should need a large shader cache. So I am guessing it's not clearing all the caches when I uninstall a game. So my guess is the cache isn't clearing properly?!? Anybody have any suggestions.

I have another question that I am hoping is a bit easier. How do I install non-steam games. I am talking non launcher games that have an installation process. Things like holocure I can do, but struggling with things like VN's.
 
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MomoVideo

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So, had my Deck for a while now and just starting to hit an issue. I only have 4.53gb free on the main drive. I have the entry level model (still need to get a new ssd and do the swap over) so install everything on the SD card instead. Other than the OS there should only be the shader cache on there. I only have indie games on there and nothing that should need a large shader cache. So I am guessing it's not clearing all the caches when I uninstall a game. So my guess is the cache isn't clearing properly?!? Anybody have any suggestions.

I have another question that I am hoping is a bit easier. How do I install non-steam games. I am talking non launcher games that have an installation process. Things like holocure I can do, but struggling with things like VN's.
IIRC there is an issue where shader caches were not deleted when uninstalling games. You need to delete them manually.
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
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I decided to play Shadow of Valentia (Citra) and Xenoblade 2 (Ryujinx) on Deck. I was fed up with playing at the desk.
For added fun I thought it would be nice to set up syncthing.
2 hours later, nothing works and Ryujinx now crash.

Should have known.
 

Pixieking

MetaMember
Dec 7, 2018
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How does Tears of the Kingdom run on Deck? Is there a quick and easy place to find config info? Or does anyone have some settings to share?
 
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FunnyJay

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I would just like to praise the deck which manages to stay whisper quiet when playing certain games (example: State of Decay 2) that always causes both my desktop and laptop's fans to go haywire in an attempt to cool down.

It's such a marvelous piece of hardware!
 

Alexandros

Every game should be turn based
Nov 4, 2018
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I would just like to praise the deck which manages to stay whisper quiet when playing certain games (example: State of Decay 2) that always causes both my desktop and laptop's fans to go haywire in an attempt to cool down.

It's such a marvelous piece of hardware!
It really is. I can't wait for Steam Deck 2, that is going to kick all sorts of ass.
 

Arc

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Sep 19, 2020
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I've barely touched my Deck since Zelda came out. However I've got a slate of RPGs to play on it in the future.

It really is. I can't wait for Steam Deck 2, that is going to kick all sorts of ass.
I only want a spec bump, OLED screen and better game compatibility. Battery technology is what it is and you can't expect much unless there is a miracle breakthrough in the future.
 

TheTrain

MetaMember
Jun 11, 2019
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Any chance Valve will release Steam OS 3.5 preview at the start of summer sales? I can't wait to play around HDR in Dock, a more vibrant screen and ray tracing and god knows what else they're cooking
 

Alexandros

Every game should be turn based
Nov 4, 2018
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Any chance Valve will release Steam OS 3.5 preview at the start of summer sales? I can't wait to play around HDR in Dock, a more vibrant screen and ray tracing and god knows what else they're cooking
It would seem more prudent to do that after the sale. There may be bugs that stop people from playing the games they bought during the sale.
 
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