Valve Announces Steam Deck As Portable SteamOS + AMD Powered Portable PC

[Mike Frett]

As a pessimist I must tell you, like the steam console, this will have low sales and people will just install dirty windows. If I had made this, it would've been using an ARM CPU as we all know it's the future. I appreciate Valve trying though they are beating a dead horse.

[Vistaus]

What I find most interesting is that it will ship with Plasma. I thought all the big ones only cared about GNOME “standard desktop”, according to 144Hz and a few other fanboys around here.

[grigi]

Yup, this is probably number #1 on the charts of the top idiotic things system integraters can do with PC's, they ship it with a single stick of RAM. Even if you have a low amount of ram like a single 8 gig stick its always better to instead ship 2 4 gig sticks.

This was a 32G system.

[Linuxxx]

Another interesting notion that just occured to me out of nowhere is the assumption that, since the device won't be locked down (thanks Valve!), I'm pretty sure there will be quite a few diehard Linux-loathing people who plan to buy the Steam Deck just to install Windows on it straight away, only then to find out that AMD's very own Windows GPU drivers are so bad that Linux's non-official RADV Mesa driver will ensure that games will actually perform a whole lot better with SteamOS on this device!

Exciting times ahead indeed!

[Paradigm Shifter]

To make abuse of the trading card system for profit more difficult and costly, Steam locks you at level 0 until you pair up a credit card and have sent them at least $5.

Ah, I see. Thanks. While I vaguely recall this being mentioned in the past, I basically sublimated it as I pay little to no attention to my "level" or trading cards, or whathaveyou, beyond knowing they are there, and that I don't care about them.

[Citan]

Ooohh FUCKING YEAAAAAH!

I had been saving to buy a full new computer when AD 5000 APU are finally available... But I'm definitely gonna order one of those.
After all that more or less subtle work on improving the fundamentals of gaming APIs AND sponsoring development of tools alleviating the pain of making a game "portable" when it was not cross platform, Valve is finally releasing its nuclear spearhead.

This will create a big air gap to game developers to consider again Linux as a target platform. Not now. Not in one year. In two years, when this peripheral has met with success proving there is an audience in "Linux gaming".

[AmericanLocomotive]

5%? You mean less than 1%. External GPU docks are an extreme niche - virtually nobody uses them. Designing a portable handheld gaming system around the ability to use a eGPU dock would be an instant failure. It just needs to be work well enough the way it is to be a successful "portable".

At the very aggressive $399 price point, this thing blows basically everything else out of the water. There isn't a laptop out there that will come close to the features or performance at the price. The custom VanGogh APU will provide plenty of performance, especially since it's going to be running quad-channel LPDDR5 with an RDNA2 GPU. RDNA2 as it sits offers 20-30% higher performance at given clock-rate compared to GCN and coupled with the quad-channel LPDDR5, it will have around 88GB/s of memory bandwidth to work with.

It will be completely adequate for 720p gaming, and plugging into a TV will just result in up-scaling. It's not meant to be a 4k portable powerhouse.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

no. I'm stuck on the fact that a piece of hardware is going to preform in real world scenarios in the same ballpark as a piece of hardware from 2015 and yet offering no real incentive other than a different library of games. the steam deck is the worst parts about consoles with little of the good. in comparing to the switch, which is a direct competitor in terms of price, and size.

I think you underestimate how big of an incentive that different library of games is. Nintendo's first party games tend to be excellent. For basically everything else, I'd rather own it on Steam.

I wouldn't consider buying this without egpu support. the apu is simply to weak gpu wise for modern TVs many of which you can get 4k for cheap. and docking it IS an advertised usecase. and comparing to switch isn't even fair considering the age of the two systems.

but overall, it is disappointing to see valve not take it to where it could have been I understand using the APU, I do not understand lack of egpu support, even if it would be a small price hike, even if it was only available on the higher end models.

Who in the actual hell wants to hook up a big honking eGPU to a portable console, even when docked? This must amount to < 5% of the target market. Again, sometimes the things we want are super niche and make zero sense from a business perspective, but it's hard to see that because they would be cool as hell to ourselves.

Also, if this even reasonably successful it will build momentum for future iterations, or even a line of devices, including some higher end and more expensive ones that will probably have all the things you want. Not to mention it's a nice way to directly fund Valve's investment in Linux gaming, when nobody else seems to give a damn.

[ssokolow]

I've not investigated, but I thought Steam Level is dependent on Achievements, trading cards, etc. rather than purchases. I've certainly not seen my Steam Level rise with purchases (as much as I dislike DRM in general, Disgaea on the PC is too tempting to resist )...

The Steam Deck could be an interesting (and much more flexible) replacement for my much-loved (but sadly abandoned-by-Sony) PS Vita.

But the only one worth buying is the top end model.

To make abuse of the trading card system for profit more difficult and costly, Steam locks you at level 0 until you pair up a credit card and have sent them at least $5.

[ssokolow]

If you were never going to buy it, then being locked out doesn't really matter, does it?

It's a nifty piece of hardware. If it's as unlocked as they claim, I'd love to slap some Steam-free Linux on it and load it up with a launcher of my choice and some of my 1967 GOG games, however many more Humble Bundle games, Retrode2/INLRetro/etc. dumps of carts and console CDs and DVDs I own, etc.

It'd certainly be faster and more compatible than the Pandora I currently use... though I'm still interested in getting a Pyra for non-gaming once the early adopters have had a chance to shake the bugs out so I can have a physical keyboard on the go.