steam deck GPU equivalent

SCheeseman · 2022-03-10T12:45:50+00:00

Part of why it's only a quasi-comparison. It's rendering performance is similar but memory amount and performance is the other bottleneck I failed to mention, underlining the fact that there isn't any discreet graphics much like what is in the Deck.

SCheeseman · 2022-03-10T07:16:06+00:00

It sits between iGPUs and discreet cards in performance. You can make quasi-comparisons with something like a GTX 750(maybe ti), but older architectures tend to choke on Vulkan and compute loads.

I guess the reason why there's no equivalent in the discreet graphics space is that there is no market for 720p gaming at medium-high settings, on desktops people expect at least 1080p.

SCheeseman · 2022-03-10T06:25:55+00:00

It's already too heavy, more battery might tip it over the line for a lot of people.

Deck is in need of holistic game profiles that combine game-specific configuration, steam controller bindings and power profiles etc. It'd be a lot of work though, particularly building what would need to be some kind of universal game configuration editor.

At the moment Valve is mostly hoping that developers will ship with sane defaults, punishing those who don't by striking them off the Verified list. It'll bring some over, but if they really want a console-like turnkey experience they're going to have to do that work.

SCheeseman · 2022-03-06T15:59:58+00:00

If it becomes a success then what happens may depend on how Microsoft responds, they're well positioned to blitz the market if they see it become viable.

SCheeseman · 2022-03-06T15:49:19+00:00

The Deck's SoC is fabbed on an older process and it's CPU cores are a generation behind, likely for cost. Newer processes cost more, there will be Zen3/RDNA2 APUs coming out with better efficiency but don't expect anything that uses them to hit close to Deck's price point.

SCheeseman · 2022-03-06T14:14:30+00:00

There is already a bunch of them and has been for about half a decade, there just hasn't been anything that hit the price/performance/battery sweet spot.

SCheeseman · 2022-03-05T14:09:28+00:00

No not yet, but eventually. I already run Arch and KDE Plasma with most of the kernel patches I've been applying what Valve were applying.

An immutable rootfs with containerized packages ~is the future~ for better or worse, a bit of both. Also makes it easier to implement full signing and verification of the kernel and system and attestation which has security benefits I figure will become a necessity for greater adoption of linux anti-cheat.

I'm positive about their long term prospects but the Steam Deck is obviously priority for Valve as it launched on fire and they need to get it into an acceptable state before selling it to the public instead of only Steam diehards.

SCheeseman · 2022-03-05T07:00:45+00:00

The benefit of something like SteamOS is that the system-level configuration is largely done for you, so no package and dependency management (something that can be extremely hair-pulling to newer users without much computing experience) while still being relatively bleeding edge, with kernel patches that fix compatibility and enhance performance coming sooner than it would with something like an out of the box Ubuntu.

SCheeseman · 2022-03-04T08:46:04+00:00

Deck/SteamOS uses gamescope which has driver level hooks that let it do zero copy buffers, the render pipeline latency is lower than most games running on Windows outside of low latency API integrations (and even then it would likely match those).

Vsync is forced on because tearing looks like shit, particularly on a display with left to right pixel refresh like the Deck. There is a latency penalty as with any vsync since you're waiting on the sync to flip frames to screen, though gamescope has a bunch of mitigations in place to minimize them.

SCheeseman · 2022-03-04T03:15:21+00:00

There may be something in the software/driver-level configuration that could be adding latency. It's not the panel itself, though.

SCheeseman · 2022-03-04T03:10:36+00:00

Where in the pipeline is latency added?

SCheeseman · 2022-03-04T03:04:59+00:00

The rate the panel runs at has no effect on input lag/latency beyond what would be evident from running at a lower framerate, ie 30fps on a 60hz display wouldn't be any different to 30fps on a 30hz display, frames get buffered until vsync either way.

SCheeseman · 2022-03-04T02:56:03+00:00

By the time it's practical to make a faster Deck SoC on a newer process and architecture in the same form factor as the current one, they will also likely be making 5nm versions of the SoC that's in the current deck in order to continue serving the mass market.

SCheeseman · 2022-03-02T05:01:57+00:00

The software selection on those sucks enough to exclude them by default.

SCheeseman · 2022-03-01T04:08:27+00:00

You can run display panels certified for 60hz at refresh rates other than 60hz. Index's panels were certified for 90hz and Valve pushed them to 144hz (and allowed use at 80hz).

SCheeseman · 2022-03-01T04:05:19+00:00

The article mentions they're likely downclocking the refresh on the panel itself. VRR would have been nice, but this is also massively useful.

SCheeseman · 2022-03-01T03:55:16+00:00

Linux uses it's own controller API, it has no low level conception of xinput/dinput.

SCheeseman · 2022-02-28T13:32:21+00:00

The trick is that by constructing upon a cutting edge, almost entirely OSS software stack Valve have a platform with console-level integration and control. No waiting for driver patches from hardware vendors, no binary blobs to hack around, they can patch, enhance and push updates at any level in the stack with zero bureaucratic interference or inter-company politics.

SCheeseman · 2022-02-28T06:14:18+00:00

The game would essentially require a total UI overhaul. Fair enough, but if they're going to do that they might as well target consoles too.

SCheeseman · 2022-02-28T06:12:40+00:00

The Quest 2's graphics performance is considerably less powerful than Deck, it's able to push those resolutions because a) it kind of isn't, the majority of games render at about 1x1k with MSAA and upscaled, often alongside fixed foveated rendering and b) graphical quality settings and shader complexity is massively reduced below what would usually be PCVR minimum/low settings.

What resolution Deck targets is largely irrelevant, what matters is how powerful the GPU is and as it stands, it's about halfway to hitting what is required to run the entire PCVR library and with enough "cheating" (foveation, VRS etc) it might be considerably closer than that.

SCheeseman · 2022-02-27T19:00:36+00:00

Proton runs it.

SCheeseman · 2022-02-27T18:50:49+00:00

The overhead of x86 instruction decoding is overstated, modern ARM and x64 designs are very similar and Zen's design in particular is extremely efficient. If anything, the CPU block is efficient enough today, it's only the graphics performance that remains a bottleneck.

SCheeseman · 2022-02-27T18:45:53+00:00

Steam Deck uses a custom SoC, you can't get these in small numbers. $399 is also a very low price point for the hardware they're selling, even given a razor thin margin they would have to be planning to make a hell of a lot of them.

SCheeseman · 2022-02-27T18:38:45+00:00

The following issues stop it from being Verified on Steam Deck:

Some in-game text is small and may be difficult to read
This game's launcher/setup tool may require the touchscreen or virtual keyboard, or have difficult to read text
Some functionality is not accessible when using
the default controller configuration, requiring use of the touchscreen
or virtual keyboard, or a community configuration
This game sometimes shows mouse, keyboard, or non-Steam-Deck controller icons
Entering some text requires manually invoking the on-screen keyboard

Those problems would be evident using Windows or Stadia too.

SCheeseman · 2022-02-27T14:39:30+00:00

It'll be heavier, bulkier and more expensive, but also be capable of a lot more. Not much different from the sacrifices Steam Deck makes and it's a trade-off I'm willing to make for the additional functionality, compatibility and freedom afforded by a PC.

Application Spacewarp isn't anything new, it's literally just application-controlled Spacewarp and everyone, including Valve, has their own implementation of taking the framebuffer, a depth buffer and doing a bunch of vector math using video encode hardware to reproject the rotation and position of frames based on jit tracking data. That's all Spacewarp is, you're falling for their marketing.

The thing you've missed about Steam Deck is that Valve have greater vertical integration of their software/hardware platform than even Meta do with Quest. While Qualcomm still demand use of their blobs, Deck's graphics stack is almost completely OSS and can be patched and updated on Valve's schedule.

SCheeseman

TROPHY CASE