PieFedIs the Steam Deck getting outdated soon? Should I wait for the next gen?
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cloudless
Is the Steam Deck performance struggling with new AAA games? Should I be concerned buying a Steam Deck now?
I'm guessing/hoping not because most game developers would optimise the games for the Switch 2 and Xbox Series S which have similar performances as the Deck.
I think 30 fps (consistent) is perfectly fine, and I don't mind medium details.
It depends, a lot of modern AAA games run fine but a good amount of them are very unoptimized and run poorly on the Deck.
Valve said not to expect a hardware refresh soon since newer chips are more expensive and not that much faster, just look at the handheld PCs selling for ~$900 that are only 25% faster.
There are plenty of benchmarks online so you can check if the games you want will work properly or not.
Yeah there isnt anything of the same size with significantly more power afaik. Gotta go with a laptop then if u need the power.
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If you remote play from the laptop that you have now the performance will be better than playing directly from the deck, but the noise can be in another room. And since the deck isn't doing much compute, battery life should be great too. And you can stream at the Deck's native resolution so your fps will be higher than your laptop's display (assuming that is full hd)
me, who bought the steam deck primarily to play roms of games from 30 years ago: never had a problem so far.
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Even if a new AAA comes out that you’re eagerly wanting to play and the performance may not be great on Steam Deck, don’t forget about all the hundreds of games you also love that can be played on Steam Deck. Or the ROMs from nostalgic consoles that you love.
If you have a gaming solution now and you’re not ready to commit, just wait for the inevitable next gen Deck as you’ll be happier that way. Of course we’ll never know when it is coming.
Get a device now and play the games you want? Or wait ~2 years and get the next gen so you can play some games better?
Only you can make that informed decision that works best for you. Best of luck!
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Sure thing. I also read more comments and saw you have a laptop and stream games to a tablet.
For my use case, I have a desktop PC for when I want to play at high fidelity and have serious time to sit down and game. The Steam Deck I have is for the free moments of gaming time I can get. I can be on the couch and game. Sit on my porch during a break and game for a bit. I can click the button to sleep the console and pick up in two days from right where I left off - either Steam games or ROMs.
A Steam Deck isn’t cheap so definitely weigh your options and find out what works best for you. If you feel you want the performance uplift and can just wait, then put your laptop in another room so you won’t hear it and steam it to a tablet with a controller in your hands or something. That’ll give you a great experience, too. Then you can get Deck 2 and feel happier with your decision.
If money isn’t as much of a concern, freaking get it now lol.
Same, the last roughly 40 hours of my gameplay on the Deck have been PS1/2 and Xbox games, with a few hours of New Vegas sprinkled in.
Get a Steam Deck OLED. Just do it. It is currently and will remain for a very long time a very capable device.
I actually kinda HOPE they don't release a new generation for a good long while, so devs have some pressure to target it for new games, which also means that those new games will remain playable on other older hardware as well.
It did that on day 1. It's a mobile device. You have to temper your expectations.
The XBOX is not going to have similar performance. The Nintendo is actually quite a bit more performant. But more importantly the games on these devices are going to be specifically designed and optimized to run on a specific piece of hardware.
It obviously depends on the game but newer AAA titles are going to struggle to hit 30FPS on 800p/low.
If you want something with more performance you should get the Legion Go (non S) or Ally X and run Bazzite on it.
Valve is very quiet about these things. I don't think anyone saw the OLED model coming. There were no leaks or rumors. Just boom, one day there it was. So probably no one knows and anyone who says they do is probably lying.
My crystal ball says buy one now.
I feel like people have gotten Stockholm syndrome from phones with new generations every year.
Current hardware still works fine. If you have frame troubles, lower settings and mess with your battery/performance profiles.
Do not solve the problem by offering to give companies another 500 of your dollars.
(If you’re playing your Deck at home and have a beefy PC, though, you can always stream from your PC to your deck for better performance! On most networks, there’s virtually 0 latency! Highly recommend.)
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Ohh. My bad.
Tech influencer folks predict a 2026 drop for the second revision, so if you can wait that long (or trust these predictions they’re making) I’d wait.
Is the Deck going to be your first / primary gaming device?
I got my Deck primarily for indie games, 10-30 year old games, or other generally “light” / casual games to play on the go or while watching a show with my partner.
For more demanding games, I’ll run them on my gaming PC and stream to my Deck via Sunshine / Moonlight / Moondeck. This has the added benefit of very low power consumption, meaning that instead of a ~2 hour battery life I get 6 or more.
The added benefit here is that a lot of games seem to be shipping increasingly unoptimized. Things that might have finnicky performance on my 3840 x 1600 monitor run silky smooth when I squish them down to 1920 x 1080 to stream to the Deck, usually with maxed out settings.
In the context of how I’m using it, Steam Deck is probably never going to be obsolete.
If you’re considering it as your primary device and primarily want to play modern AAA games, you should probably be spending at least 2-3x as much on a laptop or desktop. For that use case, Steam Deck is more appropriate as a companion device.
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Well, in that case just be prepared for certain games to be unsupported or run very poorly.
Anything with kernel level anti cheat won’t be available to you.
Cloud gaming is definitely a good way to supplement :)
The Steam Deck runs games at PS4-level graphics fairly well. It will definitely struggle with newer AAA games if they don't have graphics options low enough for the Deck.
If you are looking for an affordable device to play AAA games well on with no issues, get a ps5.
If you are looking for a hand held to play indie titles and the plethora of older games available I'd go for the steam deck.
I think it'll be a while until we get a hand held experience like the steam deck but with AAA capable hardware.
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Its relatively "low" resolution really helps it achieve better fps, but the trend of not optimizing and praying FSR does it good enough may be an issue.
I've never tried the really big titles on it, so I can't say reliably, I'm afraid.
Its a complicated answer. It can play probably most modern AAA games. But it likely won't be a great experience and I can only describe it as playable.
If you want a very good experience with the steam deck, then use it for mid spec games or less and it'll be perfect and have good battery life.
If you want more then maybe try another hand held, or a console.
In the end the device you play your games on needs to do one thing well, and that's to play the games you WANT to play.
That will never happen. Physically larger devices are always going to be more performant. And AAA titles will just increase the demands of games accordingly.
Waiting on a next generation portable Linux machine is a win win situation. Unless you die in the next year.
How useable is the steam deck during nuclear winter ?
Hmmm...
Depends on Steam DRM, access to electricity, and concentration of radiation.
Should be quite usable in ideal conditions after the nukes go off.
My brother has a Lenovo Legion Go (the original one, not the S). I am definitely in envy of the big display, the higher refresh rate, and the more powerful chip. However it's a bit ehh in terms of ergonomics. It also runs windows but that's irrelevant because you can install steamOS.
There's a good chance I'll get a Legion Go next and stick steamOS on it unless we see a steam deck 2 soon that's bigger and punchier. I know we all love our retro and indie games, but it is nice to be able to play more demanding games from time to time.
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Are there electronic goods on the market that aren't, in some part, made in China?
There's a vast different between "a part made in China" and "made by Chinese companies".
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I didn't think my question was political, but rather about logistics. I just don't know of any video game console, or electronics manufacturer in general, that is promising that none of their components are made in China.
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Oh, sorry, I conflated those two things. So, if I'm understanding this right, you don't mind if the components were made in China or purchased from Chinese companies, but the seller of the final product cannot be a Chinese company? That's a far easier rule to satisfy.
I wouldn't be concerned.
We're at a point in portable technology where increased performance means decreased battery life and makes the system need to be larger and less comfortable to hold (makes it release more heat, which has to go somewhere).
I do not believe there is enough demand to expect a larger, hotter, SteamDeck with poorer battery life to be released soon, or maybe ever.
It works imho best for games in the 2014-2018 time range. Newer games work fine but can run at 30-40 fps. The UE5 Games I have tested run only with a lot of upscale (lords of the falling in particular) but still playable.
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It's not necessarily UE5 that has issues with the Steam Deck, but what they do with it. For example, Clair Obscur plays well on Steam Deck, but I wouldn't even try to play Ark Survival Ascended.
Oblivion remastered runs perfectly fine on my steam deck.
Here is my opinion. I absolutely love playing oblivion on my gaming laptop with RTX4080. It looks gorgeous and so do a lot of games.
That said, I'd rather play on the deck with somewhat less graphics and chill on the couch after a long day of work. I just love the portability. Performance is okay for most games (it even plays oblivion okayish with reasonable graphics). A lot of games are optimized pretty well for it.
I just see it as an open source switch you can do and play anything you like on. I have tried windows on it too but personally it has no benefit for me so I use steamOS.
Games I play on it:
Oblivion remastered
Borderlands 3
Risk of Rain 2
Elden Ring
GTA V
I also stream from my PlayStation 5 to my deck with chiaki4deck.
FYI- you can also stream from your laptop to the Deck. Technically you can do it on a per-game basis through Steam (which you may have already noticed), but I find it's even better to install Steam Link as a non-Steam game, similar to what you probably did with Chiaki. As long as you have a good local network it's great and uses way less of the Deck's power.
I have no idea why Valve hasn't added Steam Link to the Steam store. That would make things so much easier, and you get way more settings and fewer bugs that way than doing the per-game streaming option.
Check out out Sunshine / Moonlight and Moondeck if you haven’t already
Is there a reason to use those over Steam Link?
I have a AMD cards in all my desktops, so Moonlight is out. I could never even get Sunshine to run properly on my desktop, let alone stream.
Steam Link just... Works. It's an official Valve thing. There's a ton of options to dial things in or work around weird issues, but for the defaults are usually fine. It handles non-Steam games just fine. All sorts of resolutions and refresh rates- I stream to my 4k TV in my living room, my 1080p tablet, various phones, and the Deck. My only complaint about Steam Link is that, for some bizarre reason, it's not on the steam store. It would be a lot easier to just install it from the store in Gaming mode on the Deck, with a default controller profile. The picture is good, the latency is fine unless I'm on wi-fi and getting really far away from my router b
For me, the visual fidelity is better and I found it to be a lot more stable overall, particularly in the framerate / latency department. This was the case over the local network but became even more pronounced when I played from another city.
Back when I first set it up, Steam Link didn’t have HDR Support so doing regular navigation on my desktop looked all washed out and awful.
Moonlight is the client side, it runs on the Steam Deck that is AMD based. Sunshine is what runs on the host - you need both.
MoonDeck is a Decky Loader plugin that lets you run your stream for each game by its appid, letting you keep your controller layouts in order. Normally, you’d be launching Moonlight and then the stream, which means you’d have to have your controller layout for each game associated with the Moonlight appod and then have to manually switch between them depending on what you’re playing.
It’s certainly more involved than the simplicity of running Steam Link, but for me the benefits were well worth it.
Decks went from GDPWin with intel HD 615 integrated graphics, running desktop windows in 2016 (we were amazed it could run 2011's Arkham City 25 fps low (definitely playable! lmao)) to Steam Deck where people are still reasonably posting about it having console parity.
RE "outdated soon": this is a $350 handheld x86 computer with an APU powerful enough to drive complex 3d games at 720p. People are going to be buying Steam Decks until they stop making them. Capability and performance per $$ is extremely good for numerous use cases, including people who are gaming like OP.
RE devs optimizing for SD/Switch2/XBS: i hope OP is right? definitely where non-AAA studios are going to be aiming, but AAA studios have weird corpo masters who rarely operate in ways that would make sense to cool people.
As the Steam Deck isn’t new and is apparently struggling with some AAÀs, that’s why I got a used Steam Deck 2 months ago to run alongside my PS5.
I really don’t regret the move as I can play every future AAA I could want on the Playstation and so many games (including older AAÀs) on the Steam Deck.
For me it’s the perfect combo at under 1000.-(around 1000$).
I don't play retro games. I have the OLED. I don't feel like it's outdated. I don't care about FPS and I play some AAA games.
If you aren't too sensitive to a bit of input lag, you could keep your laptop around and stream the more demanding games over steam link. Streaming these demanding games will also significantly increase battery life, but I don't think it will work away from home.
Most games run quite well if you drop the settings (outside of those using intrusive anticheat), and it runs lighter games very well.
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Is it the kind you can open up and clean the fans?
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Ah, bad luck
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I meant bad luck that you bought a machine with loud fans generally!
That's a pretty personal opinion but I'm a Switch owner and if there is one thing I don't miss on it, it's AAA games. Not because I dislike AAA, but because I think in handheld mode I really preferred games with simpler graphics, like Mario games (2D and 3D), sidescrollers, the top down Zelda games or (S)NES games. I really had a hard time when I tried Breath of the Wild and ended up playing it in the dock almost completely. I think it's a real missed opportunity that the new Pokemon games aim for 3D and open worlds because it not only hurts the games performance, but for me also the playability.
I'm interested in switching to a Steam Deck but I don't think I would play visually complex games on it. That's what my PC is for. But I don't know if that's just me or if other people feel the same.
I pretty much only use my Deck for older/simpler/indie games. I tried Ghost of Tsushima, and I definitely couldn’t enjoy it at the performance and detail level the Deck is capable of. However, streaming it from my PS5 is still a pretty great experience. That said, it still looks better on a 4K screen.
The next gen steam deck likely isn't coming out for quite awhile still, so it's probably not worth waiting for next gen.
Performance wise, the Steam Deck does struggle to run new AAA games if they're poorly optimized, use UE5, or have mandatory ray tracing for lighting. It's still possible to play most of these games, but it will depend on your tolerance for graphics quality or your willingness to install performance mods. There's also no shortage of good games to play, slightly older AAA games generally work flawlessly and nearly all AA/indie games run great. I have enough good games in my library where I could never buy another game and always have something good to play.
The switch 2 in portable mode has nearly identical power to the Steam Deck, so if it sells anywhere close to Switch 1 I think we'll see a lot of games target being able to run on it. The switch 1 was far enough behind modern platforms to not be worth optimizing for, for most AAA games/devs. But the switch 2 and steam deck generally have enough power to run new games at an almost acceptable level, and that makes optimization a much more appealing target.
Also worth considering is local streaming. If you have a decent PC/PS5 you can stream games to the deck. It can be a good compromise for the games that don't run great natively.
The thing that I would keep an eye out for is if Valve ever does a refresh with a VRR panel. With VRR, you don't need to have "so much excess GPU power that it's impossible to miss a rendering deadline".
Another benefit to waiting for the next iteration of handhelds is that the price of current ones will probably drop
It’s already outdated for that because the hardware is weak. If what you want is AAA games, just buy a ROG Ally Z1E, it’s much better for your use case. Buy it used.
But I do need to point out that AAA games are trash and you should reflect on your life choices if that’s all you care to play.
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Now I'm thinking about the old e-penis hardware algorithm scripts for IRC!
I mean people enjoy crack and I’m not gonna tell em it’s good for them.
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Just in case. Much better games in the indie and AA segments these days.
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If you already have a good sized steam library then take a look at how much of your games are “deck verified” to run on it and decide from there. I have a decent desktop pc with a 4070 ti and 9900k cpu and I still do most of my gaming on my steam deck.
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The deck is now 3 years old, so it’s not all that future proof. I expect to see a successor sometime in the next 2-3 years or whenever it makes sense for Valve to upgrade it without losing battery life.
I’m on my second Deck (LCD sold for an OLED), and I honestly couldn’t be much happier. I feel like the base models are one hellava good buy even still.
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There’s two ways to live life: my way and the objectively morally wrong way. If anyone disagrees with me: my answer is my muscle flex. You cannot see it but I’m a 140lbs 5’10 manlet king with 14% body fat and well read in literature and philosophy. So basically imagine Plato flexing to win an argument. That’s me.