During their recent Steamworks virtual conference, Valve revealed more interesting details about their Steam Deck console, and from what we've seen, it's shaping up to be a very exciting little device.
So the fact that it was pushed back to February 2022 due to global supply chain issues hurts even more as we want to get our hands on it now.
While we've known a lot about Steam Deck specs for some time now, Valve and AMD have revealed that the custom AMD chip that will power the console is called the Aerith SoC and it features a quad-core, eight-thread Zen2 CPU. an AMD RDNA 2 GPU. During the conference, the close partnership between Valve and AMD was highlighted, as well as the decision to design the chip for consistency, rather than trying to achieve high frequencies.
This means that the Steam Deck should provide a consistent gaming experience across all the titles you play, while still allowing the 40-watt-hour battery to provide seven to eight hours of playtime. By trying to achieve higher frequencies, the chip may look better on paper and offer higher frame rates in some cases, but doing so could lead to performance issues and drain your battery faster, and it's a compromise that Valve and AMD don't. they understand. I do not want to do.
Steam Deck will also work the same way whether played on handheld or in docked mode, again providing consistency for the player, but this may disappoint anyone expecting a performance boost when the handheld is connected. to the base (either the one made by Valve) or any USB-C hub).
Valve did not impose power restrictions on the chip, instead leaving them to game developers, although it recommends limiting the frames to help preserve battery life.
Improved developer support
The Steamworks Virtual Conference was aimed at game developers looking to port their games to the Steam Deck.
While most of the games that are on Steam will be played on the Steam Deck, developers are encouraged to test their games to make sure they play their best. This not only means making sure they achieve consistent frame rates, but also that their controls feel good when using the Steam Deck controls, and that the text is readable on the Steam Deck's seven-inch screen. After all, many of these games were designed to be played on PCs with much larger screens.
All of this is promising and should allow many games to perform brilliantly on the Steam Deck. Valve also discussed how this would allow developers to optimize their games for Steam Deck, such as using specific texture packs for Steam Deck versions that reduce the size of games to download and install.
Due to the Steam Deck's small, low-resolution screen, you don't need high-resolution textures, which means that the games will take up less space on the Steam Deck storage. This will be especially welcome for people who own the cheapest Steam Deck model, which only includes 64GB of eMMC PCIe Gen 2 storage.
Analysis: playing the waiting game
The information that Valve, along with AMD, shared on the Steam Deck got us even more excited about the handheld. While Valve's previous forays into hardware haven't always hit home, a powerful, portable handheld that can take Nintendo's dominance and deliver an instant library of thousands of PC games has great potential.
The fact that Valve and AMD are focusing on consistency rather than pure performance is another plus here, and the tools Valve offers developers could mean Steam Deck players have a great experience playing games.
All of this makes waiting for the delayed release even more difficult. While people who received their pre-orders now must wait until February 2022, those who order later may not get their hands on the device until the end of next year. That wait is really going to suck, but maybe some of the Black Friday gaming laptop deals we're already starting to see could help.
Through PC Gamer