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Digital Foundry-Valve Steam Deck Spec Analysis: Can It Really Handle AAA PC Gaming?
- Thread starter NoviDon
- Start date
ethomaz
Banned
It is very similar AMD mobile APU specs wise.
Closer to a lower clocked Ryzen™ 3 5400U (low-end mobile) in CPU terms and lower clocked Ryzen™ 7 5700U (mid-end mobile) in GPU terms (1.6TFs).
I don't expect something better than what these APUs delivery.
Edit - Thinking a bit about Tegra X1 with 1TFs... the Desk should have a very small advantage in GPU terms.
Closer to a lower clocked Ryzen™ 3 5400U (low-end mobile) in CPU terms and lower clocked Ryzen™ 7 5700U (mid-end mobile) in GPU terms (1.6TFs).
I don't expect something better than what these APUs delivery.
Edit - Thinking a bit about Tegra X1 with 1TFs... the Desk should have a very small advantage in GPU terms.
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ethomaz
Banned
You are looking more like PS4 level graphics with a bit better CPU and more RAM.
It is nowhere close to Xbox One X, PS4 Pro or Series S level.
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DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
I don't think this iteration is good enough. If you want something to play older games and your aged old steam library you should be ok but I don't think its gonna bring it for the future.
FingerBang
Member
I would expect it to be at least twice as powerful. We're talking about a much newer architecture and not all tflops are equal (as weird as it sounds).
It's more powerful than a PS4 and it has to target a lower resolution. It can potentially do much better than PS4 graphics.
ethomaz
Banned
It has a better CPU (not that better btw because it has half of cores) and more RAM.
GPU is probably just a bit better if all than PS4's GPU.
Tegra X1 1TFs is really the best comparision.
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Kagero
Member
I'm cool with that, to be honest as long as the load times are fast.
ethomaz
Banned
That depends more of the game engine... if it is coded to take advantage of faster storage to have better loadtime then it will happen.
But I have the impression it will play games from Steam like they are today, no? I mean there is very few games that takes advantage of faster storage.
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Zathalus
Member
The key difference is that this APU is RDNA2 and not Vega, so a decent IPC jump there.
Tegra X1 is only 512 GFLOPs, with the Switch configuration in mobile being around 200 GFLOPs. Also, RDNA2 has a much higher IPC then the old Maxwell architecture found in Tegra, so this GPU would be roughly 10x as fast as the mobile Switch configuration, or 5x as fast as the docked switch configuration.
The GPU is a bit better then the PS4, but only targets half the resolution. The CPU is also 2x-3x the PS4 (even with half the cores)
ethomaz
Banned
You are looking at something way below that 5980HS for it.
AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS Cezanne Review: Ryzen 5000 Mobile Tested
It will probably play games at 60fps or 30fps in low settings at 720p.
And yes you will need to set some games below 720p to reach playable framerate.
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Kagero
Member
From my experience with PS5 games. Almost all games have fast load times through patches made for the current SSD's. I only started to notice really when going from switch games to PS5. Switch is pretty much unplayable to me at the moment because of it. I just don't have the patience.
ethomaz
Banned
I have a PS5 and most 3rd-party games has crap loading times.
I can remember only two being good... REVIII and NioH 2.
Everything else is sub par with loading over 4s... it is basically not even using the SSD bandwidth.
That is a constant let down in these next-gen patches lol
After you get used to games like R&C, Returnal, Miles Morales, Demon's Souls, etc you will hate these higher than 4s loading times that 99% of the games on PC have.
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SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
Half the resolution yes, but 2x the framerate so it would be around even.
Unless you are expecting PC gamers to play this at 30 fps.
I think this is a great handheld for last gen games, but thats about it. If they want to run games like Doom with ray tracing or Metro exodus with ray tracing that dip to 1080p on the 10 tflops PS5, what resolutions are we looking at on this 1-1.6 tflops GPU? Next gen engines like UE5 are targeting 1440p 30 fps on the PS5. Worst case scenario, this thing gets a 1/10th resolution cut. Best case. 1/6th. Either way you are looking at 500p or below.
I think they shouldve gone with a 4 tflops GPU but I guess it simply wasnt possible in their 20w power envelope. This is a great first start and I hope by the time AMD rolls out their 3nm, valve has a mid gen refresh lined up.
I really hope Sony does the same. I havent been this excited for a handheld since the vita.
NoviDon
Member
yeah it should be a little beast at least for a couple of years. the only problem is the jump in visual quality when more games become current gen only. can it run the games and not look like a washed out mess? hopefully FSR gets implemented into a ton of the future titles coming out to help with the performance delta.
ethomaz
Banned
I have a PS5 so I'm spoiled in terms of loading times after all... that is why I put as weak point the loading being so big in most DF tech articles.
If you asked me last year I probably should say loading with 10s was fine... over 20s was bad.
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meech
Member
"The console will run SteamOS and is built on Linux, which means owners will be able to use the device as a Linux-based PC to browse the web and even install rival games stores.
YSoftware known as Proton will let Windows PC games run on the system without developers having to produce a new version of their titles."
news.yahoo.com
Emulation, a lot of the flops will be used just for this. A huge majority of games dont have native linux versions.
YSoftware known as Proton will let Windows PC games run on the system without developers having to produce a new version of their titles."
Valve reveals handheld Steam Deck PC games console
Gaming giant Valve has produced a handheld console that can play popular PC games.
Emulation, a lot of the flops will be used just for this. A huge majority of games dont have native linux versions.
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ethomaz
Banned
Will it use emulation? So the performance will be way below it similar AMD APU parts."The console will run SteamOS and is built on Linux, which means owners will be able to use the device as a Linux-based PC to browse the web and even install rival games stores.
YSoftware known as Proton will let Windows PC games run on the system without developers having to produce a new version of their titles."
Valve reveals handheld Steam Deck PC games console
Gaming giant Valve has produced a handheld console that can play popular PC games.
Emuation, a lot of the flops will be used just for this. A huge majority of games dont have native linux versions.
Can you install Windows?
DigitalScrap
Member
Same. And since this literally just came out of nowhere for me (I really haven't been keeping up with rumors at all lately) even more so.
Proton is not emulation, or at least not in that term.
It's more similar to Xbox/360 games on Xbox One, they run perfectly with no loss in performance.
But libraries had to be written very well or you'll have some drops.
BackBackPunch
Member
The load times will be shit if you’re using a SD card
DigitalScrap
Member
Load times will also be a bit shit on the eMMC model as well. Even if they are using the "best" eMMC, it will max out at a theoretical 400MB/s, but they almost always deliver a great deal less due to having so few memory gates.
I wish they posted specifics about the eMMC and NVMe.
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meech
Member
Thats impossible,Linux and Windows are completely different operating systems.There will be significant performance losses. The Xbox One is far more powerfull than the 360,uses a similar Os, and yet still some development effort was needed.A
James Sawyer Ford
Member
I think Sony would be wasting their time with this. Vita proved it's not really a viable model to split hardware configs. The problem as you mentioned is that this device is only good for last-gen games. It's not going to be used at all for next-gen titles due to lack of power.
I do think in the future it may make sense if games move to 8K standards. At that point, the power delta should be very easy to get a 1080p handheld screen with the same power per pixel as an 8K console.
So...in other words, Sony would release PS6 and PS6 Portable Day 1 and their SDKs would support both. We are getting closer to that reality but not there yet.
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
I don't think there's any good comparisons between Jaguar and Xen 2 to really say with confidence what the perf diff is.. especially when you start discussing cores, and the fact Xen 2 can do 8 simultaneous threads.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Games made this year? But what about games made for 2022 and into the future?
meech
Member
Yes, but its an additional layer, something like Wine. It still leads to less fps than a native version would have.
RobRSG
Member
You need to think that Tegra X1 is 512Gflop for fp32. That’s the correct reasoning.
spons
Gold Member
Future games? Sure. You can jack up the settings and resolution on high-end hardware, and lower them on the Steam Deck. PC games already cater to the lowest common denominator, which is about the performance of what the 1050 Ti does at 1080p (according to the Steam survey anyway). You absolutely cannot release a game on PC that doesn't work across the board.
Not necessarily. Proton is an implementation of DirectX and related technologies. Windows has an implementation of that as well. Nothing is emulated. The difference is negligible.
ethomaz
Banned
Actually games optimized runs using FP16 code on Tegra X1.
Most if all mobiles games runs using FP16 instead FP32.
But that is another talk.
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SonGoku
Member
Why are you comparing Vega (GCN) performance with RDNDA2?You are looking at something way below that 5980HS for it.
AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS Cezanne Review: Ryzen 5000 Mobile Tested
www.anandtech.com
It will probably play games at 60fps or 30fps in low settings at 720p.
And yes you will need to set some games below 720p to reach playable framerate.
If I remember correctly RDNA1 performance per teraflop was on par with Turing if not a bit better
Not sure about memory bandwidth though
BattleScar
Member
Not even close
The Tegra X1 has 256 Maxwell Cuda Cores at 1GHz. This is 512GFLOPS FP32 or 1TF FP16
Van Gogh (the Steam Deck's APU) has 512 RDNA2 shaders at 1.6 GHz which is 1.6TF FP32 or 3.2TF FP16.
It will be significantly faster in every meaningful capacity than the Tegra X1. Leave alone the X1's shite CPU by comparison to Zen 2.
You are looking at something way below that 5980HS for it.
AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS Cezanne Review: Ryzen 5000 Mobile Tested
It will probably play games at 60fps or 30fps in low settings at 720p.
And yes you will need to set some games below 720p to reach playable framerate.
I'm not sure how you're coming to these conclusions to be quite frank.
Cezanne has 8 Vega CU with LPDDR4X Bandwidth at best (most of the time its gonna be regular DDR4).
Van Gogh has 8 RDNA2 with LPDDR5 Bandwidth (which is about 50% higher bandwidth than LPDDR4X).
RDNA2 is significantly more bandwidth efficient than Vega, so at identical bandwidth it will be more performant that a Vega GPU with the same number of shaders. Except it also has at least 50% more memory bandwidth than every possible Cezanne configuration.
The limiting factor of course is the CPU, however with an integrated GPU you're very much likely to be GPU bound at pretty much all relevant resolutions so it shouldn't matter much at all.
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M1chl
Currently Gif and Meme Champion
It's more like translation, however it still has performance hit.
Bojanglez
The Amiga Brotherhood
It is possible and what he said is true. Proton is not emulation, it is build upon WINE (Wine Is Not Emulation) which is a reimplemented of Windows libraries to provide native Linux functionally.
You are right that sometimes there is performance loss, but also sometimes there is improved performance.
saintjules
Member
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MrFunSocks
Banned
That goes directly against what the valve people said in all the interviews though. They said it’s not replaceable.
Disappointing video, thought they’d actually got their hands on it. He does share the same concerns as me though - significantly less powerful than the Series S which is already running games at 720p. Will have no games made specifically for its specs.
Didn’t know about the clock speeds etc. Looks like it could possibly be like the switch in that it’s portable mode is even lower powered and will only get 1TF of GPU power. That power draw is gonna be a problem considering how much the Series S uses to run its games and it’s not even powering a screen.
Astral Dog
Member
I don't understand, why the tablet size is such a big deal? Why is the Switch too big to be a handheld? the thing is light as a feather and small,if im gonna play AAA games on the go i rather look at a decent sized screen for a better experience.
People have been using it just fine yet i see on the internet that its too big to be a handheld
Besides, it needs space for a good battery and comfy controls, even Nintendo knows whats up with the bigger OLED screen, in Valve's case i guess they didn't had much option than make it 'big' for cooling and battery
It feels more like a complaint from Grandpa Simpsons than anything
People have been using it just fine yet i see on the internet that its too big to be a handheld
Besides, it needs space for a good battery and comfy controls, even Nintendo knows whats up with the bigger OLED screen, in Valve's case i guess they didn't had much option than make it 'big' for cooling and battery
It feels more like a complaint from Grandpa Simpsons than anything
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M1chl
Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Well they are pretty hard to find, it's the same size as in XSX.
RaySoft
Member
You can't just think "power wise" since this APU has a RDNA2 GPU. I would much rather have a GPU that supports all the newest functions than an older version that may be faster at i.e. rasterizing, but missing other key aspects in hardware. This handheld has mesh shaders, not even used yet in games, but its comming.
You could almost compare it to glQuake back in the day.. bilinear filtering for instance was something strikingly different from the usual software renderer without a 3D card back then. No games yet have fully utilized what's possible with the new generation of GPUs.
It's still an abstraction layer so a minimal cost is still there, but not at all on the same scale as emulation.
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Good video, I just keep thinking the comparisons with the Series S are good and bad. Mainly because the tech is so similar, but would be running at 720p requiring less power. So games should be fine on 720p with plenty of power. I would argue the Series S will struggle going forward because it's trying for 1080p and occasional 4k. Also the 16gig of ram much better for the future. I can't imagine developers will have to many issues dropping their games down to 720p with some small sacrifices.
Only thing is the on screen text and UI's, often way to small on Switch. If developers actually spend the time to address this, with the steam deck in mind, amazing.
Only thing is the on screen text and UI's, often way to small on Switch. If developers actually spend the time to address this, with the steam deck in mind, amazing.
The steamdeck website has just been updated with the following:
https://www.steamdeck.com/en/tech
It's strange they didn't include the information about the m.2 slot before reservations but I'm not sure what is meant by "not intended for end-user replacement"
Regardless, it looks like m.2 2230 storage cards are expensive and rare.
https://www.steamdeck.com/en/tech
It's strange they didn't include the information about the m.2 slot before reservations but I'm not sure what is meant by "not intended for end-user replacement"
Regardless, it looks like m.2 2230 storage cards are expensive and rare.
kyliethicc
Member
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MasterCornholio
Member
It's virtualization on driver/kernel level. You redirect things like OS kernel calls so the application 'thinks' it's running under a different host OS, but actually isn't. Because binaries are built for the same hardware ISA (x86) there's no other translation required, yielding close to native performance.
It's been common-place for at least 2 decades with x86 devices in non-gaming use, and the overhead to native execution ranges around 5-10% (depends on the application and how much it interacts with the OS - in many cases you can basically get full native speed) and that's purely CPU overhead.
GPU limited applications will generally run at 100% speed, not accounting for bugs/compatibility issues of course. Device drivers they rely on are a harder challenge to get 100% stable/accurate and there's the additional problem of having to translate Graphics API calls when APP is running DirectX only. That's still primarily a CPU overhead (and a source of more bugs) though, when it works, GPU performance should remain largely the same.
But yes - that's nothing like 360 emulation where they do full ISA translation, like any emulator has to - making it much heavier to run.
It's nothing like that - see above. 360 is emulation with benefit of some hw-extensions on the emulating platform (X1/XSX), and it costs a lot more to run than native 360 execution would.
See above - not emulation in the way people usually use the word(though technically it all fits the definition of the word). It's relatively low impact (sometimes none) and primarily all on CPU. Compatibility is the bigger concern really - while a lot of stuff runs according to Proton DB, PC is already a shit-show of compatibility/performance issues under native Windows, and you never know what's broken when you add another layer of potential issues.
99% of developers aren't going to be building their games with the steam deck in mind. They're just making them for PCs for Steam and the Steam Deck will just run them the best it can at whatever settings the developers offer/player selects. There won't be any "developers dropping their games down to 720p" really, unless they are really going the extra mile supporting the Deck with a native Linux port in mind and using it as the optimized base spec.
The Series S is a 1080p-1440p machine typically (with a few indie titles or 2D titles hitting 4K like Hades) with a stable energy source, cooling solution, clock rate, faster storage, etc. Its games are built with a unified development kit in mind between XSS, XSX, and PC. I'm not sure how the Series S will struggle moving forward with 2.5x-4x the GPU compute and over twice the CPU power, but somehow the Deck will be fine because... it has more RAM?
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