• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Valve Halves Steam Deck SSD Bandwidth on Some Models

I'm shocked more people aren't upset with this news.
In principle it sucks because potentially people could buy without being aware that the SSD speed won't necessarily be what they thought.

In practice, not many buyers would even know what the original spec was, and they won't care because it won't impact any performance in any game the Deck (the GPU in which is at best equivalent to roughly a GTX 1060) can run. I mean, you aren't going to be running UE5 games on the Deck when they eventually come out, for instance. It's not going to happen.
 

CrustyBritches

Gold Member
Some dude on Reddit claimed he had a Gen 3x2 drive and posted the model…

Transcend lists the CrystalDiskMark results as 1700MB/s read, 1000MB/s write. The Gen 3x4 Kingston drive I have is 2500MB/s read, 1200MB/s write. The read is kind of irrelevant since the Deck is probably CPU limited when it comes to game loading, as seen by there being little difference between Deck ssd and microSD card game load times. There is a difference in download and transfer from external USB-C ssd, but I don’t think that will manifest between the Gen 3x2 and Gen 3x4 drives since the write speeds are extremely close.
In practice, not many buyers would even know what the original spec was, and they won't care because it won't impact any performance in any game the Deck (the GPU in which is at best equivalent to roughly a GTX 1060) can run.
Deck is probably only half as powerful as a GTX 1060, maybe less. It’s pretty much spot on a stock RX 460 2GB, which is a little faster than Radeon 7850 oc.
 
Last edited:

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
I'm shocked more people aren't upset with this news.
I dunn… imagine if MS or Sony cut the clock, reduced RAM, or cut the SSD bandwidth but charged the same price…

Is it because the demand is so much higher than the available offer and anything feels worth just to get a unit sooner? 🤷‍♂️
 

bender

What time is it?
Kind of a crummy situation, especially with pre-order queues being so long. My 512GB unit arrives on Wednesday. Wish me luck.
 
Last edited:

Dream-Knife

Banned
Has anyone actually benchmarked games compared to the SD slot? Saw some start time videos on YouTube, and the SD was actually faster than the m.2 by a second or two.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Reduced RAM or clock speeds would actually have a noticeable effect on gaming performance. Cutting SSD bandwidth in half doesn't.

What about when games are made to use the bandwidth of the SSDs or the Direct Memory thing becomes the new "IT" thing in video games?
 

bender

What time is it?
Take a long, hard look at the Steam Deck's other hardware specs and you'll probably come up with the answer on your own.

I trust that it isn't going to be noticeable but it is still feels like a bait and switch when the first bullet point for "Choose Your Steam Deck" is "Faster" and "Fastest" storage.
 
Top Bottom