Steam Deck console

EvilHomer3k · Post by **EvilHomer3k** » Sun Feb 27, 2022 2:07 pm

I pre-ordered two. One for the family (me and my youngest) and one for my 17YO (birthday/christmas present). The more I know about it the happier I am that I pre-ordered. Overall it looks great.

Reemul · Post by **Reemul** » Tue Mar 01, 2022 2:03 pm

Daehawk wrote: ↑Tue Feb 08, 2022 4:15 pm Ive had ZERO interest in this. I haven't even posted in this thread before. Until I saw it the other day . Wow its like a big pretty PSP. I like it. Now I want one. Not $500 want one but if I could afford a cheaper one I would.

Yeah I do want one, willing to wait for the 2nd gen tbh, due a pc upgrade next year and will tie in getting a Deck at the same time I reckon

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Wed Mar 09, 2022 1:54 pm

My reservation went from Q1 2022 to Q2 2022 last month and today went to Q3.

Not expecting to see one until next year.

Reserved on Mon, July 19, 2021

Your expected order availability: Q3 2022

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Wed Mar 09, 2022 2:01 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 1:54 pm My reservation went from Q1 2022 to Q2 2022 last month and today went to Q3.

Not expecting to see one until next year.

Reserved on Mon, July 19, 2021

Your expected order availability: Q3 2022

I reserved on day 1 and same status. I'm expecting they only shipped a bare minimum to make this not a paper launch.

EvilHomer3k · Post by **EvilHomer3k** » Tue Apr 26, 2022 11:07 am

Got my deck on Friday. It's quite nice. Speakers are better than I thought they'd be. Got the 64gb one and upgraded it to a 512gb drive. That took about 15 minutes and was much easier than working on a Macbook (even an older one). Most recommended games run well. I'm especially enjoying playing fighting games on the deck. FPS games work okay. Well, they work just like console FPS games. That is, it works fine if you like using a controller, but I still prefer mkb.

hitbyambulance · Post by **hitbyambulance** » Tue Apr 26, 2022 1:39 pm

I had a pre-order for an OpenPandora years ago. then CraigIX ran off with the money all spent, so EvilDragon (the other guy with the company) said they would offer a credit towards the successor (the Dragonbox Pyra) for anyone who got scammed. this device is now several years delayed and i'm clearly not getting it anytime soon, so i may well end up with the Deck.

EvilHomer3k · Post by **EvilHomer3k** » Tue Apr 26, 2022 4:21 pm

At least you know the deck is shipping. I haven't tried windows or windows games on it yet but every steam game I've tried thus far works (though I don't have the largest or newest library).

stimpy · Post by **stimpy** » Tue May 17, 2022 11:13 am

Woot!!!
Now I can take my unhealthy obsession with Elden Ring on the 20 hour, each way, train ride I have coming up!!!

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Tue May 17, 2022 11:42 am

June-August just changed to July-September for me.

ChaoZ · Post by **ChaoZ** » Thu Jul 14, 2022 2:51 pm

Got mine this week. I am very impressed but there are a few caveats:

1. Screen bezel is very thick, so much wasted space. Reminds me of the old Nexus 7 tablet I had. Probably like the Switch (but I don't own one). The screen isn't OLED, but it doesn't bother me much.
2. It can generate quite a bit of heat from the top, however if you're not playing the most demanding games, it's fine.
3. It's kinda slippery. It's not completely a negative because non-slip textures tend to go all gooey in time, but I'm considering some kind of silicone case, since playing while leaning against a table sometimes means it slips around. The thumb sticks also lack the rubbery texture that is common to Xbox controllers.
4. Not overly fond of the one USB-C input/power being at the top, which they had two so you can choose top or bottom. The upcoming dock looks awkward because of this as well.
5. Battery life is adequate, but not great.
6. The dual touchpads don't work all that well, at least in the games I've tried so far. The haptics feel rudimentary at best.

What I'm quite surprised about is that it's nowhere near as bulky or awkward as I expected. The best position to play is actually still on a table, but it's fine sitting in a chair, lying on your stomach, perhaps a bit on your side.

Tried four games on it so far and three work well: Dirt Rally, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit (non remastered), and Disco Elysium. Hotline Miami's controls were very clunky, but I've never played on desktop so I can't say if it's me. Disco Elysium can have very tiny text, even with dialogue text boosted; some of the elements just don't scale. In my library, 46 games are listed "Great on Deck" out of 350+. Most of my library is older titles, very few AAA from the past 5 years. I look forward to testing more RPGs and turn-based games on this thing. It's definitely great to have a huge backlog accessible to me on the go now.

hitbyambulance · Post by **hitbyambulance** » Fri Jul 15, 2022 10:16 pm

this blog is a good source of the latest info for Linux gaming in general, but they have a number of Deck-specific articles regularly now

https://boilingsteam.com/

rf2000 · Post by **rf2000** » Mon Jul 18, 2022 4:21 pm

My steam deck order snuck on me. I'm not really a gadget hound. Most of my time is spent on my home computer with a 32 in monitor where I game. Although I have an ipad and a laptop [mainly used by my son], it's mostly the computer or iphone for games, netflix, etc. So when steam deck was announced it sounded interesting enough to put a measly $5 deposit not knowing if I was even going to buy it. I ordered it a little later too. I saw early reviews about it in feb but then forgot about it.

Few days ago, I was surprised to get an email saying my steam deck was ready to complete purchase. Initially, I thought about taking a pass waiting for it to mature more or even its eventual successor. But the more I thought about, it would be coolest device to play my games from steam, epic, origin, etc [this is really a pc unlike the switch] conveniently anywhere anytime. More than 90% of the time, it would be used at home where I have access to my computer, but whether sitting on the toilet or lounging outside it seems it would be so convenient not just playing mainly games but consuming netflix, hbo max, etc. I can see myself using this device enough to definitely get my money's worth out of it.

So, I ordered it and it's arriving tomorrow.
Now, I can't wait to give it whirl.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Mon Jul 18, 2022 4:23 pm

If nothing else, there's a thriving resale market.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Fri Jul 22, 2022 9:17 am

Finding myself less and less interested as time goes on. Steam stealth-changing the hardware isn't helping.

stimpy · Post by **stimpy** » Fri Jul 22, 2022 9:20 am

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 9:17 am Finding myself less and less interested as time goes on. Steam stealth-changing the hardware isn't helping.

Can you expand what you're referring to on this?

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Fri Jul 22, 2022 9:52 am

stimpy wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 9:20 am
LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 9:17 am Finding myself less and less interested as time goes on. Steam stealth-changing the hardware isn't helping.
Can you expand what you're referring to on this?

I think he is referring to the recent SSD change.

IGN

Valve has clarified that its quiet switch of SSDs in the Steam Deck will have "no impact to performance" following concerns that the hardware had been downgraded.

Polygon reported that Valve had changed the Steam Deck specs, with some 256GB and 512GB models coming with a different SSD than what was initially advertised. A switch from the PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe SSD to the PCIe Gen 3 x2 NVMe SSD appeared to be a downgrade, but Valve has refuted this to IGN.

"Many Steam Deck components come from multiple suppliers for improved redundancy and production capacity," a Valve spokesperson said. "One of our SSD suppliers provides PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe SSDs, while another provides a x2 (2 lane) SSD. Our team has tested both components extensively, and determined that there is no impact to performance between the two models.

"SSD performance is currently gated by factors not related to PCIe bandwidth. In extremely uncommon cases, differences in read / write speed caps may minimally impact file transfer speeds, but OS performance, loading times, game performance, and game responsiveness are identical between the x2 and x4 drives."

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Fri Jul 22, 2022 9:56 am

stimpy wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 9:20 am
LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 9:17 am Finding myself less and less interested as time goes on. Steam stealth-changing the hardware isn't helping.
Can you expand what you're referring to on this?

SSD change:

Steam Decks ordered at the time of the console’s release came with either a 256 or 512GB SSD, which were connected using an x4 PCIe connection. SSDs in more recently ordered consoles, however, are connected using just two lanes, according to the German tech blog HardwareLuxx.

Fan variant:

How can a replacement fan make such a difference? It’s a long story, but the Steam Deck community figured out many months ago that Valve shipped its gaming handheld with one of two different fans. One is made by Delta, the other by Huaying, and it’s long been suspected that the Delta fan is an inferior part that Valve didn’t initially design for. But while Valve has attempted to alleviate the issue with software, it’s definitely a hardware problem as well.

ChaoZ · Post by **ChaoZ** » Fri Jul 22, 2022 9:59 am

If the Steam Deck can load games from micro SD nearly as fast as it can from the internal SSD, I really don't see it as a problem. It's not like they went to eMMC or something drastic like that.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Fri Jul 22, 2022 10:02 am

They edited the specs page without an announcement. Like I said, the delay is the main issue for me but these other changes aren't helping. If we weren't in such an inflationary environment I'd probably have cancelled already.

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Fri Jul 22, 2022 10:09 am

FWIW this is happening all over the tech industry. Even in high end gear. Supply chain disruptions have made spec sheets near-term unreliable. I recently had a customer buy a 6-figure piece of specialized equipment that had non-spec sheet components and was going to require a custom firmware branch. That's partly why I'm sort of shrugging at this. It's appears to be pretty non-impactful.

Edit: My biggest gripe is I have no idea when I'm going to get an invite to order this. There has been zero communication on it. There also seems to be no rhyme or reason about how these are being allocated. I know they say first come, first serve but I pre-ordered almost immediately (within the first couple of hours).

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Fri Jul 22, 2022 11:20 am

malchior wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 10:09 am
Edit: My biggest gripe is I have no idea when I'm going to get hit with the charge on this. There has been zero communication on it. One day it'll just ship I assume. There also seems to be no rhyme or reason about how these are being allocated.

From what I understand you get an email and then you have to buy it. If you miss the window, back of the line. Which is the other annoying thing. I have to check Steam every week and sift through spam to see if I've been blessed and deemed worthy.

ChaoZ · Post by **ChaoZ** » Fri Jul 22, 2022 11:31 am

The email gives you three days to place your order.

So yeah, if you miss it, your reservation is cancelled. It's not like people go on vacation, away from email, during the summer or anything right?

stimpy · Post by **stimpy** » Fri Jul 22, 2022 12:00 pm

ChaoZ wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 11:31 am The email gives you three days to place your order.

So yeah, if you miss it, your reservation is cancelled. It's not like people go on vacation, away from email, during the summer or anything right?

Get your priorities straight, people!!!

rf2000 · Post by **rf2000** » Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:19 pm

Even if you decide not to get the steam deck, I've seen people on ebay selling the rights to buy it for $700+.

I just received my deck, 256 gig model, 2 days ago. First accessory I bought is a 512 gig microsd card for $50. In hindsight the better buy would be the $400 model and add a 1 tb microsd card. I don't think there is much of a performance drop.

First game I downloaded was super mega baseball 3. Looks really good on the screen, speakers sound well, and controllers are just as good as the xbox one I use with the desktop. Ultimate appeal is the 500 games it says I have in my steam library [fair amt of old and indy games] that I can eventually tap into any time, not to mention games from epic, ubisoft, origin clients you can also access.

ChaoZ · Post by **ChaoZ** » Mon Jul 25, 2022 11:41 am

rf2000 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:19 pm In hindsight the better buy would be the $400 model and add a 1 tb microsd card. I don't think there is much of a performance drop.

It's eMMC vs. SSD, which is a pretty big deal in my experience. I got the 512gb model just because I don't want to deal with it all. Also picked up a 512gb card I haven't used yet.

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Mon Jul 25, 2022 9:22 pm

Funny enough I fired up my computer today, Steam loaded and popped a window on me with an 'Account Alert' letting me know I could complete my purchase. It was dumb luck because I had about 6 hours left before I would have lost my reservation.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Thu Jul 28, 2022 2:46 pm

Just checked Steam store and was able to purchase. I guess I'm in.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 2:45 pm

FedEx says delivered today. Camera shows a box sitting out on the sidewalk. Yay!

TheMix · Post by **TheMix** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 3:53 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 2:45 pm ... a box sitting out on the sidewalk.

I hope someone is home to get that ASAP. I can't imagine it will stay there for long.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 5:48 pm

TheMix wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 3:53 pm
LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 2:45 pm ... a box sitting out on the sidewalk.

I hope someone is home to get that ASAP. I can't imagine it will stay there for long.

The kiddo grabbed it at some point. Phew!

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 6:33 pm

Oh man, I’m so sorry. How much is she demanding for its return?

TheMix · Post by **TheMix** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:38 pm

hepcat wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 6:33 pm Oh man, I’m so sorry. How much is she demanding for its return?

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 9:03 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 2:45 pm FedEx says delivered today. Camera shows a box sitting out on the sidewalk. Yay!

I completed my order on 7/25 and still days away somehow. Looking forward to it. I grabbed a 3rd party dock as well.

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Thu Aug 04, 2022 4:43 pm

My initial impressions are it is better than I expected.

The highlights so far have been the UI and the games experience. The UI is easy to use and navigate. It is very responsive and integrated well with both touch and the physical controls. It is easy to select games and install them and they provide enough information to know if it'll work well on the steam deck.

I also intentionally tried out a couple different game profiles. I selected Banner Saga because it was labeled as great for Steam Deck. It worked flawlessly. I also tried Nier Automatica to try out a larger game and because it wwas labeled as 'Playable'. It has moments such as naming save files where you need keyboard input. The "workaround" is to summon the Steam overlay keyboard by pushing Steam+X buttons. That worked flawlessly and the game play I tried worked well with the controls.

I also dove into the hardware side to investigate which SSD was installed in my unit. It appears to be the original spec'ed high performance SSDs versus the ad hoc SSDs they were putting in some units. I haven't heard any fan whine yet (the other common complaint on the replacement parts). I threw Bright Infinite Memory at it and was pleasantly surprised by how quiet it was even when it was pumping out a decent amount of heat.

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Fri Aug 05, 2022 2:48 pm

malchior wrote: ↑Thu Aug 04, 2022 4:43 pm My initial impressions are it is better than I expected.

The highlights so far have been the UI and the games experience. The UI is easy to use and navigate. It is very responsive and integrated well with both touch and the physical controls. It is easy to select games and install them and they provide enough information to know if it'll work well on the steam deck.

I also intentionally tried out a couple different game profiles. I selected Banner Saga because it was labeled as great for Steam Deck. It worked flawlessly. I also tried Nier Automatica to try out a larger game and because it wwas labeled as 'Playable'. It has moments such as naming save files where you need keyboard input. The "workaround" is to summon the Steam overlay keyboard by pushing Steam+X buttons. That worked flawlessly and the game play I tried worked well with the controls.

I also dove into the hardware side to investigate which SSD was installed in my unit. It appears to be the original spec'ed high performance SSDs versus the ad hoc SSDs they were putting in some units. I haven't heard any fan whine yet (the other common complaint on the replacement parts). I threw Bright Infinite Memory at it and was pleasantly surprised by how quiet it was even when it was pumping out a decent amount of heat.

Your impressions largely mirror mine. It's been awhile since I had this level of excitement for a gadget, it really does feel like we are on something new like the dawn of PC gaming felt like back in the day. Also, I am thrilled with SD is doing for Linux gaming and glad to have another reason to play around with it. I have mine set up with a dock and portable ssd so I can download my camera memory cards in the field easily and even edit in Linux desktop mode if wanted. I can see they have thought of both the normies and geeks as you can kind of go as keep and geeky on the thing as you feel comfortable. For a newb, I think they would be perfectly happy never leaving the Steam GUI and then there's folks like me that want to boot into Windows from micro SD just because we can.

What 3rd party dock did you go with, do you like it? I don't have one dedicated to the SD yet, but am in love with this one (J5create USB C 4K Triple Display Hub - 4K HDMI x2, 4K DP, 2 USB-A and USB-C 10Gbps, PD 100W, Ethernet, SD 4.0 Card Reader | for XPS, Surface Pro (JCD397)) that was just recently released that importantly for my external SSD it has an extra USB C port in addition to the 100W power delivery one and it does super speed 10Gps vs the typical 5, and also has a USB A 10 Gps port. Another nifty trick is that it can do high refresh rates on a single monitor (144 HDMI and 240 DP). My only nit so far is that it gets warm, not hot, to the touch when I am cranking on it.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Fri Aug 05, 2022 3:23 pm

I'm enjoying it but have only had a few hours total to play with it. Fan is quiet, fortunately.

The Portal Desk Job game was a good introduction to the potential.

hitbyambulance · Post by **hitbyambulance** » Fri Aug 05, 2022 3:24 pm

this is the dock i use for my Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 (with Ubuntu) at work

it's great. ofc the price reflects that - but it does have a Thunderbolt port so i could plug in an external GPU if needed. and i suspect the dock's DAC is of a higher quality that what is actually in the laptop itself... need to research that.

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Fri Aug 05, 2022 3:35 pm

Enough wrote: ↑Fri Aug 05, 2022 2:48 pmWhat 3rd party dock did you go with, do you like it? I don't have one dedicated to the SD yet, but am in love with this one (J5create USB C 4K Triple Display Hub - 4K HDMI x2, 4K DP, 2 USB-A and USB-C 10Gbps, PD 100W, Ethernet, SD 4.0 Card Reader | for XPS, Surface Pro (JCD397)) that was just recently released that importantly for my external SSD it has an extra USB C port in addition to the 100W power delivery one and it does super speed 10Gps vs the typical 5, and also has a USB A 10 Gps port. Another nifty trick is that it can do high refresh rates on a single monitor (144 HDMI and 240 DP). My only nit so far is that it gets warm, not hot, to the touch when I am cranking on it.

I don't have the dock yet. It is this one from JSAux. There is an older model available on Amazon.

I also just installed EmuDeck on it and fired up the Metroid Prime Trilogy via PrimeHack. It works really well. This is going to be a workhorse for me I think.

hitbyambulance · Post by **hitbyambulance** » Fri Aug 05, 2022 3:46 pm

malchior wrote: ↑Fri Aug 05, 2022 3:35 pm I also just installed EmuDeck on it and fired up the Metroid Prime Trilogy via PrimeHack. It works really well. This is going to be a workhorse for me I think.

i'm sure, chronologically, it can handle everything up to PlayStation 1/Nintendo Wii emulation just fine (original Xbox and Sega Saturn excluded).

appears the PlayStation 2 emulation will be fine once PCSX2 is updated to work better with Vulkan drivers.

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Fri Aug 05, 2022 3:49 pm

I'm going to try some PS2 just to see but suspect that's the correct line.