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Valve’s Steam Deck in our hands

Switch-like Steam portable is coming this December


two people playing co-op with two Steam Deck units



The Steam Deck is a new handheld device from Valve for playing PC games on the go, the company announced Thursday. The Nintendo Switch-like device is set for release in December starting at $399.

Previously rumored as the “SteamPal,” the Steam Deck is a portable PC that’s slightly larger than the Nintendo Switch. It features a 7-inch touchscreen, two thumbsticks, a D-pad, and a four-button layout. There are also two trackpads — one on either side of the machine, under the thumbsticks — to allow for increased precision. The Steam Deck has eight triggers on its back: four on the device’s shoulders and four more where the ring and pinky fingers rest.

The Steam Deck will run games from players’ existing Steam libraries. Players will simply log into their account, and their friends and catalog should follow them onto the handheld. The Steam Deck is capable of running PC games on its own hardware, without the power of the cloud. Videos released by Valve show people using the Steam Deck to natively play games such as Baldur’s Gate 3, Crusader Kings 3, Disco Elysium, Hades, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Players can also purchase a dock that allows the Steam Deck to run on a TV.



Inside, the Steam Deck boasts an accelerated processing unit (APU) built by AMD. Its CPU is based on the company’s Zen 2 microarchitecture and tops out at 3.5 GHz. The GPU contains eight RDNA 2 compute units running at up to 1.6 GHz, delivering peak performance of 1.6 teraflops. The system packs 16 GB of RAM and a microSD card slot, allowing users to expand upon the built-in storage. The Steam Deck’s 7-inch screen is an LCD with a 16:10 aspect ratio and a 60 Hz refresh rate at a 720p resolution of 1280x800. The Steam Deck also features a dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi radio — it’s compatible with 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks — and Bluetooth 5.0 for controllers, accessories, and (unlike the Switch) audio.


At launch, the Steam Deck will be available in three models with different storage options. Valve says there are no performance differences between the three versions — aside from the speed of the flash memory, which will provide varying read and write speeds.

The $399 base model offers 64 GB of storage in the eMMC format. The next model up costs $529, and packs faster storage courtesy of a 256 GB PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD; it also comes with an “exclusive Steam Community profile bundle.” The top-tier Steam Deck, at $649, includes a 512 GB NVMe SSD that Valve refers to as “high-speed,” although it is still a PCIe 3.0 drive. In addition, this model’s screen features “premium anti-glare etched glass.” The unit comes with an exclusive carrying case and exclusive virtual keyboard theme, on top of the cheaper models’ bonuses.

Steam users will be able to reserve any of the three Steam Deck models (for a fee) starting at 1 p.m. EDT on Friday, July 16 — as long as they made a purchase on the Steam Store at some point before June 2021. If not, they’ll have to wait until 48 hours later.
 
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Leon

Seasoned
Feb 26, 2009
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Hogwarts Legacy running on 60fps on medium settings FSR 2 Balanced according to early reports. Pretty good for a soon to obsolete handheld eh?
 

venom

Lado-K-Lashkary
Mar 15, 2007
2,757
256
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Karachi
Hello hello hellooooooo.. I am so fucking happy today.









The deck came in late last night and I just fiddled around a bit with it. Installed EMUDECK and played a little WII U game and then went on today to upgrade the SSD to 512GB from the 64Gb one I had. Even though I have always been a console gamer, I think i have some serious PC germs :LOL:

Reimaging steam OS as I type this down. I just want recommendations on how much space should i allocate on the SSD for Windows? I am seriously considering a dual boot setup since i have gamepass as well. I also have a 512GB SD CARD hooked onto my switch but I plan to hook that up with my deck for all the EMUDECK stuff.
 

iampasha

Seasoned
Apr 4, 2013
2,749
1,474
129
28
Karachi
Hello hello hellooooooo.. I am so fucking happy today.









The deck came in late last night and I just fiddled around a bit with it. Installed EMUDECK and played a little WII U game and then went on today to upgrade the SSD to 512GB from the 64Gb one I had. Even though I have always been a console gamer, I think i have some serious PC germs :LOL:

Reimaging steam OS as I type this down. I just want recommendations on how much space should i allocate on the SSD for Windows? I am seriously considering a dual boot setup since i have gamepass as well. I also have a 512GB SD CARD hooked onto my switch but I plan to hook that up with my deck for all the EMUDECK stuff.
Anotha one!! Welcome to the decker club, 🎉

Also damn your brave, opening that thing up AND setuping dual boot just as it arrived 😄 personally to much of a wuss right now to do that... hopefully everything goes super smoothly.

As for the recommendations, paging @Necrokiller
 
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Necrokiller

Expert
Apr 16, 2009
13,594
5,124
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Hello hello hellooooooo.. I am so fucking happy today.









The deck came in late last night and I just fiddled around a bit with it. Installed EMUDECK and played a little WII U game and then went on today to upgrade the SSD to 512GB from the 64Gb one I had. Even though I have always been a console gamer, I think i have some serious PC germs :LOL:

Reimaging steam OS as I type this down. I just want recommendations on how much space should i allocate on the SSD for Windows? I am seriously considering a dual boot setup since i have gamepass as well. I also have a 512GB SD CARD hooked onto my switch but I plan to hook that up with my deck for all the EMUDECK stuff.
Damn, even I don't have the courage to open the Deck like you have , much less as soon as you got it 😛

I've allocated roughly 100gb to Windows and its more than enough for indie Game Pass titles but given more space I'd suggest you to split half way with SteamOS (256GB Windows/256GB Steam OS), as it downloads proton related files and pre cached shaders so its good to have more internal space for them if that's an option. Another 512GB for SteamOS games and Emudeck is a good chunk of space for all games. Outside of PS3 games, ROMs don't take that much space 👍

.
 
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Necrokiller

Expert
Apr 16, 2009
13,594
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@venom @iampasha


This was basically developed for the Steam Controller but now also applies to the Steam Deck.

Absolute must if you guys install Windows on the Deck. It will make every game recognize the Deck as an Xbox controller and you can add shortcuts to Steam so you can launch them via Big Picture UI like any native Steam game.
 
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venom

Lado-K-Lashkary
Mar 15, 2007
2,757
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Karachi
@venom @iampasha


Big Picture UI like any native Steam game.
Yar apas ki baat hai magar mujhe yeh bhi nahi pata k big picture mode kya bala hai lol.

I'm still getting the hang of this new eco system. Vulcan, AA, FSR, shader cache aur pata nahi kya kya kuch hai PC gaming mein jiska mujhe kakh nahi pata :LOL:

But tbh I'm actually enjoying the whole process of exploring these things. But most all I am actually blown away by the performance of the SD. Especially since my benchmark of a handheld console was the Nintendo Switch. Just played Mad Max and Crisis core on the SD natively and OH MY GOD. I am literally blown away by how good games actually look on the deck. It is borderline unbelievable. Especially, crisis core was pretty much close to 60 fps and high graphics settings and it looked flawless. I also played crisis core a bit on the switch and man the difference between both of them was night and day. I obviously knew that SD would outperform the Switch but to this extent, i definitely did not expect.
 

Necrokiller

Expert
Apr 16, 2009
13,594
5,124
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@Leon @iampasha

I'm not entirely sure if this is a new feature or not, but if you already have something installed on Steam (windows PC) and are using Windows on the Steam Deck, it will automatically transfer files over LAN so you don't have to re download them.



Might be an old feature I guess if you have multiple PCs on the same LAN but I'm noticing it now as the use case is more frequent.

I don't know if it works across SteamOS and Windows. If you guys try it out, let me know.
 
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    Consoles can't even catch a break in titles developed exclusively for them 😢
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    faraany3k said:
    So while Playing Control, I found a journal which said that a bathroom is missing in Islamabad Beurue of Control. With Alan Wake and Control seems to be connected worlds. Even our city is in the universe as well. No wonder those Trail 5 and Trail 6 are haunted.
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  • faraany3k faraany3k:
    So while Playing Control, I found a journal which said that a bathroom is missing in Islamabad Beurue of Control. With Alan Wake and Control seems to be connected worlds. Even our city is in the universe as well. No wonder those Trail 5 and Trail 6 are haunted.
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    faraany3k said:
    What is peoples obsession with Battle Royale genre. 6 minutes to find a match, 3 minutes to setup a match, 2 minutes to land, 10 minutes for scavanging maybe 2 3 gunfigts and its over. Multiplayer landscape is looking absolute dogshit.
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    What is peoples obsession with Battle Royale genre. 6 minutes to find a match, 3 minutes to setup a match, 2 minutes to land, 10 minutes for scavanging maybe 2 3 gunfigts and its over. Multiplayer landscape is looking absolute dogshit.
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    skip the villain arc
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    iampasha said:
    I usually stay away from animes. Vinland saga changed the way i look at my life, and my experiences within. I recommend every breathing human being to watch this animated masterpiece at least once fromstart to finish.
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    EternalBlizzard said:
    Vinland Saga > Berserk
    I usually stay away from animes. Vinland saga changed the way i look at my life, and my experiences within. I recommend every breathing human being to watch this animated masterpiece at least once fromstart to finish.
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    I absolutely hate parry and Sekiro made me love it, i hate sci fi and Mass Effect made me love it. This is the definition of genre defining experiences.
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    Forbidden West Complete Edition now available on your fav websites. And Nixxes showed Crapcom how it's done 👍
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    Necrokiller Necrokiller: Consoles can't even catch a break in titles developed exclusively for them 😢