This is fucking insane wtf holy shit
Glad to see more handhelds picking up Steam OS! So many portable competitors have been hampered by their OS sucking down limited resources while providing an inferior UI and UX.
Glares at Armor Crate
I have it for fan/led management on my pc and it has so much potential, but overall is just so bad and has so little support.
Nice, now I finally have an upgrade path. I’ve loved my Steam Deck, but have wanted something I can have a “docked mode” with high performance and a “mobile” mode with the TDP locked to save battery.
So for you non portable gamers like me who didn’t know what TDP was and had to look it up…
TDP, or Thermal Design Power, is a crucial concept for devices like the Steam Deck. It refers to the maximum amount of power that the device’s System on Chip (SoC) or APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) is allowed to consume. On the Steam Deck, TDP is measured in watts and directly impacts performance, battery life, heat generation, and fan noise. So limiting the amount of power it uses when not plugged in makes the battery last longer.
It’s important to note that TDP is a very fuzzy number. It has no industry-wide standard definition, and manufacturers play with the formula for their own products all the time. At best, it gives you a ballpark estimate of what cooler and PSU you’re going to need, and some would dispute even that.
You can quickly set/remove a TDP limit on a Steam Deck whenever you want, though. Right?
Yes, but can you add CPU and GPU cores on demand tho? If you have them you can set tdp limit on portable mode and remove limit in docked mode, but how about steam deck, how do i add GPU and CPU cores?
You can, thanks to SteamOS. That’s why I am looking forward to this device. It’s got a much higher performance ceiling than the deck, so I can throttle it down and have the option of performance or battery life. The deck wasn’t a powerhouse to begin with, so unless I’m playing a 2D clicker I never throttle the TDP.
While I like the concept… isn’t that a bit of what killed the initial steam machines. IE they basically encouraged everyone and their grandmother to release one… and the end result was the name was dilluted down so badly that no one knew what a steam machine was.
I think the messaging is clear this time: Steam Deck is the defacto and flagship SteamOS device that represents the platform, and it has a strong established mindshare already, while other options are now available as well. It had a headstart of three years that gave it plenty of time to shine, and the handheld form-factor still stands out as something the competition (Windows) treats as an afterthought at best with poor UX.
The Steam Machines effort tried to position Alienware Alpha as its focus but the press coverage including all of the other options at the same time confused people. Steam Machines also had awful timing and pricing, with the Alienware being outdated hardware whose Windows version had already been out for a year for the same price or lower by the time the SteamOS version released, and the SteamOS version offering absolutely no advantage in pricing, power, features, or UX for most gamers. All of those factors are different this time. Plus game compatibility was much worse than it is now.
I think it’s fine.
The first party device has existed over a year now, proved its worth, and become more widely understood by gamers.
Android suffers from fragmentation, sure, but it being used by a variety of manufacturers hasn’t stopped people from understanding that android is android, and can do similar things whether you buy a phone/tablet for 200 bucks, or 2000.
The problem then was the immaturity of Linux for gaming. Valve has done a shit ton of work to make that possible and focused on a specific experience with the steam deck for several years. Now they’re just expanding and building on that success, which is awesome to see.
I fully agree that was “a problem”. but I fully hold to the fragmented hardware also being a significant problem. IMO the steam deck still significantly makes gains from being a consistant hardware target for dev’s to base things on, in addition to basically having little to no consumer confusion, if a game says “will run on steam deck”, it’s safe to assume, it will run on a steam deck. This time around valve specifically hasn’t released a steam deck 2, because they want to avoid any hardware confusion.
I don’t think hardware vendors will use chips or parts that lack decent working linux drivers, which would make the “too many hardware variants” point moot.
Then again, higher ups are known for taking stupid decisions.
The key problem why “Runs on SteamDeck” exists is not the raw power of the SteamDeck (or lack thereof) but the compatibility with Linux. Unless someone decides to utterly cripple a handheld for the sake of battery efficiency any game labeled with SteamDeck support will also run on any other handheld running SteamOS.
The problem with the SteamMachines ultimately was the lack of game support. The hardware confusion was just the cherry on top. You could even argue that the lack of supported games back then meant a limited number of customers would be interested which in turn led to companies releasing underpowered hardware. By that logic one can even claim the failure of SteamMachines is entirely down to the piss poor Linux support then.
I… think we are saying the same thing with different words and emphasis.
All these handhelds have decent AMD hardware, I would bet money that absolutely any new steamOS handheld will have similar or more powerful hardware than the OG deck. This new Lenovo device specifically is more powerful than the OG deck as well.
And with steamOS being Linux, a free and open source system, hardware fragmentation wont really be a thing. With Android hardware fragmentation was bad because many devices would never get updated after a year or so, but this is true Linux and valve is a consumer friendly company so I don’t really know what you mean talking about hardware fragmentation.
This is great for valve, and great for gamers. There is no down side to this.
The problem with Steam Machines was that they were nothing but overpriced pre built PCs. And they usually shipped with Windows because only a handful of Steam games ran on Linux out of the box. That’s basically what birthed Valve’s investments into Proton.
And only for $120! That’s crazy considering I just made that number up and it doesn’t mention an estimated price point.
Pricing starts at $500 USD with availability beginning in May.
Quote from the linked article. Why spread bad info?
I didn’t. I clearly stated that I was not serious. That was not in the article when I posted my comment.
Another outlet has it listed at $499, fwiw.
I was ready to justify the lack of trackpads at that price point.
