It varies by game. Proton will be faster a lot of the time, plus you can factor in mobile optimizations Valve's made like the option to limit framerate to 30 FPS, use upscaling on demand, cap TDP, etc. Apparently Proton/DXVK batches GPU commands which helps to alleviate CPU limitations and reduce memory traffic, so a lot of CPU-demanding DX11/10/9 games especially will run better through Proton than Windows.
@@marsmurderer9868 I mean, they're not a charity. The risk-reward involved in producing a game vs administering an online marketplace is a no brainer business wise, so it makes sense to prioritize it.
@@goa141no6 iirc opening the case actually might make the performance worse because steam deck relies on the fan to draw fresh airover the VRM heat sink near the bottom vent holes, so removing that will remove the air over VRMs
@@STORMFIRE07 not only that it relies on the cover to draw air over the charging controller, gamers nexus did a very dense thermal analysis. With the back cover on it keeps the charge controller 10° under Max spec, with the cover off it almost hits thermal runaway... Please please please do not run it without the back cover.
Wow! At 15W consumption it can easily compete with the desktop CPU and APU with higher power consumption. That is really impressive. I can't wait for the future iteration of this AMD APU.
It won't, AMD doesn't wants it, they consider it a waste of 7 NM and rather sell a full cpu (minimum IGPU core count) or give a full GPU. After all AMD striped laptop GPUs just to make more margins selling them as desktop GPU.
@@goa141no6 ? You mean the 6500 XT, the only GPU to be stripped down to hit a specific price point? Sure. But you do realize the 6000 series laptop APUs will come with more cores and more CUs than the Steam Deck. 6800U will be 8 cores, 12CUs of RDNA2. When AM5 comes around, I imagine we’ll get a higher power version of those APUs, either with Zen 3 or even with Zen 4, and have DDR5 speeds which will be fantastic for APUs.
@@johnbuscher But laptops run 1080p or 4K displays you'll need the extra CUs to get anywhere near ok performance and it'll likely be a bit crap for gaming. The decks screen is 1280x800 for a reason.
You're making it sound a lot smoother than Linus Tech did. Watched their video and it appeared that right now Windows is absolutely horrendous on the Steam Deck. I hope it gets better, primarily for the sake of Game Pass.
I've been using windows 11 on my deck and haven't had ANY issues at all!! It's been nice, now I still have SteamOs installed into the internal ssd, and windows 11 on a 512gb micro sd card, its honestly surprised me how well it works, especially with it being installed on a little SD card haha, but it does lol
@@MrRunItUp How is it/has been holding up. I heard numerous people say windows on sd card is very bad and I'm concerned. Might dual boot my deck instead.
An app from Steam called Wallpaper Engine. Although it's a paid app it's cheap and has lots and lots of options from the community with lots of themes and categories.
Just got my deck yesterday. I'm enjoying SteamOS, though there are things here and there that would certainly be easier with Windows (stuff outside of just regular Steam games). However I think I'm going to stick with SteamOS for now, as far as just running Steam games goes I can't imagine it getting any easier.
Have you tried the KDE desktop yet? Might work just as well for your purpose? Congrats, can’t wait to get mine (q2, so anywhere between ‘soon’ and ‘not soon enough’.
@@marcelslofstra2157 yeah, and for the most part it's all very simple, but there are certain things are a pain that I haven't gotten a good grip on yet. Mostly installing stuff through Lutris.
There are apps like Mini Galaxy for GoG and Heroic Launcher that was originally just for Epic games but now does GoG as well. Heroic is actually a lot better than the Epic Launcher.
@@loop5720 lutris is not emulation. It's a front end for managing your games similar to playnite and big box. You can set it up to run your roms for you too.
What I found in my extensive time playing Infinite and what settings I would have like to see tested would have been as followed: - Uninstall high res texture pack - 800p or 720p - 100% render res scaling - Set BOTH the min and max fps in the settings to 60 for dynamic res - 90 or lower FOV This should get the Steam deck playing at 60fps in multiplayer, no problem
Thanks! I bought my re-order with the idea of using Game pass through windows on the Steam Deck. I am still waiting for mine but I am glad someone did the testing on that idea. Good to know that it's going to work well
If the wattage can be bumped up a few watts without overheating this will be a game changer. Running lower watts unplugged and then higher wattage plugged in to get better performance. Im excited to see all theses developments being made with the steam deck
ETA's is the only positive experience I've heard...I'm inclined to think he was lucky and even if you can get windows running there is absolutely no point in doing so when Valve highly discourages it and Steam OS was designed for this hardware and vice versa.
Well, note that in ETA Prime he mentioned that he had to map the controls for every game not on Steam. That was one of the issues that they noted on LTT as well. Also, LTT noted that for Steam games you were much better off with Steam OS as long as it was a supported game, while ETA Prime is mostly sticking to non-Steam games in the Windows tests, and games that just won't play on Steam OS (because this is the motivation for installing Windows in the first place). Even ETA Prime said that the system is good with Steam OS, and it's only when the firmware allowing dual boot comes out that Windows will really be worth using as a second OS. Also, The Phawx's channel seemed to have a similar take to ETA Prime's.
@@CripplingDuality There is a point to put windows on the steam deck cause there's still a lot of software that people may use that just isn't compatible with linux. And the fact that gaming is still viable makes it even better.
@@ChrisianHan 100% agreed, its a really nice experience but its "cool" to bash on windows (Linus...) but if you take all bias out its not bad at all and quite cool.
Personally I'm interested in this device for 2 reason: 1-Gaming device. 2-Back up pc. However I've not seen videos showing the performance using other apps as photoshop/android studio/illustrator etc I think it would a tremendous idea to show the steam deck capabilities in production software.
Its CPU performance is similar to one of the power profiles of a Ryzen laptop I own, so from my experience I can tell you Steam Deck would be sufficient for most production software such as Audition or Photoshop. It wouldn't be on par with a modern high-end desktop obviously, but it'd be perfectly usable. Professional video editing software like Premiere would be pretty rough though. After Effects would be frustratingly slow and would probably need more RAM to really be usable. Out of the box I don't think Steam Deck would be compatible with Adobe's hardware acceleration features, but you might be able to force it somehow. I remember there used to be a trick to whitelist GPUs.
@@jonathbe5218 They did, the Rembrandt laptops are faster than this. Only reason no one talks about it, is because laptops ship with 1080p or higher displays, so performance is lost due to resolution upgrade.
I don't think that Valve will increase the allowed TDP of the device. The cooling systems does not seem to have much headroom left over the default 15W and that is totally ok because the handheld has to strike a balance between battery life, size, weight and thermals.
Honestly wouldn’t expect too much of an increase in performance anyhow, since I think the max GPU clock is locked to 1.6GHz, and it can hit that around 10W anyhow. If GPU clocks are unlocked, then some exotic cooling solution may make it feasible to run at a higher TDP, but I agree with you, battery life becomes non-existent then. If there was an easier way to increase cooling performance when docked, I would say that could be the best of both worlds, but I don’t think there’s any way to do that currently.
Mine isn't scheduled until Q3 which sucks, but judging by how quickly things are advancing, both with Steam OS 3.0 and Windows "support", I'm sure most of the bugs and performance/driver issues will be sorted by the time I get mine. I'd like to stick with Steam OS, but my main purpose is emulators and some older games. A lot of the games I want to play seem to have good compat on ProtonDB but aren't verified so it's hard to say how they'll fair. I'm sure by July-Sept all the issues with setting up Windows will be sorted out and maybe even scripted, but I also hope to see major improvements to Proton.
If possible please run the AIDA64 benchmarks on it, I'm curious to see the RAM bandwidth and latency results in particular. Also I see that resizeable BAR is disabled on Windows, which is not surprising but what about SteamOS, can you check if it's enabled there?
Yeah, that was doable pretty much since the Steam controller was released back in 2015 (Maybe they added the feature in 2016, but I can't remember). Either way, this has been a thing for several years.
This 100%, nowadays it's easy to import your entire collection of games from other platforms into steam for the purposes of using its superb gamepad mapping tool on them.
Its not taking full advantage of the vram or possibly quad channel like steamos does. Didn't allocate over 1 GB of vRAM. Which in this case could matter with the external monitor, more so the quad channel for overall apu performance.
It's not just LPDDR5 at 5500 MHz, it's also quad-channel. That gives it roughly half as much RAM bandwidth as a PS4, plus the benefit of delta color compression. That's the biggest part of the reason any off-the-shelf APU system from GPD or Aya isn't going to have comparable performance for a while. Whether it's got 8 GPU cores or 80 GPU cores, it's going to choke with only dual-channel DDR4 or DDR5. This is the reason AMD hasn't made a giant "gaming APU" besides for the console market, desktop PC RAM just isn't fast enough for it to make sense. You'd need something like 8-channel DDR5 to keep up with anything resembling a decent GPU, and the price of all those RAM sticks would make the whole proposition cost more for the end-user than just buying a video card. I've never heard a technical explanation for why we aren't using GDDR5/6 for main system RAM apart from it having much higher latency - maybe this would be too harmful for non-gaming performance. I remember it was a big surprise when the PS4/Xbone were revealed to be using GDDR5 for main system RAM, people thought it wasn't possible.
No one thought it wasn't possible for PS5 to use Gddr5, PS4 already used graphics memory In its unified pool. Performance sucks, that's why no one uses it on CPU's because as you mentioned latency. The bandwidth advantage is unnecessary.
@@foch3 I didn't say PS5, I said PS4. When rumors started circulating about PS4/Xbone using GDDR5 for main system RAM, people generally wrote these off as fake because up to that point it had been considered impossible for one reason or another.
@@AFistfulofXanax My Bad. Considered impossible by who though, a reddit poster? The memory controller would need to support it, that's it. This design is used because it's cheaper in silicon to have one memory controller that's just a little less optimized for the CPU.
@@foch3 It was just generally considered impossible or at least highly impractical at the time, this was a pretty broad consensus. Especially since Microsoft was already known to have chosen DDR3 for Xbox One. I was around when the PS4 specs were first accurately leaked and the use of GDDR5 for many system memory - that by itself - was enough for people to conclude the whole leak was made-up nonsense from someone who was too dumb and inexperienced to even write a plausible fake leak. It was reacted to in the same way people would react if a Switch Pro leak said it used a Cell processor. As I said earlier, I think the reasoning is that while GDDR has far greater peak bandwidth, its latency (or some other factor) means that using it for RAM would be a net negative for non-gaming applications. If using GDDR didn't come with tradeoffs I can't see why they wouldn't have switched to it, at least for certain high-end SKUs like i9/R9. AMD especially has shown they'd be on board with disruptive new RAM technology if it offered tangible benefits, they were early adopters of HBM.
after 20 yrs of waiting, we didnt exactly get half life 3 ... But Valve did manage to pull off what microsoft and apple couldnt !! A windows laptop that games and its smaller than a laptop. Aaaand i dont have to blow 4 months of paycheck to get some reasonable looking graphics out of it... i must be dreaming XD
If you look at the graphs, the gpu is being bottlenecked by limited vram but if you go to bios put it at atleast 2gb it would be much better for graphics intensive games
With integrated graphics you can reserve RAM for the iGPU but this doesn't mean the iGPU is limited to the reserved amount. A small reserved amount is usually recommended because it will take what it needs. On my Ryzen-based HTPC I think I only have like 128 MB reserved but it can still play games that allocate multiple gigabytes of "VRAM".
@@artstyle9606 I admit it's been a few years since I looked into this in detail, but the last impression I had was that RAM is dynamically allocated to the CPU or iGPU on demand. I'm basing this on my experience with a Ryzen laptop as well as a Ryzen HTPC, which both have only a minimal iGPU VRAM reservation, but which are able to play games which use large amounts of VRAM without issue. Are you quite sure that I'm mistaken, like you've tested this yourself recently? Because if I'm wrong I'd like to investigate it and learn more, but I don't want to waste my time if you're not confident. Thanks.
As much as using Windows instead of Linux on Steam Deck is a heresy and should not be done I cannot deny my respect for the Valve's approach of letting you do whatever you want to do with your equipment.
@@protocetid the smallest x86 Devices we have today are compute sticks, which can't fit a full RDNA2 Die, and are thicker than average phones. Samsung has squeezed RDNA2 onto a mobile device, but that's an ARM Exynos from Samsung. In my opinion, we won't be seeing an x86 phone anytime soon. Even Linux phones today use ARM versions of Linux.
@@NigelMelanisticSmith Would gamers mind a thick phone? Perhaps explaining that it can't be thin because of active cooling would make them ok with it, gaming phones aren't mainstream anyway AFAIK. Doesn't absolutely have to use the SD's chip, figured that if Valve's handheld got big enough for developers to optimize specifically for it then the Steam Phone could piggyback off it.
tbh whenever i watch an eta prime video it doesnt even need to be something super interesting i feel like he makes anything interesting in the way he presents it
My go to is PlayStation Remote Play and I'm a huge fan of mini laptops. Damn I didn't think I would even consider buying one but looks like I'm starting a Steam Desk savings fund today.
There must be some black magic going on inside that AMD CPU! Performance at 15W looks awesome. The Steam Deck could easily run as your one and only PC!
Great video. Shows how this can seriously be used as a normal computer. And it costs as much as a low range GPU does these days (if you can even get one). Probably performs just as well too
I wish / hope Microsoft puts some more focus on the Deck as well. Maybe even reach out to Valve for cooperation? When Steam brings SteamOS interface to big picture mode, more people will begin to use Windows 11 on this, I guess.
You know what would make a great comparison is benchmarking the games on it using steam in windows compared to steam Linux OSI maybe even seeing if running the steam deck steam ui in windows shows any performance difference.
I would love a tutorial on how to dual boot Windows and Steam OS on this. Hopefully they release those Audio drivers before I get one because I'm defo throwing Windows on mine as soon as I get it.
You might fry the power regulators if you mess with a higher tdp ... Cooling is design for 15W so be aware that this might be a bad idea in the long run.
Hey, great video As always. If you interested it would be really nice to see a performance comparison of the same games both on windows and steamos, on their maximum playable settings.
It'll be interesting to see if the BIOS locks down any attempt to raise the TDP above 15W for thermal reasons (I probably would if I were Valve to prevent users "melting" their Deck). If it isn't restricted and you can run it at a higher TDP without thermal throttling, then I would have expected someone to have tried to do it by now on SteamOS surely?
Thanks for the performance rundown, but you pointed out Forza Horizon 5 at 1080p with resolution scaling set to Performance. Their resolution scaling is a basic upscaler, no FSR, no DLSS or even Unreal's TAA upsampling, meaning it's basically running the game at 720p (or lower?) except for the UI which would be 1080p. It seems a bit misleading to suggest the Steam Deck is running the game smoothly at 1080p when it's actually a much lower resolution and definitely not the same experience as native 1080p. Thanks again for diving into this!
Hi, great video! Recently got my deck and really like it. Installed Windows 10 and Forza Horizon 5 on Micro SD card but the controls are not working. Steam controls recognized as a keyboard and mouse. Any idea how can i switch to the controller mode so all the buttons will be working?
It looks like someday we can have very little but nice windows pc & game deck in once by Steam deck! (with low price for the performance and even easy to carry!)Thx for the good video about what I'm curiousing!
Still waiting for my purchase email.. but this is the device i was looking for the last years. Its probably too early, but i guess there will be further improvements coming in down the line either officially or by 3rd party devs. Please keep locked on to the development to be able to run windows on steamdeck 🤩
Ah, I see you have the Micron RAM. I wonder how much that affects it? RAM timings have a HUGE impact on GPU performance, as shown just a few years ago by the Nvidia GeForce 1070 and 1080 cards, I'd be interested in which RAM yours has. Valve announced recently that, as part of their ramping up production rates, they have secured a second memory supplier, so your SteamDeck may now, exactly like the Nvidia cards before, either have Samsung or Micron RAM modules. This made about a 15-20% difference in high-end stability and overclock capabilities on the SAME CARD model with different RAM in the case of the 1070+ cards, something I personally tested with 2 otherwise identical 1070FE cards (snagged right around launch - within 1-2 weeks of), and since APUs are even more drastically affected in graphics performance than dedicated GPUs by RAM speed, I expect to see different performance levels based on which ones we get in the silicon lottery.
@@gustavrsh nah bandwidth plays a massive part in Apu performance. Giving the steam deck more juice would give drastically diminishing returns even if the temps are kept under control
@@stealthysaucepan2016 Sure but I don’t know that the 8 CUs here are going to benefit as much from more bandwidth either. They could, but I could just as easily believe that a 25W part with 2GHz on the GPU side would also net a hefty performance bonus.
@@stealthysaucepan2016 Yeah, that's where the better timing gave some 10xx cards a 10-15% better performance OOB even at the same stock speeds and voltages, with the potential to boost SOME of them even further, but still better even without overclocking at all. I expect to see a similar situation here, and will be watching for any pattern we can determine. 😁
At least windows has gotten better support now with newer drivers and such, I don't have my deck yet getting it for xmas first thing I'll do is install windows 11 pro after I upgrade my SSD
I would love a windows vs proton performance and battery test. Great work!
looking glass or gpu pass trough would be a good test
There's already one, at Linux For Everyone
It varies by game. Proton will be faster a lot of the time, plus you can factor in mobile optimizations Valve's made like the option to limit framerate to 30 FPS, use upscaling on demand, cap TDP, etc. Apparently Proton/DXVK batches GPU commands which helps to alleviate CPU limitations and reduce memory traffic, so a lot of CPU-demanding DX11/10/9 games especially will run better through Proton than Windows.
@@sixdroid i wish, just on an optimus laptop alone i am having a hard time configuring it..
In Cyberpunk SteamOS is 10 fps faster than Windows. But i want to see other games.
I love Valve approach, limit nothing, options, options, options. 😀
"Why have OR, when you can have AND" ;)
Limit nothing except game production
@@marsmurderer9868 I mean, they're not a charity. The risk-reward involved in producing a game vs administering an online marketplace is a no brainer business wise, so it makes sense to prioritize it.
Also if you ever plan to push it higher than 15 watts I recommend you cool it very well as the deck gets pretty hot at 15 watts
You will need stronger fans or make it an open case system.
@@goa141no6 iirc opening the case actually might make the performance worse because steam deck relies on the fan to draw fresh airover the VRM heat sink near the bottom vent holes, so removing that will remove the air over VRMs
Does anyone know what's the name of that cool Retro 80s Windows desktop app ETA Prime is running on his Steam deck?
Yeah I think linus's teardown mentioned that too
@@STORMFIRE07 not only that it relies on the cover to draw air over the charging controller, gamers nexus did a very dense thermal analysis.
With the back cover on it keeps the charge controller 10° under Max spec, with the cover off it almost hits thermal runaway... Please please please do not run it without the back cover.
Wow! At 15W consumption it can easily compete with the desktop CPU and APU with higher power consumption. That is really impressive. I can't wait for the future iteration of this AMD APU.
It won't, AMD doesn't wants it, they consider it a waste of 7 NM and rather sell a full cpu (minimum IGPU core count) or give a full GPU. After all AMD striped laptop GPUs just to make more margins selling them as desktop GPU.
@@goa141no6 ? You mean the 6500 XT, the only GPU to be stripped down to hit a specific price point? Sure. But you do realize the 6000 series laptop APUs will come with more cores and more CUs than the Steam Deck. 6800U will be 8 cores, 12CUs of RDNA2. When AM5 comes around, I imagine we’ll get a higher power version of those APUs, either with Zen 3 or even with Zen 4, and have DDR5 speeds which will be fantastic for APUs.
@@johnbuscher But laptops run 1080p or 4K displays you'll need the extra CUs to get anywhere near ok performance and it'll likely be a bit crap for gaming. The decks screen is 1280x800 for a reason.
@@goa141no6 oh you work for AMD? Lol your opinion on AMD business practices means nothing.
@@eagle_rb_mmoomin_418 There's also a thing called just lower the resolution you game at
The Aerith APU is a 15W part, but total system draw is typically around 25W. Have you measured power at the wall?
This is an important difference! Thanks for pointing that out!
Also, I've been really enjoying your content lately! Keep it up!
@@bulletpunch9317 No because there isn't a docked mode
Total power draw at the wall peaks at 45 watts if the system is under heavy load and the battery is charging from empty.
You're making it sound a lot smoother than Linus Tech did. Watched their video and it appeared that right now Windows is absolutely horrendous on the Steam Deck. I hope it gets better, primarily for the sake of Game Pass.
I've been using windows 11 on my deck and haven't had ANY issues at all!! It's been nice, now I still have SteamOs installed into the internal ssd, and windows 11 on a 512gb micro sd card, its honestly surprised me how well it works, especially with it being installed on a little SD card haha, but it does lol
@@MrRunItUp How is it/has been holding up. I heard numerous people say windows on sd card is very bad and I'm concerned. Might dual boot my deck instead.
Would love to see a battery test with steamOS and windows.
probably not enough difference when actually playing, but not irrelevant for when doing other less demanding stuff
Check out the LTT video
Me too. I'd love to see what kind of battery life you can get out of the steam deck playing those AAA games on low settings.
Would love to see a battery test while running Microsoft Office suite and Adobe, cos that is what many Windows users do... :)
@Doomguy yeah, windows has a lot more bloatware running on it also
What do you use for the desktop background? Plus any plans to do a SteamOS vs Windows performance comparison?
I saw Wallpaper Engine at his desktop
@@johngoodenough8857 yes it is wallpaper engine, you can find it in the steam store :)
An app from Steam called Wallpaper Engine. Although it's a paid app it's cheap and has lots and lots of options from the community with lots of themes and categories.
@@M4RC0Geek Do I need another library/ source for this live wallpaper or is it included via the ap from Steam?
@@hassosigbjoernson5738 it’s completely unrelated to Steam.
Just got my deck yesterday. I'm enjoying SteamOS, though there are things here and there that would certainly be easier with Windows (stuff outside of just regular Steam games). However I think I'm going to stick with SteamOS for now, as far as just running Steam games goes I can't imagine it getting any easier.
Have you tried the KDE desktop yet? Might work just as well for your purpose?
Congrats, can’t wait to get mine (q2, so anywhere between ‘soon’ and ‘not soon enough’.
@@marcelslofstra2157 yeah, and for the most part it's all very simple, but there are certain things are a pain that I haven't gotten a good grip on yet. Mostly installing stuff through Lutris.
@@captain_zed is Lutris emulation?
There are apps like Mini Galaxy for GoG and Heroic Launcher that was originally just for Epic games but now does GoG as well. Heroic is actually a lot better than the Epic Launcher.
@@loop5720 lutris is not emulation. It's a front end for managing your games similar to playnite and big box. You can set it up to run your roms for you too.
What I found in my extensive time playing Infinite and what settings I would have like to see tested would have been as followed:
- Uninstall high res texture pack
- 800p or 720p
- 100% render res scaling
- Set BOTH the min and max fps in the settings to 60 for dynamic res
- 90 or lower FOV
This should get the Steam deck playing at 60fps in multiplayer, no problem
And FSR (Lossless Scaling software on Steamt to help with that)
Finally a Linux based gaming a device and he puts on windows :3
Thanks! I bought my re-order with the idea of using Game pass through windows on the Steam Deck. I am still waiting for mine but I am glad someone did the testing on that idea. Good to know that it's going to work well
How did it went? Is windows good and stable?
Been waiting for eta to get his hands on the steamdeck, the only person who knows the actual use of such gadgets
If the wattage can be bumped up a few watts without overheating this will be a game changer. Running lower watts unplugged and then higher wattage plugged in to get better performance. Im excited to see all theses developments being made with the steam deck
Dang. Wildly different takes on Windows on Steam Deck out here. Linus’ take was “I instantly regretted it” and Prime’s is like “Hey not bad!”
ETA's is the only positive experience I've heard...I'm inclined to think he was lucky and even if you can get windows running there is absolutely no point in doing so when Valve highly discourages it and Steam OS was designed for this hardware and vice versa.
Well, note that in ETA Prime he mentioned that he had to map the controls for every game not on Steam. That was one of the issues that they noted on LTT as well. Also, LTT noted that for Steam games you were much better off with Steam OS as long as it was a supported game, while ETA Prime is mostly sticking to non-Steam games in the Windows tests, and games that just won't play on Steam OS (because this is the motivation for installing Windows in the first place). Even ETA Prime said that the system is good with Steam OS, and it's only when the firmware allowing dual boot comes out that Windows will really be worth using as a second OS.
Also, The Phawx's channel seemed to have a similar take to ETA Prime's.
I installed windows on my steam deck, and its really not as bad as people say it is
@@CripplingDuality There is a point to put windows on the steam deck cause there's still a lot of software that people may use that just isn't compatible with linux. And the fact that gaming is still viable makes it even better.
@@ChrisianHan 100% agreed, its a really nice experience but its "cool" to bash on windows (Linus...) but if you take all bias out its not bad at all and quite cool.
Now if only Q2 can start getting emails, your videos have me so excited to get mine.
mine was after q2 now it says after q3 🙃
@@Mr_Pewpy_But-Whole dang, i'm sorry! i got my order in about 10 mins after launch still says Q2 :(
Personally I'm interested in this device for 2 reason:
1-Gaming device.
2-Back up pc.
However I've not seen videos showing the performance using other apps as photoshop/android studio/illustrator etc
I think it would a tremendous idea to show the steam deck capabilities in production software.
Its CPU performance is similar to one of the power profiles of a Ryzen laptop I own, so from my experience I can tell you Steam Deck would be sufficient for most production software such as Audition or Photoshop. It wouldn't be on par with a modern high-end desktop obviously, but it'd be perfectly usable. Professional video editing software like Premiere would be pretty rough though. After Effects would be frustratingly slow and would probably need more RAM to really be usable.
Out of the box I don't think Steam Deck would be compatible with Adobe's hardware acceleration features, but you might be able to force it somehow. I remember there used to be a trick to whitelist GPUs.
@@AFistfulofXanax Thanks for your answer! you nailed it!
Never ever gonna install Windows when I get mine, but I'm curious to see how well it'll run.
Def gonna sideload on mine so I can do both and play everything
even if it runs well the desktop GUI will make it a pain to use
dummy😂
Everything lines up with what I've been seeing, thanks for the video!
Noooooooo, hai postato Windows! Eresia!
Basato
@@monki_sudo imagine being this salty over windows
Didn’t expect performance to be this good at 15 watts. Imagine it at 25
Why dont amd put this in laptop
@@jonathbe5218 Probably because their Cezanne APUs fulfill the same need?
@@jonathbe5218 They did, the Rembrandt laptops are faster than this. Only reason no one talks about it, is because laptops ship with 1080p or higher displays, so performance is lost due to resolution upgrade.
@@dondraper4438 Ah yes, I think I meant Rembrandt not Cezanne, yes.
Diminishing returns I'm afraid
Even your subbed-in background music is Synthwave, haha! Thanks for another great review.
I don't think that Valve will increase the allowed TDP of the device. The cooling systems does not seem to have much headroom left over the default 15W and that is totally ok because the handheld has to strike a balance between battery life, size, weight and thermals.
Honestly wouldn’t expect too much of an increase in performance anyhow, since I think the max GPU clock is locked to 1.6GHz, and it can hit that around 10W anyhow. If GPU clocks are unlocked, then some exotic cooling solution may make it feasible to run at a higher TDP, but I agree with you, battery life becomes non-existent then. If there was an easier way to increase cooling performance when docked, I would say that could be the best of both worlds, but I don’t think there’s any way to do that currently.
NEVER is it a bad idea to test Skyrim on anything.
Mine isn't scheduled until Q3 which sucks, but judging by how quickly things are advancing, both with Steam OS 3.0 and Windows "support", I'm sure most of the bugs and performance/driver issues will be sorted by the time I get mine. I'd like to stick with Steam OS, but my main purpose is emulators and some older games. A lot of the games I want to play seem to have good compat on ProtonDB but aren't verified so it's hard to say how they'll fair. I'm sure by July-Sept all the issues with setting up Windows will be sorted out and maybe even scripted, but I also hope to see major improvements to Proton.
How can you tell when yours is scheduled? I don't know how to check mine.
If possible please run the AIDA64 benchmarks on it, I'm curious to see the RAM bandwidth and latency results in particular.
Also I see that resizeable BAR is disabled on Windows, which is not surprising but what about SteamOS, can you check if it's enabled there?
I think it's possible to use Steam gamepad config for non-steam games. Just add it as a non-steam game.
Yeah, that was doable pretty much since the Steam controller was released back in 2015 (Maybe they added the feature in 2016, but I can't remember). Either way, this has been a thing for several years.
This 100%, nowadays it's easy to import your entire collection of games from other platforms into steam for the purposes of using its superb gamepad mapping tool on them.
Now do Switch emulation! I dare you ETA!! 😂
Lol
💀
I've never been so excited for a single piece of tech in so long
Its not taking full advantage of the vram or possibly quad channel like steamos does.
Didn't allocate over 1 GB of vRAM. Which in this case could matter with the external monitor, more so the quad channel for overall apu performance.
I was waiting so eagerly for you to receive the Deck. Many thanks Eta, great videos. I wish they get to release it in my country.
I pre-ordered it 4 days after it was announced and they've pushed back my preorder 4 times now.
It's not just LPDDR5 at 5500 MHz, it's also quad-channel. That gives it roughly half as much RAM bandwidth as a PS4, plus the benefit of delta color compression. That's the biggest part of the reason any off-the-shelf APU system from GPD or Aya isn't going to have comparable performance for a while. Whether it's got 8 GPU cores or 80 GPU cores, it's going to choke with only dual-channel DDR4 or DDR5.
This is the reason AMD hasn't made a giant "gaming APU" besides for the console market, desktop PC RAM just isn't fast enough for it to make sense. You'd need something like 8-channel DDR5 to keep up with anything resembling a decent GPU, and the price of all those RAM sticks would make the whole proposition cost more for the end-user than just buying a video card.
I've never heard a technical explanation for why we aren't using GDDR5/6 for main system RAM apart from it having much higher latency - maybe this would be too harmful for non-gaming performance. I remember it was a big surprise when the PS4/Xbone were revealed to be using GDDR5 for main system RAM, people thought it wasn't possible.
Exactly what Ive been saying for ages. It's literally the most overlooked part
No one thought it wasn't possible for PS5 to use Gddr5, PS4 already used graphics memory In its unified pool. Performance sucks, that's why no one uses it on CPU's because as you mentioned latency. The bandwidth advantage is unnecessary.
@@foch3 I didn't say PS5, I said PS4. When rumors started circulating about PS4/Xbone using GDDR5 for main system RAM, people generally wrote these off as fake because up to that point it had been considered impossible for one reason or another.
@@AFistfulofXanax My Bad. Considered impossible by who though, a reddit poster? The memory controller would need to support it, that's it. This design is used because it's cheaper in silicon to have one memory controller that's just a little less optimized for the CPU.
@@foch3 It was just generally considered impossible or at least highly impractical at the time, this was a pretty broad consensus. Especially since Microsoft was already known to have chosen DDR3 for Xbox One. I was around when the PS4 specs were first accurately leaked and the use of GDDR5 for many system memory - that by itself - was enough for people to conclude the whole leak was made-up nonsense from someone who was too dumb and inexperienced to even write a plausible fake leak. It was reacted to in the same way people would react if a Switch Pro leak said it used a Cell processor.
As I said earlier, I think the reasoning is that while GDDR has far greater peak bandwidth, its latency (or some other factor) means that using it for RAM would be a net negative for non-gaming applications. If using GDDR didn't come with tradeoffs I can't see why they wouldn't have switched to it, at least for certain high-end SKUs like i9/R9. AMD especially has shown they'd be on board with disruptive new RAM technology if it offered tangible benefits, they were early adopters of HBM.
Can you test Batocera? Would love to see how well that will work for the ArcadePunks guys.
Thanks! LTT gave a bad review, but it was not based on much. Thank You!
Any Genshin Impact test in the future?
after 20 yrs of waiting, we didnt exactly get half life 3 ... But Valve did manage to pull off what microsoft and apple couldnt !!
A windows laptop that games and its smaller than a laptop. Aaaand i dont have to blow 4 months of paycheck to get some reasonable looking graphics out of it... i must be dreaming XD
it might be cheap... but you have to order it now and wait a year to actually get it... 🤣
If you look at the graphs, the gpu is being bottlenecked by limited vram but if you go to bios put it at atleast 2gb it would be much better for graphics intensive games
With integrated graphics you can reserve RAM for the iGPU but this doesn't mean the iGPU is limited to the reserved amount. A small reserved amount is usually recommended because it will take what it needs. On my Ryzen-based HTPC I think I only have like 128 MB reserved but it can still play games that allocate multiple gigabytes of "VRAM".
@@AFistfulofXanax but it bottleneck the igpu making the less powerful cpu to take on the task
@@artstyle9606 That's not how it works.
@@AFistfulofXanax unfortunately it does, unless you decrease the settings making it consume the exact or less vram
@@artstyle9606 I admit it's been a few years since I looked into this in detail, but the last impression I had was that RAM is dynamically allocated to the CPU or iGPU on demand. I'm basing this on my experience with a Ryzen laptop as well as a Ryzen HTPC, which both have only a minimal iGPU VRAM reservation, but which are able to play games which use large amounts of VRAM without issue. Are you quite sure that I'm mistaken, like you've tested this yourself recently? Because if I'm wrong I'd like to investigate it and learn more, but I don't want to waste my time if you're not confident. Thanks.
Steam OS dual boot will be awesome
As much as using Windows instead of Linux on Steam Deck is a heresy and should not be done I cannot deny my respect for the Valve's approach of letting you do whatever you want to do with your equipment.
imagine if they made a Steam Phone!
@@protocetid I have to respect your ambition lol, ARM Proton would be crazy though
@@NigelMelanisticSmith Well I meant a more energy efficient version of the Steam Deck's APU running mobile Linux.
@@protocetid the smallest x86 Devices we have today are compute sticks, which can't fit a full RDNA2 Die, and are thicker than average phones. Samsung has squeezed RDNA2 onto a mobile device, but that's an ARM Exynos from Samsung. In my opinion, we won't be seeing an x86 phone anytime soon. Even Linux phones today use ARM versions of Linux.
@@NigelMelanisticSmith Would gamers mind a thick phone? Perhaps explaining that it can't be thin because of active cooling would make them ok with it, gaming phones aren't mainstream anyway AFAIK. Doesn't absolutely have to use the SD's chip, figured that if Valve's handheld got big enough for developers to optimize specifically for it then the Steam Phone could piggyback off it.
tbh whenever i watch an eta prime video it doesnt even need to be something super interesting i feel like he makes anything interesting in the way he presents it
Steam os is pretty solid
My go to is PlayStation Remote Play and I'm a huge fan of mini laptops. Damn I didn't think I would even consider buying one but looks like I'm starting a Steam Desk savings fund today.
At the moment it looks like proton performs better with that higher tdp. Looking forward to your next video with the updates!
There is no higher TDP. Both SteamOS (+Proton) and Windows use 15w for the APU
Imagine taking something like this with you back to 1985 and showing someone like Gary Kildal?
love the coverage. keep it up. Looking forward to the emulation video.
A+ video, already can't wait for the next Deck video
The thing is, can the cooling handle 25W? There is no point in increasing the performance if that is gonna fry the Apu
It would be awesome to see an update to this, especially now that we have the OLED model
Sooo excited, got my deck last week and loving it
Hey ETA, can you run BigBox on the Steam Deck? This would be my preferred Frontend/UI for Windows on Steam.
Yeah, that what's I'm hoping to see. Would love a steam deck running windows and Launchbox
There must be some black magic going on inside that AMD CPU! Performance at 15W looks awesome. The Steam Deck could easily run as your one and only PC!
Great video. Shows how this can seriously be used as a normal computer. And it costs as much as a low range GPU does these days (if you can even get one). Probably performs just as well too
I mean, you can use it as a normal computer with just the Linux desktop, with better performance without all the telemetry that microsoft bundles.
Damnnnn Can't believe you did SKYRIM!!!! YOU ARE A LEGEND
Good to know I'm not the only one experiencing Bluetooth audio issues in halo infinite lol
Since you got this stuff, you're really excited.
Please do in deep mod for this one.
For getting a lot of things that can be handle by this Steam.
Great video. The comparative benchmarking is really helpful.
What would really help the steamdeck are monitors that support VFR. Without VFR a dip to 55FPS can feel like a drop to 15
Can you make photoshop/video editing on steam deck(windows)?
Your videos are really good & detailed!
👍
Does anyone know what's the name of that cool Retro 80s Windows desktop app ETA Prime is running on his Steam deck?
Wallpaper engine
Waiting for the inevitable Batocera video :)
I wish / hope Microsoft puts some more focus on the Deck as well. Maybe even reach out to Valve for cooperation? When Steam brings SteamOS interface to big picture mode, more people will begin to use Windows 11 on this, I guess.
I would love an updated steam deck video!
Increíble !!! Espero con ansias el video de emulación...
I can't wait for my steamdeck. I love forza and dirt 5 and they played great. Thanks for the demo . This thing is going to be great
Please make a comparison between steamos vs windows and test all the AAA Games also
You know what would make a great comparison is benchmarking the games on it using steam in windows compared to steam Linux OSI maybe even seeing if running the steam deck steam ui in windows shows any performance difference.
What about a lite version of windows 10,does that improve the fps?
If I buy one of these I’ll want to see other non-steam games using the steam buttons if they would normally support a controller.
I would love a tutorial on how to dual boot Windows and Steam OS on this. Hopefully they release those Audio drivers before I get one because I'm defo throwing Windows on mine as soon as I get it.
Very impressive this steam deck, definetely I will buy one soon.
You might fry the power regulators if you mess with a higher tdp ... Cooling is design for 15W so be aware that this might be a bad idea in the long run.
😂😆😂 DO YOU REALIZE WHO YOU ARE TELLING THAT TO DUDE 🤣
@@allhandsonsteamdeck1440 yes, still a fair warning....
Imagine editing videos on it. That’s nuts
I’m saving up my money for this beast. 💪😎
I wish we could have seen cemu performance, surprised you didn't try that out... I've been waiting for that for ages.
Probably doesn't want Nintendo to take his videos down
@Doomguy And it can already run on Linux thanks to Proton
Thank you. Very thorough!
I love how he has steam on steam
It's nice to see the screen proving the system is running it.. but would prefer the direct capture. Great vid!
Awesome Video!
I feel like the sound not functioning was a halo problem and not a deck problem. It's happened multiple times on my xbox
Hey, great video As always. If you interested it would be really nice to see a performance comparison of the same games both on windows and steamos, on their maximum playable settings.
Ive been waiting since 25 years for something like the steam deck
It'll be interesting to see if the BIOS locks down any attempt to raise the TDP above 15W for thermal reasons (I probably would if I were Valve to prevent users "melting" their Deck). If it isn't restricted and you can run it at a higher TDP without thermal throttling, then I would have expected someone to have tried to do it by now on SteamOS surely?
How do you get the desktop background from the start of the video with the car in it?
He used Wallpaper Engine
Thanks. Never used it before, will give it a try. That background is sick.
Ltt be having problems with windows on Steam Deck while ETA just shows us its capabilities... XD
Thanks for the performance rundown, but you pointed out Forza Horizon 5 at 1080p with resolution scaling set to Performance. Their resolution scaling is a basic upscaler, no FSR, no DLSS or even Unreal's TAA upsampling, meaning it's basically running the game at 720p (or lower?) except for the UI which would be 1080p.
It seems a bit misleading to suggest the Steam Deck is running the game smoothly at 1080p when it's actually a much lower resolution and definitely not the same experience as native 1080p.
Thanks again for diving into this!
Hi, great video! Recently got my deck and really like it. Installed Windows 10 and Forza Horizon 5 on Micro SD card but the controls are not working. Steam controls recognized as a keyboard and mouse. Any idea how can i switch to the controller mode so all the buttons will be working?
Hopefully, by the time I get mine, these driver issues and TDP customization problems can be resolved.
Im right there with you bro, will most likely get mine by the end of the year 😭
It looks like someday we can have very little but nice windows pc & game deck in once by Steam deck! (with low price for the performance and even easy to carry!)Thx for the good video about what I'm curiousing!
Still waiting for my purchase email.. but this is the device i was looking for the last years. Its probably too early, but i guess there will be further improvements coming in down the line either officially or by 3rd party devs. Please keep locked on to the development to be able to run windows on steamdeck 🤩
Any chance you could do a Passmark benchmark?
Ah, I see you have the Micron RAM. I wonder how much that affects it?
RAM timings have a HUGE impact on GPU performance, as shown just a few years ago by the Nvidia GeForce 1070 and 1080 cards, I'd be interested in which RAM yours has. Valve announced recently that, as part of their ramping up production rates, they have secured a second memory supplier, so your SteamDeck may now, exactly like the Nvidia cards before, either have Samsung or Micron RAM modules. This made about a 15-20% difference in high-end stability and overclock capabilities on the SAME CARD model with different RAM in the case of the 1070+ cards, something I personally tested with 2 otherwise identical 1070FE cards (snagged right around launch - within 1-2 weeks of), and since APUs are even more drastically affected in graphics performance than dedicated GPUs by RAM speed, I expect to see different performance levels based on which ones we get in the silicon lottery.
I'm sure the bottleneck here is power
@@gustavrsh nah bandwidth plays a massive part in Apu performance. Giving the steam deck more juice would give drastically diminishing returns even if the temps are kept under control
@@stealthysaucepan2016 Sure but I don’t know that the 8 CUs here are going to benefit as much from more bandwidth either. They could, but I could just as easily believe that a 25W part with 2GHz on the GPU side would also net a hefty performance bonus.
@@stealthysaucepan2016 Yeah, that's where the better timing gave some 10xx cards a 10-15% better performance OOB even at the same stock speeds and voltages, with the potential to boost SOME of them even further, but still better even without overclocking at all. I expect to see a similar situation here, and will be watching for any pattern we can determine. 😁
Atleast an windows on deck review
Test Linux VS Windows. Which will give the best performance when it comes to emulation? Thanks.
At least windows has gotten better support now with newer drivers and such, I don't have my deck yet getting it for xmas first thing I'll do is install windows 11 pro after I upgrade my SSD
Seriously considering getting this to play my game pass games
No audio is a HUGE deal breaker.. :/ Hopefully it'll be fixed by the time I get mine a few months from now.
Awesome demo dude! New subscriber ✅
Windows scaling is true 4k. It just uses higher res icons and makes them bigger.
This performs better than my surface pro x 😆