Valve’s Steam Deck – Everything You Need To Know

Valve's Steam Deck - Everything You Need To Know

In July 2021, Valve officially unveiled its new hardware in the form of a mobile computer in the form of a handheld. The PC sold exclusively via Steam, which many consider competing with the Nintendo Switch, is not meant to be easily marketed. This is confirmed by the recent announcement in November that the first shipment was delayed by two months (until February). Today, you can only make a reservation for PLN 18, which after the second quarter of II 2022 will be converted into the option of placing an order. So we have a lot of time, but we regularly receive new information about this equipment, which is why we have created an article especially for you, pointing to everything you need to know about Valve’s Steam Deck.

What is Steam Deck Valve and what will it be able to do?

In short, Steam Deck is a portable gaming computer from Valve Corporation originally conceived as “special hardware for Steam”. However, think about it a bit more, because how to transfer a laptop to a handheld and it is no exaggeration, because we will be able to install third-party applications on it, and the operating system pre-installed on it can be easily replaced with others. The original one will be a modified Arch Linux, or more precisely SteamOS v3.0, for which Valve has provided the appropriate API for developers in accordance with the selection of the appropriate game settings. The fully compatible ones will be called “Steam Deck Verified”, while playing those labeled “Steam Deck Playable” will require thoughtfulness from the player. In addition to the titles marked in this way, there will also be those that are completely unsupported and not yet verified.

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The games themselves will be able to run on Steam Deck mainly due to Proton support, i.e. special software that allows you to run Windows games on Linux. There will also be support from anti-cheating tools like Easy Anti-Cheat or Battleye. We also know from one of FAQ that Steam Deck will support multiple Steam accounts on a single copy, it will even launch games from outside the library through Proton and thus allow you to add them to it, supporting the ext4 format in the case of microSD cards. In terms of mobile and docked performance, this one is identical, while the games don’t require a network connection to play. There is even an option to use this mobile computer as a controller thanks to Remote Play.

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Regarding the computer’s capabilities, Valve stated at the outset that it hadn’t found any game that couldn’t sustain the 30fps level on Steam Deck. It suggested that we would play literally everything on this computer, but over time the company began to pursue a narrative oriented to the aforementioned division into games, which called it into question. Not by the performance itself, but simply by the compatibility of the games with Proton, which, however, can be patched by Valve … or ourselves, if we decide to install, for example, Windows on Steam Deck. However, it is hard to say at the moment how such an operation will affect the overall performance, and it will certainly affect, looking at the importance of software optimization for non-standard hardware, which we will deal with in a moment.

Steam Deck from the outside, i.e. housing details and specifications

We must admit that weighing 669 grams, the Valve Steam Deck console with dimensions of 298 x 117 x 49 mm looks pleasing to the eye and definitely like something from the top shelf. It gives the impression of a more elegant Switch, but do not count on the possibility of detaching the sections with controls arranged around the 7-inch touch screen. These are permanently integrated into the console and on the top provide two 32.5mm vibrating trackpads, knobs, a D-Pad and a set of traditional ABXY and function buttons. You can also see holes under which there are stereo speakers (two) and microphones (also two).

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On the top edge of the Steam Deck there are triggers under the middle and index fingers, volume control buttons, a 4-pole 3.5mm jack port, vents, a 45W USB-C connector, a function LED and an on / off button. On the back of this mobile computer there are two more pairs of buttons and a slot for SD, SDXC and SDHC cards. There is also a six-axis gyroscope under the hood, Bluetooth 5.0 and dual-band Wi-Fi 2.4 and 5 GHz. A special, separately sold docking station is also coming to the market, providing access to 3 USB ports (1 × 3.1, 2 × 2.0), Ethernet, DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0. However, little is known about it at the time of writing this test.

On the screen side, there is a 7-inch 16:10 touch LCD with an optically bonded IPS panel for better readability. It has a native brightness of 400 nits, a resolution of 1280 x 800 and a refresh rate of 60 Hz. It works with the ambient light sensor, adjusting the brightness automatically depending on the need, which is probably also influenced by the built-in 40 Wh battery with a durability of 2 to 8 hours of entertainment. The display itself can be omitted and monitors / TVs with a quality of up to 8K at 60 FPS can be connected via USB-C.

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Wersje Steam Deck od Valve

Before we get into the hardware details, it is worth mentioning that the Steam Deck is sold in the form of three very similar models, the differences of which are mainly down to memory and equipment. So, for PLN 1899, you can buy the cheapest model in a set with a case and 64 GB of eMMC mass memory. For PLN 2499 you will get a 256 GB NVMe PCIe 3.0 × 4 SSD drive and an exclusive skin for your Steam account, and for PLN 3099 you will get a 512 GB NVMe SSD drive, plus an “exclusive” case, a skin for a profile and a virtual keyboard as well as anti-reflective protection display.

In times when games require tens or even hundreds of GB of free space, and their loading screens sometimes take a long time without SSD, only madmen will reach for the basic Steam Deck … in theory. Soon after the premiere of Steam Deck, it turned out that each of the consoles will have an M.2 2230 slot for an SSD drive, which also applies to the cheapest one. In theory, we can “put” our own disc bought in the store in this place, which, however, Valve does not recommend. However, the company recently indicated that console boot times will only increase by 25% and games will load 12.5% ​​faster compared to 512GB SSD with 64GB eMMC memory.

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What drives Steam Deck?

Valve has a very, very relaxed approach to their gear, revealing all the details in a pleasant form. This is underlined by the following video, which shows in detail the process of dismantling a computer, stating that it is better not to do it on your own. This is important material, because it reveals to us what awaits all the “smart” who are planning to play with the M.2 2230 slot.

It also allows you to look at the inside of the Steam Deck, which hides two of the most important things – APU developed together with AMD and 16 GB of shared RAM LPDDR5-5500. Valve recently revealed a number of new details about this APU, pointing to its code name (Aerith) and confirming its technology. I am talking about the Zen 2 architecture in the case of a 4-core and 8-thread processor with 2.4-3.5 GHz clocks and 8 Compute Units of the RDNA 2 graphics core clocked at 1-1.6 GHz.

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Such a connection consumes from 4 to 15 W of energy, which places the APU on the level of energy-saving laptop processors and immediately explains the relatively low clocks. Even so, the performance of the system is decent, reaching 448 gigaflops in the case of the CPU in the FP32 calculations and 1.6 teraflops according to the GPU with the same type of calculations. This APU connects to the DRAM over a 128-bit 5.5 GHz bus, which gives 88 GB / s of throughput.


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