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Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

I hope Valve will release an updated SteamDeck with a new SoC featuring Zen4 instead of Zen2 and RDNA3 vs RDNA2, all on the smaller 4nm process, as the current SoC is kind of holding it back a bit.

That would definitely boost performance and battery life. Wouldn't mind it if came with a price increase, as it would still be cheaper than a single high end GPU alone.

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There was interview with valve [1], and i'm pretty sure there will be no "steam deck 2" anytime soon. They want better battery and screen (tbh, my deck have pretty noticeable IPS glow in dark scenes), but that's it. So i expect "steam deck pro" to be like switch OLED compared to switch v1/v2 - better battery, better screen, same performance.

Also, keeping current deck hw specs will allow developers to focus on single device when optimizing game for deck. Some games (i.e. cyberpunk 2077) already have dedicated "steam deck" graphics preset. Some (i.e. sons of the forest) have steamdeck: true/false variable in debug window. Maybe we'll see dedicated deck support in some game engines? Who knows.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/23499215/valve-steam-deck-interview...

I am more amazed that Cyberpunk can work at all on the deck. I thought it had such horrible performance optimization out the gate, that it was pulled from the Playstation. Surprised that any amount of patching could make it workable on a portable device.

The base PS4 and Xbox one are essentially two netbook cpus taped together with a GPU on top. The cpu in Steamdeck is about 2x-4x faster than the one in those consoles.

There is more to it than just that two netbook cpus taped together.

Playstation version was worse probably than Windows one to begin with, that's why it was pulled. Windows version didn't have those issues.

What's interesting is that Proton (or more specifically vkd3d-proton) allows it to perform well even on Steam Deck.

Some major work also went into radv for that to happen.

It did but the game runs surprisingly smooth now on my Geforce 1080, when it used to stutter and frame dip a lot

Cyberpunk just have awful optimization. Sure, it's pretty (when it works) but even 4090 can't pull it on max settings at 4k@60fps after all the patches. People will say "it's 2 GPU generations ahead" but why would you release such game. It's just excuse to justify horrible optimization.

> Sure, it's pretty (when it works) but even 4090 can't pull it on max settings at 4k@60fps

That sounds strange, I'm using a 3090ti and can play it on 4K with more than 60fps (with DLSS). Maybe something else is the bottleneck in your setup? Or maybe you haven't tried it since the initial launch? Initially the performance was shit for me as well.

With DLSS, yeah. I expected game to run without DLSS on 4090. But it still can't hit 60fps even in desert. And nope, it's GPU bottleneck, it just uses all 100% of gpu power.

DLSS is nice, but you still can notice some flickering on neon stuff, hair, etc in cyberpunk with DLSS enabled.

5nm zen4 can probably beat 7nm zen2 on efficiency, which would help battery life. Perhaps it isn’t a big enough factor to matter, however.

probably?? A 3-4 year newer CPU architecture, and a 2 generation improvement on FAB. Yes.

Why wouldn't newer APU help for lower battery drain though?

> keeping current deck hw specs will allow developers to focus on single device when optimizing game for deck

That argument is used by incumbent console makers to refresh their hardware once in 5 years which results in it being horribly behind and holding games back as well. So I don't really buy this logic.

> holding games back as well

We're talking about portable games here. There will always be some drawback due to power limit and other issues. While i can relate to your sentence about games being horribly behind due to "platform parity", that probably won't work for portable platform.

Well, if it can run Cyberpunk 2077 which can be super demanding on even the most high end desktop, I'd say it's really up to developers to make their games scalable according to available resources, instead of thinking in terms of "I target this low end device only".

With such approach there is no need to stagnate available hardware on any platform.

Then you can get into a situation where the refresh Xbox plays games better than the original release. That confusion about, "Is this game compatible" is not great for consumers.

Isn't it exactly how it's on PC now? You get newer generation hardware and performance would be better. Except you can get it way more frequently than with consoles.

Deckard VR headset comes first, and then the component will transfer to Deck production, is … how I’m speculating.

The biggest upgrade would actually be the screen. I already found the screen resolution + meh ips made it unappealing to play demanding games anyway.

For example, I could make monster hunter world to run at 60 fps but many games like this is just not designed for 720p. There are so many things on screen that are shrunk to few pixels and it just looks bad

I’ve found that forcing games to run at above native resolutions can help quite a bit. The aliasing that happens at the native res can be pretty bad even with high AA settings depending on the implementation.

Also, the deck tends to have GPU headroom due to the awful CPU performance so you can do it for free usually.

It's not just that. Many modern games are simply not designed for low resolution. 1080p is the barely minimum for them and higher resolutions would be even better.

There will be too many objects on screen. When u shrink it to 720p, it's simply not viable anymore as the objects and textures have too few pixels to represent.

Sounds like more of a game problem. The screen is about 200dpi which is pretty good. As more games test on the deck that should improve. I tried playing some steam board games on there, the text is readable but on a small screen it's not a good experience. It worked well with an external screen.

It's a tradeoff between cost, performance, portability, battery life and resolution. They've done a nice job in my opinion.

I've been experimenting with streaming to my deck from my PC, rendering at 1440p. Compression artifacts aside, it looks quite good.

They pair pretty well with Nreal Air glasses - now if only I could write a driver to make the screen stay in space rather than moving with my head.

Games don't even work well on my older full-sized TV. The UIs seem geared towards high resolutions and people with really good eyesight.

> I hope Valve will release an updated SteamDeck with a new SoC featuring Zen4 instead of Zen2 and RDNA3 vs RDNA2, all on the smaller 4nm process, as the current SoC is kind of holding it back a bit. > >That would definitely boost performance and battery life. Wouldn't mind it if came with a price increase, as it would still be cheaper than a single high end GPU alone.

That would be a terribly unwise decision from Valve. If there is one sure thing about video games console systems, is that stability of the product is more important than outright performances. That is what makes them so successful over gaming PCs. If Nintendo or Sony was releasing a new model every 2 years and people couldn't run new games on the old releases, only a fraction of those users, the very hardcore gamers, would follow the upgrade path and most users would just leave the platforms.

The best thing that can happen is the Steamdeck stays the same for 5 to 10 years and video game developers continue making sure their games run well on it.

I agree that it's too soon for a CPU refresh for the Steam Deck, but I disagree with the idea of thinking of it as a console. It's a PC, and PC game developers are already required to support a vast, unfathomable array of configurations far beyond what an upgraded Steam Deck would require.

It is definitely a pc but if you don't treat it as a console and start selling newer upgraded versions, it will soon be dead as a platform. It is not machine you can swap the GPU or the motherboard or upgrade the memory at will and pc game developers / companies mostly don't give a fuck about people who aren't using something at least close to the greatest and fastest unless it is a highly sold platform.

And Thunderbolt. I’d love to slap a midrange external GPU on for when I want to play on my 1440p monitor.

Thunderbolt is too expensive for the Steamdeck. USB 4 should do the same but cheaper.

But USB4 is Thunderbolt?

With USB4 the PCIe tunneling is optional; with TB it is mandatory.

Ehm, the specification is clear that all external ports should expose PCIe tunneling? Or is there something that changed?

I don't know what Microsoft based their claim about it (maybe their own requirements in Windows HCP?)

From the spec:

2.1.1.5 USB4 Host

Host contains:

* A Host Router.

* A USB 2.0 Host.

* An Enhanced SuperSpeed Host.

* A DisplayPort Source.

Host can also optionally contain a PCIe controller or PCIe switch.

A USB4 Host supports 20G USB4 operation (Gen 2). It optionally supports 40G USB4 operation (Gen 3) and 80G USB4 operation (Gen 4).

Hmm, you're right - it's Windows HCP. I found a random statement when they mandate tunneling support to "Maximize compatibility across ecosystem".

Well that does seem short-sighted. :(

Isn't Thunderbolt 3 basically USB 4?

Oh cool, whatever works and is affordable

They would mind the price. All of the videos at the time of announcement highlighted how hard they tried to keep the price down.

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