Steam Deck Owners Clubhouse

[Kyan]

What do yall think about the ROG Ally?

I am glad it is going to exist. I am excited to see the handheld market expand. It's higher performance and lack of track pads might draw in new people who wouldn't get the Steam Deck.

I personally would still choose the Steam Deck if I were buying new. It has more performance than I need for the games I want to play on a handheld. I frequently get 8 hours of battery life because I am not playing demanding games. Although I didn't know it until I played on the steam deck, the track pads are essential. Valves support is well above industry standards which benefits Linux as much as the Steam Deck.

We don't have any real information about the price, no in-depth review of the software and the modifications made by Asus. So I can't take a position but since the price will be "competitive" it's almost certain that they will sell it for more than 680€ (price of the most expensive deck in France) because they can't sell hardware at a loss like Steam does and fill the gap with game sales.

 

[Space Lynx]

Anyone else have any excellent game experiences they want to share?

@Kyan thanks again for the Nier recommendation, I 100% will give it a go.

I am about to finish Dishonored, I am on last mission. 10/10 experience on Steam Deck, highly recommend.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

well RoG Ally is likely going to cost way way way more than the $360 I paid for my Deck, also it uses Windows, and I can't tell you how nice it has been being free from Windows. Also, I doubt the RoG Ally will let me hit the power button and in 0.1 microseconds turn off, and when I hit power button again again 0.1 microseconds resume exactly where I was in game, any game. it's unbelievable how fluid the experience is with SteamOS on the Deck.

There a few games that don't run well on Windows that run great on Deck as well, which is nice. For example in Dishonored on my desktop I get screen tearing unless I cap the fps manually, but on Deck with Dishonored I don't have to do anything, everything just works and looks great out of the box. no tinkering needed, which is so refreshing.

It looks like the RoG Ally will cost $899 is my guess, and that is for the non-extreme version, so the one with only 4 gpu cores not 12 as the ones shown in benchmarks recently... so yeah $360 for the steam deck? I have 0 complaints. lol

If the Rog Ally was OLED I might be tempted a little more, but its not so no loss on my end.

Asus ROG Ally launches May 11 with pricing 'for sure... below $1,000'

Asus' Steam Deck rival is promising to redefine handheld gaming.

www.pcgamer.com

True some older games like the fear collection took effort to mod to work on modern monitors and PCs but just work on the deck.

Replaying Fear ATM

 

[Space Lynx]

True some older games like the fear collection took effort to mod to work on modern monitors and PCs but just work on the deck.

Replaying Fear ATM

I noticed this as well, so many games that I just never wanted to tinker with on modern systems, and Steam Deck just makes them instantly easy to play.

100% moving FEAR to top of my list now, thanks! It has been on my backlog for a long time now.

 

[Space Lynx]

apparently Steam Deck has PWM flickering in the display, I just did some research on it...

doesn't seem to give me a headache like PWM flickering does on desktop monitors though, strange indeed.

can anyone confirm if it does indeed have PWM flickering?

Ukraine army is using the Steam Deck to control machine gun turrets

Ukrainian News company TPO (via Tom's Hardware) posted a number of images on Facebook showing the country's soldiers testing a machine gun turret in a field. The...

www.techspot.com

lmao.

 

[Space Lynx]

STAR WARS™ Knights of the Old Republic™ on Steam

It is four thousand years before the Galactic Empire and hundreds of Jedi Knights have fallen in battle against the ruthless Sith. You are the last hope of the Jedi Order. Can you master the awesome power of the Force on your quest to save the Republic? Or will you fall to the lure of the dark side?

store.steampowered.com

I wish developers/modders would go back to classic gems like this one and update it to be Steam Deck verified. Would be epic if they did...

Lord Gaben hear my call!

 

[Mac the Geek]

I was just thinking about installing KotOR on my Deck today. Surprised that it's still "unsupported".

But hey, KotOR II is rated as "playable". Think I'll go install that one instead.

 

[Nordic]

Valves verified system is borderline misinformation. ProtonDB will tell you if a game will actually work on the Deck. https://www.protondb.com/app/32370

 

[Space Lynx]

Valves verified system is borderline misinformation. ProtonDB will tell you if a game will actually work on the Deck. https://www.protondb.com/app/32370

it still says on that page that it recommends a custom executable, and a few other tinkering things. while that isn't the end of the world, its still not the experience I am looking for. I just think its a shame some of these developers don't look at old games like this and say you know what I bet I could get that game verified on Deck. maybe it takes more work than I realize, I am unsure.

but yes this is good news, worth a try at least. thanks

 

[Mac the Geek]

I went ahead and installed KotOR. (This is the part where I admit that it's been in my backlog for years and I've never actually played it.)

The display and default control set (equivalent to mouse-only, with a trackpad and L/R triggers as the only controls active) leave a lot to be desired. On the other hand, the game did start up, and I got most of the way through the tutorial before I had to get back to work. So "unsupported" does not mean "unplayable".

Haven't decided yet if I want to keep it going on the Deck. If I do, I'll have to look for better control options. A full 1200x800 display would be nice, too.

 

[Space Lynx]

I went ahead and installed KotOR. (This is the part where I admit that it's been in my backlog for years and I've never actually played it.)

The display and default control set (equivalent to mouse-only, with a trackpad and L/R triggers as the only controls active) leave a lot to be desired. On the other hand, the game did start up, and I got most of the way through the tutorial before I had to get back to work. So "unsupported" does not mean "unplayable".

Haven't decided yet if I want to keep it going on the Deck. If I do, I'll have to look for better control options. A full 1200x800 display would be nice, too.

so strange that an xbox controller layout isn't default or an option, considering the game originally launched on the original xbox... very annoying.

 

[Nordic]

So "unsupported" does not mean "unplayable".

Like I said, it is borderline mis-information. Most of the "playable" but not verified titles are because of text scaling issues and being hard to read on a 7 inch screen. ProtonDB is the best way to know for sure if a game will work or not. There is a Decky plugin that even shows the ProtonDB rating in the Steam Store.

 

[Mac the Geek]

so strange that an xbox controller layout isn't default or an option, considering the game originally launched on the original xbox... very annoying.

I have literally spent zero time looking for alternate control sets. I was on my lunch break, and "just play" was more important than "fiddle with options".

 

[Space Lynx]

I have literally spent zero time looking for alternate control sets. I was on my lunch break, and "just play" was more important than "fiddle with options".

ok, ty for the fyi... it might be a simple matter of just switching it over in options then. lol

 

[Nordic]

The Phawks did an interesting comparison between the 7840u, 6800u, and Steam Deck APU. When Valve requested/purchased custom silicone for the Steam Deck they had it specifically tuned for low wattage use. This shows with the Steam Deck out performs the other APU's by as much as 50% at 5w and has a slight lead at 10w. It is unclear if the ROG Ally will have the same tuning. What this means is that if you are not playing demanding games, the Steam Deck will have far better battery life and performance.

 

[Space Lynx]

The Phawks did an interesting comparison between the 7840u, 6800u, and Steam Deck APU. When Valve requested/purchased custom silicone for the Steam Deck they had it specifically tuned for low wattage use. This shows with the Steam Deck out performs the other APU's by as much as 50% at 5w and has a slight lead at 10w. It is unclear if the ROG Ally will have the same tuning. What this means is that if you are not playing demanding games, the Steam Deck will have far better battery life and performance.

I will watch this later, but I am skeptical of these claims, a 7840U is clearly a stronger chip, and yes it is also true that I get much more battery life in indie games than I do say a title like Dishonored. I find it hard to believe a 6nm APU old gen design beats the 4nm next gen design though even if both are set to 15 watts with fans full blast.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

I will watch this later, but I am skeptical of these claims, a 7840U is clearly a stronger chip, and yes it is also true that I get much more battery life in indie games than I do say a title like Dishonored. I find it hard to believe a 6nm APU old gen design beats the 4nm next gen design though even if both are set to 15 watts with fans full blast.

At these low wattages it could be the memory used, ,the SD uses quad channel lpddr5 ,and as stated is a very tightly tuned custom design which valve absolutely spent more time on then Asus did the Ally, the Ally will perform though.

I wonder how tightly Asus control This Soc's voltage?!?.

 

[Nordic]

I will watch this later, but I am skeptical of these claims, a 7840U is clearly a stronger chip, and yes it is also true that I get much more battery life in indie games than I do say a title like Dishonored. I find it hard to believe a 6nm APU old gen design beats the 4nm next gen design though even if both are set to 15 watts with fans full blast.

I think you misread my comment if you think I said the 7840u performs worse than the Steam Deck at 15w. The video shows data that at 5w and 10w, the Steam Deck performs better. Above 10w then the 6800u and 7840u outperform the Steam Deck by a lot. Both Valve and AMD claim there is some secret magic sauce tuning that makes the Steam Deck do better at low wattage. The 7840u is by far the stronger chip but doesn't scale as well to low wattage.

The practical implications of this is that the Steam Deck may have better hardware for not so demanding games that can use 10w or less, leading to longer battery life overall. I play very few games on my Deck that I have set to over 10w but that is just me.

 

[Space Lynx]

At these low wattages it could be the memory used, ,the SD uses quad channel lpddr5 ,and as stated is a very tightly tuned custom design which valve absolutely spent more time on then Asus did the Ally, the Ally will perform though.

I wonder how tightly Asus control This Soc's voltage?!?.

I think you misread my comment if you think I said the 7840u performs worse than the Steam Deck at 15w. The video shows data that at 5w and 10w, the Steam Deck performs better. Above 10w then the 6800u and 7840u outperform the Steam Deck by a lot. Both Valve and AMD claim there is some secret magic sauce tuning that makes the Steam Deck do better at low wattage. The 7840u is by far the stronger chip but doesn't scale as well to low wattage.

The practical implications of this is that the Steam Deck may have better hardware for not so demanding games that can use 10w or less, leading to longer battery life overall. I play very few games on my Deck that I have set to over 10w but that is just me.

I understand now, thank you both for explaining...

and yes my steam deck has impressed me so much, it uses like 5 watts playing Dishonored, and Dishonored looks fucking amazing on it not a single fps dip below 60 btw... so impressive for 5 watts lol its insane. lmao

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

LTT confirmed all that was thought and much that was said, im fine with keeping The SD, The Ally is indeed better in places but its not That much better, and as most SD users know , toning down things and gaining battery life is usually THE WAY, the reality is the faster screen and hardware with similar to SD battery performance is not compelling enough.
But that is as an owner, I might have bought an Ally if i had not bought SD, still at 5/10 watts SD rocks .

 

[Mac the Geek]

Ars Technica has a review of the Ally up today.

tl/dr: it is what we thought it would be.

 

[Space Lynx]

LTT confirmed all that was thought and much that was said, im fine with keeping The SD, The Ally is indeed better in places but its not That much better, and as most SD users know , toning down things and gaining battery life is usually THE WAY, the reality is the faster screen and hardware with similar to SD battery performance is not compelling enough.
But that is as an owner, I might have bought an Ally if i had not bought SD, still at 5/10 watts SD rocks .

and if something goes wrong with your Ally, have fun with that! lol

if something goes wrong with our steamdeck, ifixit has affordable official part replacement and how to guides. fuck yeah!

also the Ally can't play AAA games like cyberpunk, same as SD, linus only loves it cause he is addicted to high refresh rates, and has forgot the love of gaming for gamings sake, but this is the same guy that made a 80 grand gold controller cause his ego grew so fucking big. i stopped watching him after that.

 

[Nordic]

It seems pretty clear to me that even if I was buying today, I would still buy the Steam Deck. I didn't begin playing Stardew Vally until I got the Deck. The Deck can play Stardew about 8 hours. The Ally can only play Stardew for 2.5 hours. Here I was thinking one of the worst aspects of the Steam Deck was its lack of battery life. Asus said hold my beer.

 

[Space Lynx]

It seems pretty clear to me that even if I was buying today, I would still buy the Steam Deck. I didn't begin playing Stardew Vally until I got the Deck. The Deck can play Stardew about 8 hours. The Ally can only play Stardew for 2.5 hours. Here I was thinking one of the worst aspects of the Steam Deck was its lack of battery life. Asus said hold my beer.

I think there is a mode on Ally that will run it at 720p 60 fps, so it can prob bring the battery life back up some. That being said, I still prefer my Steam Deck. I have the right to repair every single tiny little part of the Deck, which is great peace of mind from ifixit. The audio on Deck is incredible imo. I have been wanting to play Dishonored since launch, but I never seem to get around to it, and Deck helped me get in the zone... and now that game is done, and many others in play. I love playing in offline mode / airplane mode... I know that there is no Windows bloat, or fine tuning in a mile long list of privacy settings, its just so fucking peaceful, and everything works so good.

I also prefer the 16:10 ratio of Steam Deck, which I was not expecting. Lot of people don't mention that Ally is 16:9. Lot of games really become more immersive at 16:10, Dishonored being one of them.

 

[SomeOne99h]

Performance with games using Vulkan in Steam Deck will run smoother in upcoming SteamOS patch that will have Mesa graphics driver patched to 23.1.0

Mesa graphics drivers v23.1.0 with Vulkan Graphics Pipeline Libraries for RADV (AMD), smoother gaming for AMD cards and Steam Deck

A new Mesa graphics drivers v23.1.0 has been released with Vulkan Graphics Pipeline Libraries enabled for RADV (AMD) graphics cards which means it includes the Steam deck. This will make games that utilize Vulkan run smoother than before. Some highlights: - Our OpenCL implementation Rusticl...

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