Steam Deck: Who's excited at the PC Nintendo Switch

Happysin

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Ah; I thought they were pulling the same thing.

I did read some details here and there and some stuff was 'need to use onscreen kb' or stuff like that.

Makes sense. I'm also going to assume some games 'not' compatible do work? Like why would Painkiller not work? It's 100 years old and I don't think Valve is going to get to all these games in Proton. Guess that's one thing nice about the ROG and those Windows units. More fussy-ish in UI but more compatibility. Trade-offs.
Anything listed with an explicit "not compatible" is almost certainly not going to work, and definitely won't work out of the box. I've made some "not compatible" things work with lots of fiddling, but they're largely right.

The exception to that is if you're using your Deck as a dock with KB/M. In that setup, there are many games that assume KB/M that will work just fine, even without the compatibility setting.
 
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sword_9mm

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Anything listed with an explicit "not compatible" is almost certainly not going to work, and definitely won't work out of the box. I've made some "not compatible" things work with lots of fiddling, but they're largely right.

The exception to that is if you're using your Deck as a dock with KB/M. In that setup, there are many games that assume KB/M that will work just fine, even without the compatibility setting.

Ah KB/M detection. I'd assume the little pads always ping as 'mouse' and the on screen kb pings as 'keyboard' for all apps. Guess not.
 

Mhorydyn

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Ah; I thought they were pulling the same thing.

I did read some details here and there and some stuff was 'need to use onscreen kb' or stuff like that.

Makes sense. I'm also going to assume some games 'not' compatible do work? Like why would Painkiller not work? It's 100 years old and I don't think Valve is going to get to all these games in Proton. Guess that's one thing nice about the ROG and those Windows units. More fussy-ish in UI but more compatibility. Trade-offs.
You can be very confident if it gets a green check on Steam, but ProtonDB can be a good resource as well if you need to dig into details further. The Witcher 2, for example, says unsupported in Steam, but Gold via ProtonDB. It loaded up just fine on my Deck, but none of the controls seemed to function. Selecting a different community keybinding (and maybe a different Proton version?) and it seemed to work just fine. Sometimes the Steam rating also seems a bit too conservative -- having to pull up the keyboard to name my character at the start of the game and then never touching it again is fine for me.
 
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Happysin

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Ah KB/M detection. I'd assume the little pads always ping as 'mouse' and the on screen kb pings as 'keyboard' for all apps. Guess not.
Mostly, not always. Especially older games that don't use a commercial game engine. You never know what custom implementation special snowflake of mouse interface you're going to get there. ;)
 
And yet the display they ended up with is 16:10 (1280x800) and 90 Hz, both of which are unusual enough these days to likely make this a bespoke part on their own.
Valve absolutely piggybacked off another ODM (probably Nintendo given the similar size and MIPI interface), but that's not the same thing as ordering a custom screen.

Valve obviously didn't want to pay for a VRR screen (and/or couldn't fit it into the power and space budget allocated). But it's not because they couldn't do a custom screen-- if they couldn't do that at all, we'd probably be seeing literally the Switch display (running at 720p60) in this device, rather than what looks likely to be a custom variant of it.
You paraphrased much of what was said in the video links. LTT guessed that Valve sourced their OLED as a custom variant of the Switch screen which is why my earlier post had Nintendo in italics.

You're also half right. It's not only that Valve didn't want to pay for a fully custom VRR screen, but that Valve has to actually sell the product. Estimates for custom AMOLED screen tooling alone are $3-5 million as a starting point. Then there's the cost per unit which is a helluva lot higher when ordering millions of units (Nintendo has sold over 8 million OLED Switch). Deck is almost 2 years old and sold like gangbusters. It's unlikely Valve wanted to risk moving the same volume of OLED Decks before version 2.0 arrives.

The APU is the core component driving Deck 2.0's release. OLED and HDR won't be going away, but assuming VRR is included, I wonder if Valve will stick with the unified slider for framerate/screen refresh? If so I hope it's a 120 Hz screen (or faster) for that 60fps cap double refresh. Separate sliders would be preferred, but Valve may lean further into console-izing the experience.
 
Yeah, it's been mentioned in a few places. I had linked the Digital Foundary guys talking about it, but either I botched the link or Ars' automatically added apostrophes to my post (fixed now). This was the relevant segment talking about VRR and the current unified slider.

Makes me hopefuly we'll be lucky enough to see a 120Hz or better screen for Deck mark 2 (with more granular control of Hz and frame rate caps). 30 fps is already taken care of nicely at 90 Hz, but with some games unable to hit 60 fps, ~40-50 can still a great compromise with triple refresh of 120-150 Hz. Whether Valve can make that plus HDR etc all fit in a reasonably priced device who knows. I'm not sure how successful Deck sales will be if Valve starts to push up too closely to $1000 (or beyond for a top-end model). At that point they're overlapping with some pretty capable budget laptops and Nvidia's rtx.
 
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Happysin

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I think that's one of the reasons they talk about the next big step for them being a few years away. It's not that absolute performance is missing, but that performance within their price thresholds isn't worth a new generation yet.

Considering how much the screen and battery life improved with this half-step, I suspect we'll see a large chunk of what you're hoping for in a Deck 2, alongside the performance bump.
 
^^ Truth.

My Deck unexpectedly arrived yesterday ("Small Business Saturday", what a nice surprise! hoho). At checkout it was "2-4 weeks". After shipping, the original tracking # estimate was Tuesday Nov 28th, and it was still listed as such an hour or so after it had arrived. Underpromised and overdelivered ftw. Logistically, Valve's warehouse in Ontario CA might be loading up UPS trucks with bulk orders sorted by region/city that aren't scanned by UPS till they arrive at their regional hub. It would explain the lack of tracking updates.

The interior case liner is rather spiffy looking, ditto the Deck's transparent shell. Conversely, I'm not vibing the console's shiny-almost-neon orange joysticks (the other accents are okay). Which is very weird, because I love the color orange; it covers huge swaths of my wardrobe! Nbd tbh; I'd have been plenty happy with the normal Batman black version. The Steam logo on the shipping package isn't terribly attention-grabbing, but the huge flammable battery warning almost seems intended to draw eyeballs towards the Portal cube and logo's vicinity.

Fiddling around with it a bit, I noticed under Settings-Display there is a toggle for -

"Enable Unified Frame Limit Management"

Clicking this off allowed me to independently adjust screen refresh rate (45 Hz minimum, no 30) and framerate limit. Nice for saving battery in games that don't need speedy synapses.
 

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Pino90

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Sorry if this has been asked before, I only read some posts of this thread. In your opinion, can the deck be a good home console? What I want to do is to just grab a Steam Deck, a gamepad and the docking station and connect them to my TV or monitor (I also have spare M/KB so no problem on that side I think). Since I have more than 100 Steam games, I think that would be a good idea for someone like me who's never gonna get back into gaming PCs and laptops.
I'm not really interested in playing 4k or high resolution nor the last game that was presented. I still have to play stuff from 2016/2017. I just want something that lets me play without having to buy a dedicated PC. The portability is a plus since I could bring it with me when I travel. I also checked the compatibilty list for my library and it looks good.

Do you think that could work? What are the drawbacks? Are there some real alternatives? (alternatives that are not portable)
 

Cat Killer

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In your opinion, can the deck be a good home console?

It's fine. There's specific game-specific irritation where the game might insist on the Deck display's resolution or the Deck's controls rather than what you might prefer for the docked scenario, with that being a function of a docked Deck not being something that game developers were specifically targeting - unlike, say, the Switch. Mostly it'll be fine.

Are there some real alternatives? (alternatives that are not portable)
You can have your own HTPC, pop any Linux distro on it, and have it boot into Steam Big Picture for the same kind of experience. You can pick your own balance between price, performance and cuteness/convenience from a little NUC-like to a monster tower. But obviously that would be "having to buy a dedicated PC."

The Deck is also "buying a dedicated PC," of course; just one that's portable and a fixed hardware target.
 

Happysin

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Sorry if this has been asked before, I only read some posts of this thread. In your opinion, can the deck be a good home console? What I want to do is to just grab a Steam Deck, a gamepad and the docking station and connect them to my TV or monitor (I also have spare M/KB so no problem on that side I think). Since I have more than 100 Steam games, I think that would be a good idea for someone like me who's never gonna get back into gaming PCs and laptops.
I'm not really interested in playing 4k or high resolution nor the last game that was presented. I still have to play stuff from 2016/2017. I just want something that lets me play without having to buy a dedicated PC. The portability is a plus since I could bring it with me when I travel. I also checked the compatibilty list for my library and it looks good.

Do you think that could work? What are the drawbacks? Are there some real alternatives? (alternatives that are not portable)

Yes, as long as you are ok with the hardware limitations. There's even a Dock for that purpose. I'd say in terms of visual fidelity, it would be like playing a Switch on a big TV. Totally serviceable, but never going to have top-end graphics.

for not-portable alternatives, you could assemble a reasonably strong home theater PC and use Steam Big Picture Mode to do essentially the same thing, but with higher visual fidelity. The downside, of course, is it's not portable.

[EDIT] I are slow.
 

Pino90

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Thanks for the replies, you more or less confirmed what I was thinking. I've been thinking about an HTPC but in the end I always get something clunky or too big to be put in the living room (I need some negotiation with the wife every time I want to add something). I'm gonna check what the HTPC market offers and then I'm making a decision.
 

sword_9mm

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Played a few games over the weekend and for my old stuff it works out pretty well.

Bioshock Infinite seemed to stick to 90 fps but I dropped it to 60.

Some games I did drop to say 45 (Darksiders 2 seems to have some big frame issues here and there) and on the 90hz screen it seems fine.

I'm knee deep in trying to get emulation working now which is always a challenge no matter how easy the install is. Just gotta put more time in.

So far I like it enough. Not perfect but nothing is.
 
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Anyone recently used their Deck to play Epic Games Store freebies? I remember reading it used to suck, but what's the experience like now? Is it worth the hassle versus just buying the same games on Steam?

I'm mainly thinking about indie stuff I've never played like Celeste, Darq, and Cave Story. Maybe dabble with Moonlighter (which I've also never played) and see how it compares to my Switch OLED copy that has sat unused.
 

Mhorydyn

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Anyone recently used their Deck to play Epic Games Store freebies? I remember reading it used to suck, but what's the experience like now? Is it worth the hassle versus just buying the same games on Steam?
I'm using Heroic Launcher for my EGS stuff. It's annoying enough that I don't do it too often, but it does work. If the game was on sale for a few bucks, I'd buy it again on Steam, but I don't think I'd pay that much more.
 
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Invid

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Got my limited edition in. My observations:

The shell: I really like the accent colours and the translucency is less apparent than I thought it would be initially. It seems like the rear shell is slightly more translucent than the front shell if my eyes aren't playing tricks on me. Might be because there are fewer reinforcing/mounting bosses on the back. Either way, aesthetically this works well.

SSD swap: I logged into with the limited edition to claim my digital rewards ( the new boot animation) before shutting it down and swapping in my 2TB drive. Cracking the shell on the limited edition is much scarier than on the older ABS unit. I felt like I was going to break it but starting at the corner nearest the bumper to get a small gap then moving to the top near the power button proved to work without excessive stress (either to the unit or my nerves). It might be possible to swap the SSD without disconnecting the black ribbon cable that runs over the heat shield but I wouldn't recommend it. There's almost no slack so it's better to play it safe and disconnect the ribbon cable on the leftt hand side. The heat shield can then be slid out of the way for easy access to the M.2 slot. The 2TB drive SSD booted without issue but I made sure I was already updated to 3.5.7. Great video to follow here.

The screen: This is my first OLED device of any kind aside from my phone. Goodness. The colours are great but it's the inky blacks that impressed me the most. Just wow. Fired up Ori and the Will of the Wisps and the HDR absolutely pops too. The screen is really impressive if this game is anything to judge it by. Again, wow.

Hades, a game I'm pretty familiar with, holds a stable 90fps at 8 watts TDP (was dipping to 88 fps at 7W so I bumped it up to lock it) and is forecasting 4 hours 10m on a full battery on the OLED. The LCD will do 60fps at 5 watts TDP for 3 hrs 50m by way of comparison. I didn't control for brightness or anything, just set them to my comfort level.

The weight: Also, the weight reduction was immediately apparent to me. So much so that I threw the LE on my kitchen scale. The LE is 619g and the 512GB LCD is 674g, so a 55g difference. I have no skins or anything on either unit. I've not heard this reported widely but the limited edition seems to be even lighter than the standard OLED units.
 

Mhorydyn

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hmmm, Y'all are tempting me to update anyway. I just had to forgo an OLED TV for prices, but an update to the Deck wouldn't break the bank...
Yea, I’m planning to upgrade mine in the new year. The OLED Deck seems like it has a ton of nice quality of life upgrades in addition to a slight performance bump. In aggregate, it should make for a noticeable upgrade.
 

sword_9mm

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I'm using Heroic Launcher for my EGS stuff. It's annoying enough that I don't do it too often, but it does work. If the game was on sale for a few bucks, I'd buy it again on Steam, but I don't think I'd pay that much more.

Interesting as I have some Epic freebies I'd like to play (Batman Arkham collection).

Seemed to me the guides on getting the store to work weren't super terrible but doing it is sometimes different than just watching someone.
 

CuriouslySane

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Another thing that's less ergonomic than I'd prefer is the behavior if you happen to have a game open on your PC and try to wake your Deck. It really, really doesn't like the possibility that two people might be gaming on your account at the same time, and the result is pretty Draconian. They might be tied by licensing, but there are still many legitimate reasons why you'd want to access your library from multiple systems at once, and it dings the pick-up-and-play factor a bit that it's harder to multitask games when you want to.
 

Thorvard

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Yea, I’m planning to upgrade mine in the new year. The OLED Deck seems like it has a ton of nice quality of life upgrades in addition to a slight performance bump. In aggregate, it should make for a noticeable upgrade.

I'm glad I upgraded. I was kinda going back and forth even after placing the order, but now that I've got it in my hands and used it for about 5 days it's a solid upgrade. The screen, weight, and battery life are all huge improvements.

I kinda liken it to going from a Launch GBA to the flip one with a backlight. You don't need to upgrade but once you do you won't be able to imagine yourself going back.
 
Long rambling 3am post follows.
TLDR: oled Deck is excellent. Possibly good enough to ignore buying a full-fledged gaming PC for awhile.

Mostly playing the Switch oled this past week (still on my first playthroughs of Zelda BotW and Luigi's Mansion 3), but in between I've toyed with Valve's new shiny. Man this thing is awesome. It fixes most of the things that kept me from following through with my original Deck preorder from 2022. Going back and forth between the two, the ergonomics are miles better than the Switch imo. Switch joy cons are severely cramped for my average-sized hands.

The pre-Xmas timing of oled Deck's arrival has also been near-perfect. The day before Valve's announcement, I jumped on a smokin' hot deal for a loaded Lenovo Legion 7i laptop w/ a mobile rtx 4080. It sold out fast. Was a little bummed I missed out on the rtx 4090 version (roughly a desktop 4070ti w/ 16gb of ram), but otherwise, what I bought is an impressively well-built metal-chassis laptop. 32gb ram, 2TB ssd, top Intel chip, good 2560x1600 500 nits ips screen (thank gawd 16x10 ratios are finally coming back!).

Next day, I see a Digital Foundry video about the oled Deck, and was already 90% confident I'd be returning the laptop.

Until the Lenovo, my current gaming pc has been a gtx 1660ti Alienware laptop. Bought in 2019 (seems longer), I don't really like gaming laptops, preferring a quiet full-fledged desktop with huge screen. Credit where it's due though, because the Alienware has been a surprisingly great experience overall. It was meant as a ~1-2 year stopgap solution since I had been traveling so much, and I've wanted to upgrade my gaming rig for the past ~2-3years. Unfortunately, sky high GPU pricing convinced me to splurge on other things like vacations, a dog, new TV, etc.

It's not that I can't afford a $1000+ video card; it's that I've been very turned off by the price-gouging versus actual product cost. I know and chatter with people who work for Nvidia (and TSMC). Off-the-record they'll tell you straight up that whatever makes the company the most money is what matters, period. These days that ain't consumer gpus, so what's a PC gamer to do? Wait for Intel Battlemage? lol. AMD is seemingly happy with the status quo so they ain't budging, either.

Instead of feeding the gpu duopoly, back in May I bought a Playstation 5 and 1yr Premium Plus catalog subscription to subdue my 60fps hardware cravings. The console + our lg c1 oled tv have been a damn good time. In some ways, the ease-of-use is even more enjoyable than PC gaming. But, the indie scene sucks on consoles (or is stupidly overpriced on Nintendo Switch to the point that I could almost break even paying Nvidia for an on-sale rtx 4080 and buying my games on GoG/Steam/Epic freebies.

Anyhow, long rambling fuggin' post here I know, but oled Switch, oled TV, oled Deck, and eventually, PC using OLED (or at least mini-LED). This is how I want my games; preferably with hdr and vrr 120Hz+. Deck and ps5 have satiated my hardware appetite in 2023. Maybe in 2024 We will get a slightly faster rtx 4080 Super for $999, but that probably won't make me budge. At this point, I'd rather wait and see where we are in 2025. By then we'll see a Playstation 5 Pro, Intel's 2nd gen gpus matured (or not), and rtx 5000/radeon 8000.


Back to the Deck, it's perfect for what I expect my main use case to be; clearing out my backlog of older games and enjoying indies. IIRC Deck gpu is ballpark gtx 1050ti level, which is plenty of graphical oomph for most AAA games prior to ~2018 or so. Games played so far:

- Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Looked so good right from the start, I played 5 mins and then set it aside. The first Ori was amazing, and I love metroidvanias. I'll be saving this tasty treat for later.

- Telltale's The Walking Dead. Back when it was newish, I never made it out of the intro. It somehow felt like I should be playing on my tablet, but sure as heck not on my (then speedy) PC. On Deck? I've played for hours and enjoyed it. Was surprised this game features Glenn, Herschel, etc! I had no idea.

- Gorogoa. Absolutely stellar puzzle game. It had been sitting in my Steam backlog for a few years. Finished it in a couple sittings. Touchpads aren't as good as a mouse, but perfectly serviceable. Thank you for not locking us into joysticks Valve!

- Half-Life 2 Lost Coast. I think I booted this up years ago, but says it includes HDR lighting now. I dabbled, but meh. Wasn't feeling it at the time. Will check back in with this later.

- Wattam. Messed around for 24 minutes. Perfect handheld game (and enabling half-rate shading, framerate caps, etc = big battery life savings)

- Post Void. Simple slide-shoot gameplay makes me feel like I'm one of Serious Sam's maniacal enemies frantically rushing to the end of the level. Game is like a double espresso.

Next up: a few more graphically intensive games that have sat untouched in my backlog like Metal Gear the Phantom Pain, Prey, Bayonetta, and the first Dishonored's expansions. Also still haven't finished Elden Ring (supposedly I'm 3/4 done), Alien Isolation, nor Witcher 3 (about 1/2 complete + expansions), so will give those a peek while saving them largely for the big screen.
 
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Wow, thanks Mhorydyn! Definitely be checking that out soon. PS5's Portal handheld is being given a poor reception (although LTT gave it a modest thumbs-up). If Deck can perform roughly similar, that'd be amazing.


TLDR for below - if you have an oled Deck, don't trust Steam's "Deck verified" for maximizing your screen.

Spent several hours with handheld Horizon Zero Dawn this weekend. It's not the kind of game I'm particular interested in playing on the Deck. Still, it's a triple-a hdr showcase title from 2017 that holds up well today. At 99% completion on ps5, I'm familiar with the experience on Sony's giant wave (I actually like the current oversized consoles. My ps4 was FAR too noisy, especially compared to my larger, and unsurprisingly much quieter, launch-edition Xbox One).

Aloy was hanging around the Mother's Heart/Craddle starting areas initially using out-of-the-box "verified" settings aka medium. This looks good, but equaled ~38-41 fps averages on my Deck. Not sure how/who chose this as the default, because it is nowhere near optimal imo. Compared to proper pc gaming, upping textures, shadows/ambient occlusion, model geometry, etc from medium to high was less noticeable to image quality on a 1280x800 screen... and dropped avg framerates by ~2-5. Ugh, mid 30 fps averages. No surprise a big-budget console/tv game emphasizing high detail and huge draw distance isn't making the same impact on a small screen; my eyes just aren't good enough to notice the finer details, but that AMD apu is still having to work just the same.

What did make a noticeable difference was HDR, which wasn't enabled by default. The Deck-verified out of the box settings are tuned for the regular LCD Deck, and do not take advantage of the magnificent oled screen. Also not enabled? AMD FSR! This is puzzling because, despite the low resolution, FSR upscaling is a HUGE boon with no downsides that I experienced. At equivalent settings, frame rate performance increased by roughly 15-25% using the Quality setting. Performance and Balanced gave better fps, but my eyeballs seemed to prefer the smoother output of Quality. I could be imagining the differences; they are that hard to notice on a relatively low-rez screen (compared to a smartphone anyhow).

And if the above wasn't enticing enough for your PC min/maxing desires, I just can't say enough good things about Valve providing the flexibility and options for maximizing framerates to suit each individual's personal taste. I have so much love for the Deck's frame-time graph in overlay 2! (Scott Wasson and the old Tech Report made this world a better place). By comparison, I have a freakin' Alienware laptop packing Intel and Nvidia components that locks screen refresh rate to 144 Hz. Wtf, who said I want 144 Hz when I'm just using Excel, watching a 30fps youtube video, or trying to preserve battery life when on the road? /rant

Playing around with the Deck & H:ZD's settings, there were lots of great choices depending on my priorities. Enabling hdr and upscaling (FSR or "simple") were no-brainers and always worth it. Interestingly, depending on other graphical settings, upscaling tech would knock anywhere from ~1-2 watts off the gpu power draw. This was huge in the second scenario below. My 3 fav H:ZD tweaks:
  1. Smooth ~60-ish frameratesmake for the most enjoyable H:ZD Deck experience imo. To that end, I found myself
    • capping screen refresh at 55 or 56 Hz and setting the in-game FPS limit to 60
    • all graphics to low except shadows & ambient occlusion to medium.
    • FSR Quality upscaling.
    • This was my favorite way to enjoy combat in Horizon Zero Dawn on Deck. GPU averaged ~9-10 watts, CPU averaged 2.2 watts (never topping 3). Alternatively, I could pick "Performance" upscaling, and this would get me a mostly stable 60 fps ("Balanced" upscaling less so), but I preferred the slight boost to image quality and 55 or 56 Hz.
  2. Silent Mode. The oled Deck's fan is a smidge quieter than the lcd variants I've had hands-on with, but the lower pitch when under heavy load is more noticeable to me. If I was playing Hollow Knight or Hotline Miami, the Deck is basically silent. H:ZD being more demanding, that fan is running at max. UNLESS-
    • set Deck refresh and in-game fps cap to a rock-solid 50
    • FSR upscaling to Performance (picking "Simple" here still gobbles 8-9 watts. It's all AMD or no-go)
    • all graphical settings to low. Now you can pick 1-3 to boost up to medium. I choose shadows and AO, but model quality and textures worked, too.
    • enable Steam's half-rate shading if so desired to save another watt or 2.
    • enjoy the silence while you Enjoy the Silence (in the background)
  3. Locked 45fps/90Hz refresh with all The Shiny.When avoiding combat, this might be nice for exploring the terrain. I spent a lot of time playing like this before deciding I preferred absolute frame rates over any minor differences in image quality.
    • Cap in-game fps @ 50, refresh @ 90 Hz, and Steam limit to 45
    • all graphics settings to medium and push 1-3 up to high
    • FSR at Quality or Balanced depending on your other tweaks.
    • The 90Hz refresh makes things feel smoother than the raw frame rate might otherwise indicate. Having this flexibility is definitely one of the best parts of the Deck. Now if only we had vrr and ~120Hz!

Of course, all the above was done in the starter zone with only 2-3 types of electrofauna (and some human npcs) active at any given time. I'd expect to have to dial things back in frantic combat around the busier regions of the game. YMMV
 

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Mhorydyn

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After a few days of playing with the OLED Steam Deck, I don't know that I have much to add over what's already been said over the last few pages. It is, overall, a notably nicer device now. Tons of small improvements all add up to a much nicer package. I'll be spending another few days slowly restoring my various tweaks as I have time and then I'll be able to spend a good bit more time actually gaming on it. Once I finish off the Resident Evil 4 remake, I think Ori and the Will of the Wisps will be a good one to jump into.
 

Mhorydyn

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Anyone else have wifi issues?

I can't connect at all to my 5ghz network at home(which I'm pretty sure it was connecting to in the past) not sure what happened over the past couple of days.
I haven't noticed any wifi issues ever (yet?), even after downloading a few hundred gigs over the last few days.
 

Mortus

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Anyone else have wifi issues?

I can't connect at all to my 5ghz network at home(which I'm pretty sure it was connecting to in the past) not sure what happened over the past couple of days.
Yep. Here's the fix.

Enable Developer Mode in options. Under Developer tab, disable Wireless Power Management.

Why this is a thing, I have no idea.
 

elvisizer

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Another thing that's less ergonomic than I'd prefer is the behavior if you happen to have a game open on your PC and try to wake your Deck. It really, really doesn't like the possibility that two people might be gaming on your account at the same time, and the result is pretty Draconian. They might be tied by licensing, but there are still many legitimate reasons why you'd want to access your library from multiple systems at once, and it dings the pick-up-and-play factor a bit that it's harder to multitask games when you want to.
huh? i've got elden ring running on my laptop right now, started up my steam deck, nothing happened. started a game on the steam deck, it booted up, and now 2 games from my library are running. Nothing happened other than the games launching . . . .what draconian result are you seeing happen, ya got me curious now :)
edit: OK now I see what you mean!! took a few minutes but suddenly got the currently playing a game error elsewhere on the deck. that IS abrupt!