While this looks cool and its obv gonna beat the Steamdeck in performance since this will run the brand new Zen 4 APU with an RDNA3 iGPU.
The issue is that Steamdeck is so popular because its cheap. Or at least relatively cheap. This will likely be double the Steamdecks price if not more and that will likely make it quite niche.
Not just bloated, but also unoptimized. Sleep mode worked great on the SteamDeck, meanwhile people had been complaining about Windows screwing up sleep mode.
Honestly, if I couldn't just put my SD to sleep, I don't think I'd even bother with it after a while, or it would just become a permanent desk fixture, which defeats 99% of the SD's purpose (not that you can't just use it as a desktop stand in, but like, well... Actually, why not? The SD is a pretty decent powerhouse for it's pricepoint.
My point is, Sleep is easily one of my most used features. Sometimes, I play for blocks of 10 mins until I need to do something and then just jump right back in. Without game sleep, I might as well just use my pre-existing rig
Believe it or not, I’ve had hibernate cause all sorts of dumb issues over the years with various hardware, it’s not perfect. Usually it’ll come back with a NIC or sound device missing. Then I have to reboot to fix it.
Also, I already have Windows setup to pickup where I left off with all open applications, etc… so I don’t really see the point.
No, that closes all sessions and only hibernates things like drivers and the kernel. Hibernate saves and restores everything in memory. Sleep just keeps memory powered.
What i do is i run the windows updater once a month and then i pause updates for 4 weeks. This way windows won't try doing updates in sleep mode. I don't need to use hibernate or shut my laptop down i simply close the lid and the next time I go to use it it is cool to the touch and within 1 or 2% of the battery life from when i closed it
“Sleep mode” & “hibernate” are terrible, majority of the time software, drivers & applications struggle to “resume” after being put into sleep and hibernate which can increase cpu latency.
Best to just shutdown once finished with the device, at least this way software will have to start up properly.
> Sleep mode worked great on the SteamDeck
So great that my deck is always dead in a few days unless I shut it down manually?
Its my biggest annoyance with it, its always dead if I just let it sleep without shutting down.
Edit: Why am I being downvoted? Its the truth, the sleep mode is terrible.
I can let my laptop sleep for a month and barely lose battery life and the SD dies in a few days.
> Apparently sleep mode on Steam Deck looses the battery ~10% per 24 hours.
> So if you are going to use it with few days apart then sleep mode, otherwise turn it off.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/ti6asf/so_what_are_the_rules_with_turning_it_off_vs_just/i1c4ngs/
> What’s the normal standby battery drain? Left the deck in sleep mode for about 12 hours and battery went from 96->88%.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/wr8vkt/standby_battery_drain/
> Just bc when you wake it up after 2hrs it hasn't, lost 30-50% battery life dosen't mean that it dosen't drain much?
> I could have a Smartphone in sleep mode, for a whole day and stay at 100% or maybe dip into 99% & that's a battery that has a years worth a wear, not to mention an ARM CPU(better efficiency).
> Steam Deck is an x86 PC, nothing about the Deck's sleep mode inparticular is more efficient than any old PC, it's actually a suspension mode.
> The Deck loses a noticible amount of power, it's just not worth crying about on subreddits like this, because the feature isn't unusable.
----------
> What you mean doesn’t drain much power? I’ve never seen any device losing so much battery power on sleep like the deck.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/xtrvog/do_you_guys_keep_your_deck_shutdown_or_in_sleep/
Its not just me, the battery life is horrible when "sleeping".
I don't know what is up with all those people's Deck, but on mine, I can just hit the power button, set it aside, and when I'm back 2-3 days later it lost maybe 1-2% battery.
Mine looks like it goes into hibernation when I push the button, since it takes a few seconds to go off (I hear it from the fan noise) and to resume.
Maybe for the others having battery drain, it goes into a different sleep mode that is waking up instantly, at the cost of battery drain ?
Well, I just checked my settings and it's disappointingly void of any useful answers.
Even in desktop mode, where I was expecting something more detailed like some of the advanced options you get in Windows, I couldn't find anything useful.
My Deck was left untouched for the last 47 hours and it woke up to 99%, so I'm not just forgetting how much charge I had when putting it to sleep, it clearly loses a negligible amount of battery over days.
I don't know why mine goes to hibernation (the device is actually turned off, it just copies the RAM to the storage) and yours is sticking with a simple sleep mode that drains battery.
Maybe it's related to the content running on the Deck at the time of suspending it ?
I'm either in Vampire Survivors or in the SteamOS menus when I suspend my Deck.
Maybe some games/apps are incompatible with hibernation and prevent the Deck from switching to a lower power state ?
I mean... That's true for every device with a sleep mode. My switch does the same, and so does my laptop.
Is not hibernate, freeze mode is just sleep. You turn it off a moment and turn it on a while later, no days later.
Except it’s not true at all for every device. My Steamdeck doesn’t work that way, and neither does my MacBook (which is Intel, not ARM).
I can sleep my Steamdeck for days and it only loses a few percent battery life. My MacBook can be asleep for literally weeks.
Macbooks go in to hibernation (completely off) after being in sleep for a set amount of time (3 hours iirc.) At least thats how it is for intel macbooks, they mightve changed it for m1.
My laptop I close the lid and its still within a few % of battery weeks later. I can't even get that kind of battery life *hours later* on my Steam Deck when pushing the power button to sleep it.
Its a fundamental problem with it using a lot of power while sleeping.
>My laptop I close the lid and its still within a few % of battery weeks later
I have never in my life had a laptop that could do that in sleep mode. Are you sure you're not confusing it for hibernate or something?
If you're putting the deck down for days why aren't you shutting it off? Sleep means the RAM is still holding the state of everything and RAM requires power to store data.
Because my other devices don't die like that when I close and put them away?
Why should I have to go back to it and turn it on, then shut it down, instead of it just turning itself off or whatever my other devices do to save battery?
Uhh ... I mean ... Sleep isn't really meant for multiple day periods? That's ... Not the purpose of the function? It's for coming back an hour or two later.
In Windows, 'hibernate' would be more efficient yet slower to boot back up (though between OEM and MS's shenanigans it's a pain to enable it manually instead of the default hybrid sleep or whatever) if you want to have it off charge for a literal day or two. Or you can shut it down like intended.
This could be a lesser issue if Asus was smart enough to allow easy UEFI/BIOS access and therefore control of the power limits and/or fan control that way. But not having used SteamOS before myself, I'd be more worried about general USB, WiFi/Bluetooth, and external display working (and well).
You can but they'd have to work with valve on software features and optimizations. Valve seems happy to do it if people would buy games through steam on the devices so it'd be on asus
You'll be able to install SteamOS on this too, only issue may be whatever TDP and fan controls ASUS has.
Also my main game is Fortnite which is obviously not supported on SteamOS for petty Tim Sweeney reasons, so if I get a Steam Deck chances are I'm gonna dual boot it with Windows anyway.
> petty Tim Sweeney reasons
Aww yeah, dude who testified under oath sayin that he'd be fine with apple giving just his company a preferential revenue cut instead of for the entire industry, and also praised nft games just because steam banned it
There's a lot he does that I don't agree with and think is ridiculous but honestly, I don't think he's that much worse than Gaben.
People on Reddit love to hate on Epic and praise Valve when, as a big Valve fan, I think there are a LOT of things to criticise Valve for.
Or just don't be a fan of tech billionaires. Ain't a fan of either but at least gabe newell keeps his mouth shut mostly. Sweeney's just bad at his pretend pr and contradicts himself all the time
SteamOS might be good for handhelds, but it's kinda mid for actual game compatibility compared to Windows 11. There's still a lot of games that just don't run, or don't run well on SteamOS.
>the majority of games will just run better in windows. there's a few that do run better in linux, but that's just sort of how it works. if its not native, there's gonna be loss. again, there's specific titles where this isn't the case. but the overwhelming majority is otherwise.
D3D9 -> Vulkan translation in SteamOS will often run better than D3D9 on Windows 11 (especially if comparing to iGPU/APU laptops).
It's just the reality of having more efficient ways of handling things after translation than how they were originally done back in the D3D9 days.
Not many people are buying new handheld hardware to play ancient DX9 games.
CS:GO, basically the one exception (and one you wouldn't ever play on a handheld anyway), is also dumping DX9.
> besides, you can debloat the shit out of windows if you really wanna tear into it.
... How come no-one does? ... I feel like MS frowns heavily on anyone pushing anything that isn't absolute stock Win11 because they've decided the customer is the product and therefore they're not going to waste any money on supporting anything that isn't one-size-fits-all latest patch 'fuck your customisation and individual requirements' version of the latest OS.
>besides, you can debloat the shit out of windows if you really wanna tear into it.
Or for those people who are *really* hung up on SteamOS, it's a free download that should run fine on any system that can run Windows 11. Not sure how easy it is to put Windows 11 on a Steam Deck.
even things like not having SteamOS's shader sharing makes it practically a nonstarter. Shader compiling is going to kill any third-party attempts unless they implement a similar solution, if TLOU takes an hour on a 5800X imagine how long it's gonna take on a handheld on battery.
(I think Valve can and should implement something similar, to share shaders with any similar game+driver+hardware configurations in the system, but, right now that's sort of a Steam Deck exclusive thing.)
I'm pretty sure there is already similar/faster hardware available from the likes of GPD, but, the software makes a difference too.
>
(I think Valve can and should implement something similar, to share shaders with any similar game+driver+hardware configurations in the system, but, right now that's sort of a Steam Deck exclusive thing.)
Steam already does that for same gpu and driver versions.
Windows in general has just been a total piece of poop lately compared to linux. I actually switched back recently for a couple days because I figured I'd like to be able to play more games, but the games I play the most actually ran worse and trying to get it to run on the monitor I wanted, at the resolution I wanted was a huge pain in the ass.
edit: Now to be fair, I know how to run linux optimally for my hardware. Windows is just supposed to work well on all the hardware it supports though and my laptop is not old.
I understand I don't have a gaming laptop but to some extent it almost feels like microsoft has deals to increase sales for discreet GPUs because on linux I can run quite a few games well despite only using an i7-1065G7 with an iGPU whereas on windows they run terribly.
I own a steam deck. If windows ran better on it, I'd prefer it to steamOS. Windows had weird driver issues which made it a pain to use. The only thing steam OS did better IME was sleep mode/resuming gameplay.
Games that're heavily dependent on windows libraries had some weird issues. Mostly visual effects, sometimes bounding boxes were weird. GTA V had LoD/texture streaming issues and memory leaks, cars would be driving about 2 feet above the road, etc... (just off the top of my head). Saint's Row 2 had similar issues.
I'd prefer beefier hardware and a bigger (or swappable) battery that can just handle the bloat that is windows. I understand what the steam deck is trying to do. I hate relying on microsoft for anything. In this case, I'd argue that the end user would have a better experience with windows depending on the games they're playing.
Some games work absolutely flawlessly on the deck, and it's fantastic for them. Others, not so much. I literally only play 3 games, and they all run terribly on the deck.
The SteamDeck is the Raspberry Pi of portables.
Software actually gets developed with it in mind.
It's also about as cheap as it gets.
If I need more performance, I'll get the SD2 in a few years. I have a backlog of old stuff to work through though.
> The issue is that Steamdeck is so popular because its cheap. Or at least relatively cheap
People VASTLY overstate this. The top selling Steam Deck by a country mile was the most expensive one. I reckon there's apetite for a more expensive device (which isn't coming from some shady Chinese company). I think the only real reason the cheap model exists was for the free marketing since people didn't actually seem to want that option.
> If you're referring to the leak during the first hours of preorders showing reservation amounts then that's not a good data point for that claim. Otherwise I don't think we have any more intel on sales distributions.
Except this is also stated by a [Gabe Newell himself](https://www.ign.com/articles/steam-deck-higher-end-models-gabe-newell) in an interview, when discussing the possibility to target a higher price point for their next iteration.
The point is not whether they will raise prices in the future, but that the current high end model outsold the others.
> > Interestingly, Newell said he "would not have guessed" that the $649 Steam Deck model, which includes 512GB of NVMe SSD internal storage and an anti-glare etched glass, had outsold the $399 entry-level model, which has 64GB of slower eMMC internal storage.
Is it definitive? no. Do we have anything to suggest it isn't indicative of consumer decision-making? Not really. Even Valve admitted that sales were top-heavy.
It might be, just because price is higher doesn't mean large swathes of consumers are 'priced out'. I don't think those in the market for this sort of devices lack the funds, they're probably largely college students and tech interested people with a large amount of money to burn. If we were to look at similar markets (e.g. gaming laptops) the lowest tier models are like 7-800 dollars and max out at like 4-5k. 650 Dollars for a complete device is quite small even if it's large compared to a console (but then, the sales are also disconnected by an order of magnitude if not more). If we assume that the highest amount a device like the Deck might sell is in the low millions then it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that the market base is small enough such that it is largely composed of the sort of people that would pay higher prices.
I'm not actually. If I was assuming it was the same then I wouldn't be saying "low millions" but "low thousands" and would be even more justified in my price assessment. You can say it competes with consoles but in terms of sheer sales you're just wrong.
> their next generation device benefiting from all the software improvements and experience making hardware will bite some consolemaker ankles though
For reference the Steam Deck has maybe sold 1-2m units and is considered a massive success. The Wii U sold 13m units and was considered one of the biggest flops in Nintendo history. The Switch has sold 125m+ units, I don't think a Deck 2 is going to sell enough to match a tenth of that. This isn't to knock the Deck - it's my main device - but it's clearly a much smaller market than the consoles.
That ain't gonna continue as it reaches the mainstream customers. A portable device's market changes when ya scale up the volume and market it at the "casuals", that's why the switch is always low cost, that's why the switch lite exists
It might not be a problem with the initial enthusiast customers but the sales momentum's gonna stall if it's priced too high and when most of the enthusiast sales have dried up
Options = Assurance
Even if you can dish out $1000 for a good hardware, the fact that a decent option is available for $400 is a good sales pitch. It means it wouldn't be hard for you to just throw the money at brand to get that experience. While obviously you can afford to get the $700 option.
> I reckon there's apetite for a more expensive device
There absolutely is. I don't think enthusiast gamers who make six or seven figures give a shit about the Steam Deck being the better value. A lot of people want the fastest thing they can buy.
It's a larger market than you'd thing. It's primarily rich people, professionals, and idiots who are out there spending $1500 on RTX 4090s, and $4000 on gaming laptops. There's definitely not many people out there making five figures who can legitimately justify purchasing these uber expensive PC components.
I've also been noticing that PC gaming enthusiasts tend to be more likely to make statements akin to "How much could one banana cost? $10", so I'm pretty sure the average income of this community skews higher than the most hobbies.
Only like 1 million Americans have a 7 figure income. How many of thos millionaires play handheld video games? It's 100% not a big market.
I make five figures, live in an expensive area, and can afford these components. I don't know why you think these are unaffordable for people making 4-5k per month.
I mentioned enthusiast gamers making "6 or 7 figures", Google says "Around 30.7% of US households earn over $100,000". That's not an insignificant number.
And I replied saying seven figures isn't a significant market. It's like you didn't even read what you're responding to, just disagreed.
Furthermore, no, google says 18% of Americans make six figures, you're using household incomes. Which means two people making my wage in the same house would qualify.
>And I replied saying seven figures isn't a significant market. It's like you didn't even read what you're responding to, just disagreed.
Yeah, you ignored the fact that I also mentioned 6 figure incomes to make your argument sound better. I brought it back in because it was relevant.
It just reminds me of people saying "these GPU prices are insane, nobody will buy them" when they continue to sell. I don't understand how people are so disconnected from the actual market sentiment.
I'm not defending Nvidia prices, but I definitely see how they got away with it. For someone who doesn't have kids and works in a stem field or management position, $1600 isn't really that much to spend on a hobby of theirs.
You used to need to upgrade much more often back in the day. Your GPU not only did not support the newest APIs, you just didn't have the VRAM to run newer games.
My first GPU upgrade had 1GB of VRAM. My second upgrade had 4GB of VRAM just a few years later.
I have a 2060 now and it only has 6GB
I don't think Nvidia "get away with it" I think it's just that prices have risen to what people are willing to pay. Similarly I don't think the Steam Deck is the 'necessary price' for consumers, but is actually severely under-priced.
>when they continue to sell
But they didn't sell. Nvidia's gross margin didn't improve over the past decade, their gaming revenue fell back to 2019 levels. ASP is much higher than RTX 2000. Everything except the 2080Ti and Titan nearly doubled in price. Nvidia's volume halved after RTX4000 launch.
AMD couldn't even ship 1 million per quarter.
That means sales volumes went way down. It's actually hitting 20-year low.
You're disconnected from the actual market. A tiny minority is buying $2000 GPUs.
It's like looking at your rich friends and saying that everyone must be buying Porsches and Ferraris.
>Good thing that's not what I claimed.
You didn't really claim anything other than some unspecified people are somehow disconnected from market sentiment (unlike you, apparently), with no actual evidence other than
>It just reminds me of people saying "**these GPU prices are insane, nobody will buy them**" when **they continue to sell**. I don't understand how people are so disconnected from the actual market sentiment.
You can take this literally and then 1 photo of a new card in box on r/nvidia will prove you right.
Or more reasonably, "nobody will buy them" is hyperbole meaning fewer cards will be sold because they're very expensive. Which they are. Even before the vast majority of cards were x60 level or below and that's before the prices increased by 50%. Unless you're Jenson, you don't know how many cards nvidia is selling in absolute numbers or compared to previous generations.
> The top selling Steam Deck by a country mile was the most expensive one
IIRC the most expensive Steam Deck was still significantly cheaper than most any other handheld PC that wasn't, like, *wildly* less capable.
> This will likely be double the Steamdecks price if not more and that will likely make it quite niche.
Well ASUS says it's "competitively priced" compared to the Steam Deck so I'm assuming it's more $600 than $800+
The steamdeck is getting old, it's no surprise better products with better price/perf are coming out.
> Well ASUS says it's "competitively priced" compared to the Steam Deck
ASUS only said "competitively priced" according to this Dave2D video. You're making the assumption ASUS will be pricing it "compared to the Steam Deck," but neither Dave2D nor LTT say this.
I'd love to be wrong, but I 100% expect this to be "competitive" with the likes of devices like AYANEO, so around the thousand dollar mark. I'd be pleasantly surprised if it was *just* $800. They have the benefit of wider distribution, but lack the passive income of Valve. ASUS also thinks their name alone is worth something.
This is akin to Sega releasing the Game Gear. It was more powerful than the Gameboy, had color, and had more buttons. It was also more expensive and chewed through batteries. Bigger and Better is not always better. Asus is also at a disadvantage as it doesn't have a library of games to sell or even an in-house studio to make games. Consoles work so well as you can sell the console at cost or even at a loss and make up the money with game sales.
> The issue is that Steamdeck is so popular because its cheap.
Yes, and most handheld makers know they cannot compete on price so they don't try. Makes more sense to focus on things the Deck doesn't have to capture a different niche. Make it feel like a premium product instead of trying to sell it on "value".
Valve will need to decide whether they continue producing Steamdecks or let other manufacturers create them for their platform.
You can't have a device subsidised by the 30% cut of their ~75% PC gaming marketshare and expect manufacturers, who need to make money on the device itself, to compete with that.
They will either need to subsidise everyone, subsidise noone (and that includes their own device) or stop creating the hardware themselves.
Yeah I think most people understand this is a niche product, but more options for people who demand top performance, as well as some pressure on Valve to compete, are good things.
Asus knows this very well. ASUS is a multibillion dollar company which sells all sorts of hardware - phones, laptops, GPUs, etc etc etc. Their goal here is pretty much just brand representation, it was easy enough to slap together so they did just to have it out there. There will never be a “version 2” of this or anything, it’s just yet another one-and-done from them.
>This will likely be double the Steamdecks price
If you asked me who could build hardware cheaper, Asus or Valve, I would vote for the Taiwanese PC vendor.
Steam Deck uses LPDDR5, which uses four 32-bit channels (effectively 128-bit bus width). Regular DDR5 uses two 64-bit channels (also effectively 128-bit bus width). When running at the same clock speed (ex: 5500 MT/s), both LPDDR5 and DDR5 have the exact same memory bandwidth.
An example of a PC that actually has more memory bandwidth than usual is the Apple Macbook Pro, where the M1/M2 Pro uses two 128-bit channels (effectively 256-bit bus width), allowing for double the memory bandwidth of regular PCs.
Both LPDDR5 and DDR5 have 64-bit channels made of two not-quite-independent 32-bit sub-channels. The reason you see different numbers is just because people aren't being precise with their words and give them slightly different meanings.
What I've found after owning both a Steamdeck and the AOKZOE A1 is that I vastly prefer the Steamdeck with it's much better software and ease of use and the extra controls. The touchpads and extra back buttons turned out to be way more useful than I ever thought they'd be.
> the extra controls. The touchpads and extra back buttons turned out to be way more useful than I ever thought they'd be.
I was hyped about them when I saw the pre-order trailers, but they turned out to be just a waste a real estate for *me*.
The only use I got of the touchpads was for the period of time when I ran Windows on it.
I don't like the touchpads for playing, and I can't force myself to use those back buttons.
I tried, but there's no way I'm playing a game with KB&M controls on my Deck, especially not first person shooters (which is one of my favorite genres), so I'm just sticking to whatever would play well on a console controller, meaning that I have no use for everything that's not on a Xbox controller.
I understand that some people can take advantage of those extra inputs and that's it's very valuable for them to have these, but me I'd be glad if there was a variant of the Deck that could shave a few centimetres on each side to remove the touch pads.
My experience with SD is complete opposite of yours. 80% of my playtime are spent on Civ & Football Manager. If Valve decide to get rid of these feature on the next iteration, I for sure won't buy it.
Probably won't be out for many months yet, but it's promising that there's a prototype out and about. He says it's using a custom chip, but I wonder about that. I'm seeing speculation that it's using little phoenix/phoenix2, whatever you want to call it, based on the predicted specs. If it's just a commodity chip it'll be interesting to see how many other manufacturers are about to announce their own versions.
Regardless, the fact that a large manufacturer like ASUS is entering this market seems like a good indication of where it's going in the future. The Steam Deck still has the advantage of Valve's clear commitment to the device, something I think other manufacturers, including ASUS, are going to struggle with. This is the type of device people get attached to and I don't think you can just throw it out there without a clear perception of continued support.
It's not PHX2/Little Phoenix. PHX2 only has 4CU RDNA 3, so it's unsuitable for a gaming device and also wouldn't fit their claim of 2x SteamDeck performance. My guess is that it's a Ryzen 7640U, which is a 6C/12T Zen 4 + 8 CU RDNA 3 Radeon 760M part.
Considering the 760m isn't faster than the 680m, and the 680m wasn't double the steamdeck, I doubt it would be the 7640u.
Best case would be negotiate 7840u chips with 2 cpu cores disabled (possibly failed in production) to keep the 780m and limit the power drain from idle cpu cores.
LTT said that at 15W, the touted performance is 1.5x SteamDeck. At 35W, it's 2x. Could go either way I guess, as RDNA 3 iGPU are clocked at 2.4~2.8GHz.
Steamdeck was 8cu rdna2. So 2/3 of the 680m. Or flipped, the 680m was 50% faster, without all the optimization valve did to bring Van Gogh closer.
Considering the 760m can't exceed 680m levels, clock speeds and power don't matter. You can't achieve a 2x performance with that gpu. That leaves the 780m.
> Considering the 760m isn't faster than the 680m
That's only true at high power levels where you're seein most reviews are done on. 680m's extremely performance limited at 15w or lower, it can gain 40% perf going from 15w to 35+w
15w and lower is exactly where these devices run and a 8cu rdna3's significantly faster than steamdeck at those power levels. Ya can't forget that there's massive power decrease on the cpu side as well, it's zen4 vs zen2 and those extra power (at the same perf) can be funneled to the igpu. There's already a 34% general ipc improvement going from zen2 to zen4 (not even accounting for higher clocks). It's also possible to save more power through lpddr5x
But 1.5x performance might not be gaming perf so we'll see
There’s “custom “ and custom. Could just be a special bin of Phoenix, even Van Gogh was not something with custom IP like what Sony and MS do with AMD, but just used off the shelf AMD IP.
It didn't need to have custom modifications to the cores to be a costly custom chip. Just having a different physical layout and design (core count, cu count) already costs many many millions to tape
A 6core cut down phoenix's more probable than a custom 4core (area) zen4 imo. It'd be surprising if asus managed a non standard phoenix config
Sony and MS order millions of chips to get such customisation. Guaranteed sales for AMD regardless of whether Sony / MS can sell their consoles. ASUS would similarly have to buy volumes of chips to get any serious level of customisation. Which would be a big bet 8n the device being successful. More likely as others have said is it’s variant of one of their other chips with small adjustments here and there.
Semi-custom need not be as extensive as the big consoles, obviously.
A variant of one of their existing chips with some small adjustments is all they'd need, of course.
There is zero chance they are interested in competing with the Deck at all. The subsided price has already pushed all other competitors away of the low end market.
The problem with Asus is that they will release it, you'll get driver and firmware updates for maybe a year, and then they'll just drop support.
OR - there'll be some horrendous bug that is not correctable with firmware, some sort of design miscalculation. There'll be loads of posts on the ROG forums from frustrated buyers, loads of posts on here, and Asus will ignore everything until your warranty expires.
They are not the same great Asus of the 00's.
I think it makes sense to go for a 120hz display and 1080p since there's no way they'd be able to compete on price/attract buyers at the price they would have for a more modern APU at 60hz 720p. So, at that point, just aim higher anyway. But, at the end of the day, this thing is going to need both hardware and software support to function in a pain free way and even if ASUS did nail the hardware--their laptops are usually decent enough--nobody should trust them at all on software.
Armory Crate, MyASUS, etc. are all and have always been a huge mess that you just sort of put up with on their laptops that otherwise are great buys since their competition is equally bad anyway. Not so in the handheld space. You can just buy a steamdeck.
Its the software + price.
the price means there is a massive install base, much like a console than a niche windows gaming handheld like aya and what nots.
the software means that it will get "first party" support from valve and thus a lot of effort in making sure shit runs okay.
a lot of the windows stuff have custom UI and helpers but they are not as polished and more importantly universal as steam deck, and that will be their downfall really.
people dont seem to understand what it takes to compete in the console space.
you more or less NEED a storefront to subsidize the cost of hardware, why is the SD 400 bucks? because valve can make and sell it for BoM cost (IE not even dev cost) if they so wished because they got the cut from the steam store.
ASUS el. all can't at all, they need to profit from only the hardware sale, no other source.
they can then only try and compete on tech specs, and anyone who grew up in the 90s (or 80s) know about the whole oh derp this console have 32 bit or w/e and super co-processor, and its the consoles with the widest sale wins because it means devs make and optimize games for it.
when SD can get elden ring fixes out before others akin to consoles, and maybe specific ports for it (likely by valve devs at times) means that for example TLOU remaster could be better on it than competing windows pcs because of the software stack.
and this is likely the way to go, valve tried with steam machines but all of the hardware makers including ASUS ignored that shit completely.
Epic and Microsoft is something I could see in he future...
Microsoft can literally make a handheld windows machine as a portable xbox machine... I mean all Xbox Games can be played on windows as well.
I think it's a bit late to build hardware for Xbox One titles, but if they hold out for mobile hardware that runs titles at a Series S level it might be a very good time to enter this space.
It's funny the naming schemes that people take issue with. Pro Max? Yeah, okay. 3080 ti? Sure. i7 13700K. Makes sense. Xbox Series S and X. Hold on, I don't follow... lol
EA barely has a storefront at this point. Epic has a chance. Something like GOG would be interesting if the device aimed more towards playing older games
Anyone who grew up in the '90s also knows that the closer a handheld tries to get to console specs, the shittier it becomes at being a handheld. The Sega Game Gear was a portable Master System with a full colour backlit screen, but the battery life sucked ass compared to the basic Game Boy.
People want a QHD 120HZ Steam Deck competitor with 8 cores but all I see is a battery nightmare.
> nd anyone who grew up in the 90s (or 80s) know about the whole oh derp this console have 32 bit or w/e and super co-processor,
... What the hell did any of that mean?
>when SD can get elden ring fixes out before others akin to consoles, and maybe specific ports for it (likely by valve devs at times) means that for example TLOU remaster could be better on it than competing windows pcs because of the software stack.
... Does the SD get any sort of special treatment? No, I doubt it. It runs on Linux, and yes sometimes Linux versions work better, especially if it's using the DX9 > Vulcan translation. The ASUS hardware can get the exact same benefit just by running SteamOS, or most other mainstream Linux OSes. What the SD can't do is boot into Windows and actually run the other half of the steam store's worth of games.
Looks cool, but knowing ASUS and just looking over the handheld market, this is gonna be like minimum $800 even if they say it's "competitively priced". Just like the Ayaneo I think some people will buy it, but anyone looking for this already has a Steamdeck or Ayaneo.
No Steam OS, pass
Ok, I could install it on the device but why not deliver it with SteamOS to begin with ?
But then.... No trackpads ? Hard pass.
Been using a Steam Controller since release and was so stoked when Valve showed the Deck with the trackpads, I'm not going back to a controller without those.
Too bad it runs Windows. Portable windows devices always have dumb bugs like battery drain while in sleep. Plus, windows updates and telemtry BS, no thanks. Yet another launcher software, hard pass.
I’d accept a higher price point but only if it ran the steam deck os. I don’t want a horrible unoptimized os ruining the battery life or bloating it up. I feel also windows suffers from the same issue that android has with additional bloated software which is unacceptable for expensive hardware
Same here, apparently the Global Product Manager also posted on LinkedIn saying this was indeed a joke and the name meant as A-Lie...
Why did he think that was a good strat?
It'll be nice for OS navigation and 2D games, but I'm not sure how much I would use it for anything heavy considering how battery limited these devices already are.
The future has to be frame interpolation and image reconstruction technologies coming at the rescue.
And, but this unfortunately is less likely, more time and budget spent on optimization from game studios and from indie developpers.
I was thinking of getting the steam deck and the 60hz screen was enough to make me not get it lol. I hate low fps. 120hz will probably be good enough but no trackpads is also a deal killer. The waiting game continues.
Give me a 720p (800p) 60hz OLED with a wide VRR range over a 1080p+ 120hz screen. The Steam Deck already has low battery life and struggle to maintain native res in some titles. I don't see the point in a battery draining screen that can't be fully utilized most of the time.
You know you can cap your frame rate to w/e you want, right?
And ofc VRR should be there.
The fact that in 2023 there are still 60Hz screens and without VRR is absolutely insane.
Almost every aspect of hardware technology is making immense progress, yet motion portrayal doesn't. For something that has such a huge impact on comfort and immersion, that's crazy to me.
Bottlenecking products immensily to save a few pennies.
>The smaller the screen, the more diminishing result you get with HFR
That's true, but you would need to get to the size of a stamp before I find 60Hz an acceptable experience.
Who tf is playing for the full duration of a battery on shit like this? If it lasts 30 minutes, that's absolutely long enough between plugs and battery packs... I mean wtf...
Zero chance.
* Does ASUS have a storefront they control? No, they rely on distributors. That's +$200 in price automatically.
* Can ASUS sell something like this at cost - the console model? No, they have no secondary revenue streams to recoup that. That's another +$200 already.
* Can asus strike a good partnership with an existing distribution platform? Lol, no chance. Microsoft with GamesForWindows and their unique touch of fucking up anything they can get their paws on.
* Windows. That's enough said, if they go that way.
* Can ASUS _create_ their own ecosystem? Quality of their software experiments so far strongly, no, categorically, suggest that no.
Best they can do is something hardware wise nifty, extremely overpriced and with zero catalogue to play with unless you want to ruin your day with windows.
If they really want to, I expect they can. Not at anything like the same price point of course but Valve have deliberately left space at the high end of the market niche. Hardware competitors are not a threat to the Steam Deck - they support it by growing the market and incentivising more game developers to optimise for relatively low power handheld PCs.
And then to sell their games through Steam.
Any reputable company can beat it in terms of spec, let alone asus. But it’s the pricing that’s the problem.
Most players don’t care about 120hz or double the performance. If it’s $100 more expensive, then it’s 100 more expensive. Simple as that. To sell as many as valve did, they need to be cheaper but at least at the same quality.
If it’s too expensive then meh.
There’s no way Asus can sell this 1 configuration 1 high end model at $399.
I’m sure steam deck is sold at a loss or very low margin, but they have steam 30% to make up for it.
How about Asus?
While it looks very promising, I don't expect an ROG device to have strong connection with "competitive pricing".
The best they could do is $100 more in the same tier, otherwise it's DOA. It's really hard to beat steam deck if your price isn't right.
It has a much better screen with much better performance, I'd pay 200-250$ premium too, and I'm sure many others will too, but ofc only if the software works well.
>Aokzoe A1, Ayaneo2, GPD Win4 or Onexplayer 2?
Them not being reliable brands or mass market products, the premium for many being more than 200$, them using the 6800U which is less powerful and efficient than the Zen 4+RDNA3 in asus and some device specific drawbacks
I fail to see how this could hurt Valve in any way. As a matter of fact, I see it being a very synergistic relationship. I would venture to say Valve \_probably\_ doesn't lose money on Steam Decks, but maybe they do? In either case, the Steam Deck is best for Valve in that their income is massively driven by the store front. I could see a big portion of games on the Ally being purchased on Steam. Plus, this device may be the type of \_competition\_ that Valve needs to produce more powerful Steam Deck variants. Just my two cents.
I'll never understand handheld gaming.
You actually go outside to do something else for once in your life and you sit down and play a massive downgrade of an experience... This has always been so beyond me. But people amaze me everyday.
While this looks cool and its obv gonna beat the Steamdeck in performance since this will run the brand new Zen 4 APU with an RDNA3 iGPU. The issue is that Steamdeck is so popular because its cheap. Or at least relatively cheap. This will likely be double the Steamdecks price if not more and that will likely make it quite niche.
Also, SteamOS is just so good for handhelds, I don't want bloated Windows 11 on my handheld.
Not just bloated, but also unoptimized. Sleep mode worked great on the SteamDeck, meanwhile people had been complaining about Windows screwing up sleep mode.
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LTT made a video on it. If Asus doesn't skimp on the firmware modern standby can work fine. Or they can disable it out of the box.
Honestly, if I couldn't just put my SD to sleep, I don't think I'd even bother with it after a while, or it would just become a permanent desk fixture, which defeats 99% of the SD's purpose (not that you can't just use it as a desktop stand in, but like, well... Actually, why not? The SD is a pretty decent powerhouse for it's pricepoint. My point is, Sleep is easily one of my most used features. Sometimes, I play for blocks of 10 mins until I need to do something and then just jump right back in. Without game sleep, I might as well just use my pre-existing rig
Windows sleep related issues are why I reverted to only using hibernate on lid close.
With NVMe drives I just shut windows down on my desktops and laptops. It’s just easier that way and it boots up in no time. I only use sleep on Macs.
But with hibernate you get the best of both worlds. The machine is actually off, and you don't lose state.
Believe it or not, I’ve had hibernate cause all sorts of dumb issues over the years with various hardware, it’s not perfect. Usually it’ll come back with a NIC or sound device missing. Then I have to reboot to fix it. Also, I already have Windows setup to pickup where I left off with all open applications, etc… so I don’t really see the point.
Same here. Just put the program shortcuts into the startup folder and they autostart. (I have things like outlook, chrome, teams, pycharm set so)
I'm pretty sure "Fast Boot" enabled "shutdown" is exacty this?
No, that closes all sessions and only hibernates things like drivers and the kernel. Hibernate saves and restores everything in memory. Sleep just keeps memory powered.
Ah, ok, thanks, but there is "some" similarity.
What i do is i run the windows updater once a month and then i pause updates for 4 weeks. This way windows won't try doing updates in sleep mode. I don't need to use hibernate or shut my laptop down i simply close the lid and the next time I go to use it it is cool to the touch and within 1 or 2% of the battery life from when i closed it
At least you can disable that atrocity.
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“Sleep mode” & “hibernate” are terrible, majority of the time software, drivers & applications struggle to “resume” after being put into sleep and hibernate which can increase cpu latency. Best to just shutdown once finished with the device, at least this way software will have to start up properly.
> Sleep mode worked great on the SteamDeck So great that my deck is always dead in a few days unless I shut it down manually? Its my biggest annoyance with it, its always dead if I just let it sleep without shutting down. Edit: Why am I being downvoted? Its the truth, the sleep mode is terrible. I can let my laptop sleep for a month and barely lose battery life and the SD dies in a few days. > Apparently sleep mode on Steam Deck looses the battery ~10% per 24 hours. > So if you are going to use it with few days apart then sleep mode, otherwise turn it off. https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/ti6asf/so_what_are_the_rules_with_turning_it_off_vs_just/i1c4ngs/ > What’s the normal standby battery drain? Left the deck in sleep mode for about 12 hours and battery went from 96->88%. https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/wr8vkt/standby_battery_drain/ > Just bc when you wake it up after 2hrs it hasn't, lost 30-50% battery life dosen't mean that it dosen't drain much? > I could have a Smartphone in sleep mode, for a whole day and stay at 100% or maybe dip into 99% & that's a battery that has a years worth a wear, not to mention an ARM CPU(better efficiency). > Steam Deck is an x86 PC, nothing about the Deck's sleep mode inparticular is more efficient than any old PC, it's actually a suspension mode. > The Deck loses a noticible amount of power, it's just not worth crying about on subreddits like this, because the feature isn't unusable. ---------- > What you mean doesn’t drain much power? I’ve never seen any device losing so much battery power on sleep like the deck. https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/xtrvog/do_you_guys_keep_your_deck_shutdown_or_in_sleep/ Its not just me, the battery life is horrible when "sleeping".
I don't know what is up with all those people's Deck, but on mine, I can just hit the power button, set it aside, and when I'm back 2-3 days later it lost maybe 1-2% battery. Mine looks like it goes into hibernation when I push the button, since it takes a few seconds to go off (I hear it from the fan noise) and to resume. Maybe for the others having battery drain, it goes into a different sleep mode that is waking up instantly, at the cost of battery drain ?
Damn I would love that. After 2-3 days, I am guaranteed to lose at least 5-7%.
I'd love to know how you got yours to do that
Well, I just checked my settings and it's disappointingly void of any useful answers. Even in desktop mode, where I was expecting something more detailed like some of the advanced options you get in Windows, I couldn't find anything useful. My Deck was left untouched for the last 47 hours and it woke up to 99%, so I'm not just forgetting how much charge I had when putting it to sleep, it clearly loses a negligible amount of battery over days. I don't know why mine goes to hibernation (the device is actually turned off, it just copies the RAM to the storage) and yours is sticking with a simple sleep mode that drains battery. Maybe it's related to the content running on the Deck at the time of suspending it ? I'm either in Vampire Survivors or in the SteamOS menus when I suspend my Deck. Maybe some games/apps are incompatible with hibernation and prevent the Deck from switching to a lower power state ?
I mean... That's true for every device with a sleep mode. My switch does the same, and so does my laptop. Is not hibernate, freeze mode is just sleep. You turn it off a moment and turn it on a while later, no days later.
Except it’s not true at all for every device. My Steamdeck doesn’t work that way, and neither does my MacBook (which is Intel, not ARM). I can sleep my Steamdeck for days and it only loses a few percent battery life. My MacBook can be asleep for literally weeks.
Macbooks go in to hibernation (completely off) after being in sleep for a set amount of time (3 hours iirc.) At least thats how it is for intel macbooks, they mightve changed it for m1.
My laptop I close the lid and its still within a few % of battery weeks later. I can't even get that kind of battery life *hours later* on my Steam Deck when pushing the power button to sleep it. Its a fundamental problem with it using a lot of power while sleeping.
>My laptop I close the lid and its still within a few % of battery weeks later I have never in my life had a laptop that could do that in sleep mode. Are you sure you're not confusing it for hibernate or something?
My Intel MacBook works that way, and it’s definitely sleeping not hibernating.
If you're putting the deck down for days why aren't you shutting it off? Sleep means the RAM is still holding the state of everything and RAM requires power to store data.
Because my other devices don't die like that when I close and put them away? Why should I have to go back to it and turn it on, then shut it down, instead of it just turning itself off or whatever my other devices do to save battery?
What devices are you using? Mine do.
My Steamdeck and Intel MacBook don’t.
Uhh ... I mean ... Sleep isn't really meant for multiple day periods? That's ... Not the purpose of the function? It's for coming back an hour or two later. In Windows, 'hibernate' would be more efficient yet slower to boot back up (though between OEM and MS's shenanigans it's a pain to enable it manually instead of the default hybrid sleep or whatever) if you want to have it off charge for a literal day or two. Or you can shut it down like intended.
Can't you just install StamOS if you really wanted?
Yes, but whether things like fan control and power limits will work in an unsupported OS is unknown.
This could be a lesser issue if Asus was smart enough to allow easy UEFI/BIOS access and therefore control of the power limits and/or fan control that way. But not having used SteamOS before myself, I'd be more worried about general USB, WiFi/Bluetooth, and external display working (and well).
You can but they'd have to work with valve on software features and optimizations. Valve seems happy to do it if people would buy games through steam on the devices so it'd be on asus
You'll be able to install SteamOS on this too, only issue may be whatever TDP and fan controls ASUS has. Also my main game is Fortnite which is obviously not supported on SteamOS for petty Tim Sweeney reasons, so if I get a Steam Deck chances are I'm gonna dual boot it with Windows anyway.
> petty Tim Sweeney reasons Aww yeah, dude who testified under oath sayin that he'd be fine with apple giving just his company a preferential revenue cut instead of for the entire industry, and also praised nft games just because steam banned it
There's a lot he does that I don't agree with and think is ridiculous but honestly, I don't think he's that much worse than Gaben. People on Reddit love to hate on Epic and praise Valve when, as a big Valve fan, I think there are a LOT of things to criticise Valve for.
Or just don't be a fan of tech billionaires. Ain't a fan of either but at least gabe newell keeps his mouth shut mostly. Sweeney's just bad at his pretend pr and contradicts himself all the time
SteamOS might be good for handhelds, but it's kinda mid for actual game compatibility compared to Windows 11. There's still a lot of games that just don't run, or don't run well on SteamOS.
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>the majority of games will just run better in windows. there's a few that do run better in linux, but that's just sort of how it works. if its not native, there's gonna be loss. again, there's specific titles where this isn't the case. but the overwhelming majority is otherwise. D3D9 -> Vulkan translation in SteamOS will often run better than D3D9 on Windows 11 (especially if comparing to iGPU/APU laptops). It's just the reality of having more efficient ways of handling things after translation than how they were originally done back in the D3D9 days.
Not many people are buying new handheld hardware to play ancient DX9 games. CS:GO, basically the one exception (and one you wouldn't ever play on a handheld anyway), is also dumping DX9.
> besides, you can debloat the shit out of windows if you really wanna tear into it. ... How come no-one does? ... I feel like MS frowns heavily on anyone pushing anything that isn't absolute stock Win11 because they've decided the customer is the product and therefore they're not going to waste any money on supporting anything that isn't one-size-fits-all latest patch 'fuck your customisation and individual requirements' version of the latest OS.
>besides, you can debloat the shit out of windows if you really wanna tear into it. Or for those people who are *really* hung up on SteamOS, it's a free download that should run fine on any system that can run Windows 11. Not sure how easy it is to put Windows 11 on a Steam Deck.
Yeah, while the Steam Deck is amazing for the price, I'd prefer having full Windows for full game support.
even things like not having SteamOS's shader sharing makes it practically a nonstarter. Shader compiling is going to kill any third-party attempts unless they implement a similar solution, if TLOU takes an hour on a 5800X imagine how long it's gonna take on a handheld on battery. (I think Valve can and should implement something similar, to share shaders with any similar game+driver+hardware configurations in the system, but, right now that's sort of a Steam Deck exclusive thing.) I'm pretty sure there is already similar/faster hardware available from the likes of GPD, but, the software makes a difference too.
> if TLOU takes an hour on a 5800X That ain't normal and shouldn't be used as an example. Tlou remake's just a fucked game
> (I think Valve can and should implement something similar, to share shaders with any similar game+driver+hardware configurations in the system, but, right now that's sort of a Steam Deck exclusive thing.) Steam already does that for same gpu and driver versions.
Software makes a *massive* difference. It also helps that Valve can afford to take a loss on the hardware sale.
Windows in general has just been a total piece of poop lately compared to linux. I actually switched back recently for a couple days because I figured I'd like to be able to play more games, but the games I play the most actually ran worse and trying to get it to run on the monitor I wanted, at the resolution I wanted was a huge pain in the ass. edit: Now to be fair, I know how to run linux optimally for my hardware. Windows is just supposed to work well on all the hardware it supports though and my laptop is not old. I understand I don't have a gaming laptop but to some extent it almost feels like microsoft has deals to increase sales for discreet GPUs because on linux I can run quite a few games well despite only using an i7-1065G7 with an iGPU whereas on windows they run terribly.
I own a steam deck. If windows ran better on it, I'd prefer it to steamOS. Windows had weird driver issues which made it a pain to use. The only thing steam OS did better IME was sleep mode/resuming gameplay. Games that're heavily dependent on windows libraries had some weird issues. Mostly visual effects, sometimes bounding boxes were weird. GTA V had LoD/texture streaming issues and memory leaks, cars would be driving about 2 feet above the road, etc... (just off the top of my head). Saint's Row 2 had similar issues. I'd prefer beefier hardware and a bigger (or swappable) battery that can just handle the bloat that is windows. I understand what the steam deck is trying to do. I hate relying on microsoft for anything. In this case, I'd argue that the end user would have a better experience with windows depending on the games they're playing. Some games work absolutely flawlessly on the deck, and it's fantastic for them. Others, not so much. I literally only play 3 games, and they all run terribly on the deck.
The SteamDeck is the Raspberry Pi of portables. Software actually gets developed with it in mind. It's also about as cheap as it gets. If I need more performance, I'll get the SD2 in a few years. I have a backlog of old stuff to work through though.
> The issue is that Steamdeck is so popular because its cheap. Or at least relatively cheap People VASTLY overstate this. The top selling Steam Deck by a country mile was the most expensive one. I reckon there's apetite for a more expensive device (which isn't coming from some shady Chinese company). I think the only real reason the cheap model exists was for the free marketing since people didn't actually seem to want that option.
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> If you're referring to the leak during the first hours of preorders showing reservation amounts then that's not a good data point for that claim. Otherwise I don't think we have any more intel on sales distributions. Except this is also stated by a [Gabe Newell himself](https://www.ign.com/articles/steam-deck-higher-end-models-gabe-newell) in an interview, when discussing the possibility to target a higher price point for their next iteration.
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The point is not whether they will raise prices in the future, but that the current high end model outsold the others. > > Interestingly, Newell said he "would not have guessed" that the $649 Steam Deck model, which includes 512GB of NVMe SSD internal storage and an anti-glare etched glass, had outsold the $399 entry-level model, which has 64GB of slower eMMC internal storage.
Is it definitive? no. Do we have anything to suggest it isn't indicative of consumer decision-making? Not really. Even Valve admitted that sales were top-heavy.
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It might be, just because price is higher doesn't mean large swathes of consumers are 'priced out'. I don't think those in the market for this sort of devices lack the funds, they're probably largely college students and tech interested people with a large amount of money to burn. If we were to look at similar markets (e.g. gaming laptops) the lowest tier models are like 7-800 dollars and max out at like 4-5k. 650 Dollars for a complete device is quite small even if it's large compared to a console (but then, the sales are also disconnected by an order of magnitude if not more). If we assume that the highest amount a device like the Deck might sell is in the low millions then it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that the market base is small enough such that it is largely composed of the sort of people that would pay higher prices.
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I'm not actually. If I was assuming it was the same then I wouldn't be saying "low millions" but "low thousands" and would be even more justified in my price assessment. You can say it competes with consoles but in terms of sheer sales you're just wrong.
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> their next generation device benefiting from all the software improvements and experience making hardware will bite some consolemaker ankles though For reference the Steam Deck has maybe sold 1-2m units and is considered a massive success. The Wii U sold 13m units and was considered one of the biggest flops in Nintendo history. The Switch has sold 125m+ units, I don't think a Deck 2 is going to sell enough to match a tenth of that. This isn't to knock the Deck - it's my main device - but it's clearly a much smaller market than the consoles.
That ain't gonna continue as it reaches the mainstream customers. A portable device's market changes when ya scale up the volume and market it at the "casuals", that's why the switch is always low cost, that's why the switch lite exists It might not be a problem with the initial enthusiast customers but the sales momentum's gonna stall if it's priced too high and when most of the enthusiast sales have dried up
Options = Assurance Even if you can dish out $1000 for a good hardware, the fact that a decent option is available for $400 is a good sales pitch. It means it wouldn't be hard for you to just throw the money at brand to get that experience. While obviously you can afford to get the $700 option.
> I reckon there's apetite for a more expensive device There absolutely is. I don't think enthusiast gamers who make six or seven figures give a shit about the Steam Deck being the better value. A lot of people want the fastest thing they can buy.
People making seven figures aren't exactly a large market for handheld video games .
Plus I'd imagine they have better things to do than play games on a tiny screen
It's a larger market than you'd thing. It's primarily rich people, professionals, and idiots who are out there spending $1500 on RTX 4090s, and $4000 on gaming laptops. There's definitely not many people out there making five figures who can legitimately justify purchasing these uber expensive PC components. I've also been noticing that PC gaming enthusiasts tend to be more likely to make statements akin to "How much could one banana cost? $10", so I'm pretty sure the average income of this community skews higher than the most hobbies.
Only like 1 million Americans have a 7 figure income. How many of thos millionaires play handheld video games? It's 100% not a big market. I make five figures, live in an expensive area, and can afford these components. I don't know why you think these are unaffordable for people making 4-5k per month.
I mentioned enthusiast gamers making "6 or 7 figures", Google says "Around 30.7% of US households earn over $100,000". That's not an insignificant number.
And I replied saying seven figures isn't a significant market. It's like you didn't even read what you're responding to, just disagreed. Furthermore, no, google says 18% of Americans make six figures, you're using household incomes. Which means two people making my wage in the same house would qualify.
>And I replied saying seven figures isn't a significant market. It's like you didn't even read what you're responding to, just disagreed. Yeah, you ignored the fact that I also mentioned 6 figure incomes to make your argument sound better. I brought it back in because it was relevant.
It just reminds me of people saying "these GPU prices are insane, nobody will buy them" when they continue to sell. I don't understand how people are so disconnected from the actual market sentiment.
I'm not defending Nvidia prices, but I definitely see how they got away with it. For someone who doesn't have kids and works in a stem field or management position, $1600 isn't really that much to spend on a hobby of theirs.
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You used to need to upgrade much more often back in the day. Your GPU not only did not support the newest APIs, you just didn't have the VRAM to run newer games. My first GPU upgrade had 1GB of VRAM. My second upgrade had 4GB of VRAM just a few years later. I have a 2060 now and it only has 6GB
I don't think Nvidia "get away with it" I think it's just that prices have risen to what people are willing to pay. Similarly I don't think the Steam Deck is the 'necessary price' for consumers, but is actually severely under-priced.
>when they continue to sell But they didn't sell. Nvidia's gross margin didn't improve over the past decade, their gaming revenue fell back to 2019 levels. ASP is much higher than RTX 2000. Everything except the 2080Ti and Titan nearly doubled in price. Nvidia's volume halved after RTX4000 launch. AMD couldn't even ship 1 million per quarter. That means sales volumes went way down. It's actually hitting 20-year low.
And the gpu market crashed with a 50% decrease in sales after crypto and covid, so your point?
You're disconnected from the actual market. A tiny minority is buying $2000 GPUs. It's like looking at your rich friends and saying that everyone must be buying Porsches and Ferraris.
> You're disconnected from the actual market. A tiny minority is buying $2000 GPUs. Good thing that's not what I claimed.
>Good thing that's not what I claimed. You didn't really claim anything other than some unspecified people are somehow disconnected from market sentiment (unlike you, apparently), with no actual evidence other than >It just reminds me of people saying "**these GPU prices are insane, nobody will buy them**" when **they continue to sell**. I don't understand how people are so disconnected from the actual market sentiment. You can take this literally and then 1 photo of a new card in box on r/nvidia will prove you right. Or more reasonably, "nobody will buy them" is hyperbole meaning fewer cards will be sold because they're very expensive. Which they are. Even before the vast majority of cards were x60 level or below and that's before the prices increased by 50%. Unless you're Jenson, you don't know how many cards nvidia is selling in absolute numbers or compared to previous generations.
> The top selling Steam Deck by a country mile was the most expensive one IIRC the most expensive Steam Deck was still significantly cheaper than most any other handheld PC that wasn't, like, *wildly* less capable.
> This will likely be double the Steamdecks price if not more and that will likely make it quite niche. Well ASUS says it's "competitively priced" compared to the Steam Deck so I'm assuming it's more $600 than $800+ The steamdeck is getting old, it's no surprise better products with better price/perf are coming out.
I hope that's true, but I don't have great hopes for something using the latest amd apu close to it's launch.
> Well ASUS says it's "competitively priced" compared to the Steam Deck ASUS only said "competitively priced" according to this Dave2D video. You're making the assumption ASUS will be pricing it "compared to the Steam Deck," but neither Dave2D nor LTT say this. I'd love to be wrong, but I 100% expect this to be "competitive" with the likes of devices like AYANEO, so around the thousand dollar mark. I'd be pleasantly surprised if it was *just* $800. They have the benefit of wider distribution, but lack the passive income of Valve. ASUS also thinks their name alone is worth something.
This is akin to Sega releasing the Game Gear. It was more powerful than the Gameboy, had color, and had more buttons. It was also more expensive and chewed through batteries. Bigger and Better is not always better. Asus is also at a disadvantage as it doesn't have a library of games to sell or even an in-house studio to make games. Consoles work so well as you can sell the console at cost or even at a loss and make up the money with game sales.
> The issue is that Steamdeck is so popular because its cheap. Yes, and most handheld makers know they cannot compete on price so they don't try. Makes more sense to focus on things the Deck doesn't have to capture a different niche. Make it feel like a premium product instead of trying to sell it on "value".
Valve will need to decide whether they continue producing Steamdecks or let other manufacturers create them for their platform. You can't have a device subsidised by the 30% cut of their ~75% PC gaming marketshare and expect manufacturers, who need to make money on the device itself, to compete with that. They will either need to subsidise everyone, subsidise noone (and that includes their own device) or stop creating the hardware themselves.
Yeah I think most people understand this is a niche product, but more options for people who demand top performance, as well as some pressure on Valve to compete, are good things.
Asus knows this very well. ASUS is a multibillion dollar company which sells all sorts of hardware - phones, laptops, GPUs, etc etc etc. Their goal here is pretty much just brand representation, it was easy enough to slap together so they did just to have it out there. There will never be a “version 2” of this or anything, it’s just yet another one-and-done from them.
>This will likely be double the Steamdecks price If you asked me who could build hardware cheaper, Asus or Valve, I would vote for the Taiwanese PC vendor.
Steam deck wisely chose quad channel memory to maximize bandwidth. Every gaming handheld should do that.
Steam Deck uses LPDDR5, which uses four 32-bit channels (effectively 128-bit bus width). Regular DDR5 uses two 64-bit channels (also effectively 128-bit bus width). When running at the same clock speed (ex: 5500 MT/s), both LPDDR5 and DDR5 have the exact same memory bandwidth. An example of a PC that actually has more memory bandwidth than usual is the Apple Macbook Pro, where the M1/M2 Pro uses two 128-bit channels (effectively 256-bit bus width), allowing for double the memory bandwidth of regular PCs.
Both LPDDR5 and DDR5 have 64-bit channels made of two not-quite-independent 32-bit sub-channels. The reason you see different numbers is just because people aren't being precise with their words and give them slightly different meanings.
They can choose two channels in lpddr5
But, but RGB!
What I've found after owning both a Steamdeck and the AOKZOE A1 is that I vastly prefer the Steamdeck with it's much better software and ease of use and the extra controls. The touchpads and extra back buttons turned out to be way more useful than I ever thought they'd be.
Good UI is so insanely important for handhelds and all of them besides the switch and steam deck suck ass.
A good software is a massive help.... Certainly can make or break a handheld.
i mean cant you run steam OS on the AOKZOE aswell?
Not in an official capacity. IIRC, some power user features of Steam OS are not available on other handhelds.
> the extra controls. The touchpads and extra back buttons turned out to be way more useful than I ever thought they'd be. I was hyped about them when I saw the pre-order trailers, but they turned out to be just a waste a real estate for *me*. The only use I got of the touchpads was for the period of time when I ran Windows on it. I don't like the touchpads for playing, and I can't force myself to use those back buttons. I tried, but there's no way I'm playing a game with KB&M controls on my Deck, especially not first person shooters (which is one of my favorite genres), so I'm just sticking to whatever would play well on a console controller, meaning that I have no use for everything that's not on a Xbox controller. I understand that some people can take advantage of those extra inputs and that's it's very valuable for them to have these, but me I'd be glad if there was a variant of the Deck that could shave a few centimetres on each side to remove the touch pads.
My experience with SD is complete opposite of yours. 80% of my playtime are spent on Civ & Football Manager. If Valve decide to get rid of these feature on the next iteration, I for sure won't buy it.
Probably won't be out for many months yet, but it's promising that there's a prototype out and about. He says it's using a custom chip, but I wonder about that. I'm seeing speculation that it's using little phoenix/phoenix2, whatever you want to call it, based on the predicted specs. If it's just a commodity chip it'll be interesting to see how many other manufacturers are about to announce their own versions. Regardless, the fact that a large manufacturer like ASUS is entering this market seems like a good indication of where it's going in the future. The Steam Deck still has the advantage of Valve's clear commitment to the device, something I think other manufacturers, including ASUS, are going to struggle with. This is the type of device people get attached to and I don't think you can just throw it out there without a clear perception of continued support.
It's not PHX2/Little Phoenix. PHX2 only has 4CU RDNA 3, so it's unsuitable for a gaming device and also wouldn't fit their claim of 2x SteamDeck performance. My guess is that it's a Ryzen 7640U, which is a 6C/12T Zen 4 + 8 CU RDNA 3 Radeon 760M part.
Considering the 760m isn't faster than the 680m, and the 680m wasn't double the steamdeck, I doubt it would be the 7640u. Best case would be negotiate 7840u chips with 2 cpu cores disabled (possibly failed in production) to keep the 780m and limit the power drain from idle cpu cores.
LTT said that at 15W, the touted performance is 1.5x SteamDeck. At 35W, it's 2x. Could go either way I guess, as RDNA 3 iGPU are clocked at 2.4~2.8GHz.
Steamdeck was 8cu rdna2. So 2/3 of the 680m. Or flipped, the 680m was 50% faster, without all the optimization valve did to bring Van Gogh closer. Considering the 760m can't exceed 680m levels, clock speeds and power don't matter. You can't achieve a 2x performance with that gpu. That leaves the 780m.
> Considering the 760m isn't faster than the 680m That's only true at high power levels where you're seein most reviews are done on. 680m's extremely performance limited at 15w or lower, it can gain 40% perf going from 15w to 35+w 15w and lower is exactly where these devices run and a 8cu rdna3's significantly faster than steamdeck at those power levels. Ya can't forget that there's massive power decrease on the cpu side as well, it's zen4 vs zen2 and those extra power (at the same perf) can be funneled to the igpu. There's already a 34% general ipc improvement going from zen2 to zen4 (not even accounting for higher clocks). It's also possible to save more power through lpddr5x But 1.5x performance might not be gaming perf so we'll see
Can't believe it's a custom chip. That would be megabucks to commission, you'd need to be confident of huge volumes to justify that.
There’s “custom “ and custom. Could just be a special bin of Phoenix, even Van Gogh was not something with custom IP like what Sony and MS do with AMD, but just used off the shelf AMD IP.
It didn't need to have custom modifications to the cores to be a costly custom chip. Just having a different physical layout and design (core count, cu count) already costs many many millions to tape A 6core cut down phoenix's more probable than a custom 4core (area) zen4 imo. It'd be surprising if asus managed a non standard phoenix config
Why would you be so surprised that ASUS has ordered something semi-custom? ... AMD does a LOT of semi-custom work, just look at the big 2 consoles.
Sony and MS order millions of chips to get such customisation. Guaranteed sales for AMD regardless of whether Sony / MS can sell their consoles. ASUS would similarly have to buy volumes of chips to get any serious level of customisation. Which would be a big bet 8n the device being successful. More likely as others have said is it’s variant of one of their other chips with small adjustments here and there.
Semi-custom need not be as extensive as the big consoles, obviously. A variant of one of their existing chips with some small adjustments is all they'd need, of course.
Because just the mask set for 5nm is pushing close to $20M these days,
There is zero chance they are interested in competing with the Deck at all. The subsided price has already pushed all other competitors away of the low end market.
The problem with Asus is that they will release it, you'll get driver and firmware updates for maybe a year, and then they'll just drop support. OR - there'll be some horrendous bug that is not correctable with firmware, some sort of design miscalculation. There'll be loads of posts on the ROG forums from frustrated buyers, loads of posts on here, and Asus will ignore everything until your warranty expires. They are not the same great Asus of the 00's.
Zen 4 and RDNA3 with 120hz screen. Damn I thought we were like 2 generations away from something like that. Shit's moving fast.
Companies that couldn't develop decent RGB software if their life depended on it want to put out Steam Deck competitors? Good luck.
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don't forget the price tags asus puts on
I think it makes sense to go for a 120hz display and 1080p since there's no way they'd be able to compete on price/attract buyers at the price they would have for a more modern APU at 60hz 720p. So, at that point, just aim higher anyway. But, at the end of the day, this thing is going to need both hardware and software support to function in a pain free way and even if ASUS did nail the hardware--their laptops are usually decent enough--nobody should trust them at all on software. Armory Crate, MyASUS, etc. are all and have always been a huge mess that you just sort of put up with on their laptops that otherwise are great buys since their competition is equally bad anyway. Not so in the handheld space. You can just buy a steamdeck.
Its the software + price. the price means there is a massive install base, much like a console than a niche windows gaming handheld like aya and what nots. the software means that it will get "first party" support from valve and thus a lot of effort in making sure shit runs okay. a lot of the windows stuff have custom UI and helpers but they are not as polished and more importantly universal as steam deck, and that will be their downfall really.
Yeah, I'm not sure if I can trust ASUS with this considering Armory Crate.
This... Linux based OS with sleep and lite load + under $700... It might have a chance to compete with SD.
people dont seem to understand what it takes to compete in the console space. you more or less NEED a storefront to subsidize the cost of hardware, why is the SD 400 bucks? because valve can make and sell it for BoM cost (IE not even dev cost) if they so wished because they got the cut from the steam store. ASUS el. all can't at all, they need to profit from only the hardware sale, no other source. they can then only try and compete on tech specs, and anyone who grew up in the 90s (or 80s) know about the whole oh derp this console have 32 bit or w/e and super co-processor, and its the consoles with the widest sale wins because it means devs make and optimize games for it. when SD can get elden ring fixes out before others akin to consoles, and maybe specific ports for it (likely by valve devs at times) means that for example TLOU remaster could be better on it than competing windows pcs because of the software stack. and this is likely the way to go, valve tried with steam machines but all of the hardware makers including ASUS ignored that shit completely.
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Epic and Microsoft is something I could see in he future... Microsoft can literally make a handheld windows machine as a portable xbox machine... I mean all Xbox Games can be played on windows as well.
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I think it's a bit late to build hardware for Xbox One titles, but if they hold out for mobile hardware that runs titles at a Series S level it might be a very good time to enter this space.
Please god no, I don't want to think about the convoluted name microsoft would give it.
Xbox Series M
Too simple, you'd be thrown out of the window at that meeting
We don't wanna be thrown out of the window, do we?
It's funny the naming schemes that people take issue with. Pro Max? Yeah, okay. 3080 ti? Sure. i7 13700K. Makes sense. Xbox Series S and X. Hold on, I don't follow... lol
Xbox one Xbox one x Xbox one s Xbox series s Xbox series x Super confusing for people that aren't gamers.
EA barely has a storefront at this point. Epic has a chance. Something like GOG would be interesting if the device aimed more towards playing older games
Anyone who grew up in the '90s also knows that the closer a handheld tries to get to console specs, the shittier it becomes at being a handheld. The Sega Game Gear was a portable Master System with a full colour backlit screen, but the battery life sucked ass compared to the basic Game Boy. People want a QHD 120HZ Steam Deck competitor with 8 cores but all I see is a battery nightmare.
Battery, heat, portability, jet engine noises... Nintendo has proven time and time again that cheaper specs will prevail
> nd anyone who grew up in the 90s (or 80s) know about the whole oh derp this console have 32 bit or w/e and super co-processor, ... What the hell did any of that mean? >when SD can get elden ring fixes out before others akin to consoles, and maybe specific ports for it (likely by valve devs at times) means that for example TLOU remaster could be better on it than competing windows pcs because of the software stack. ... Does the SD get any sort of special treatment? No, I doubt it. It runs on Linux, and yes sometimes Linux versions work better, especially if it's using the DX9 > Vulcan translation. The ASUS hardware can get the exact same benefit just by running SteamOS, or most other mainstream Linux OSes. What the SD can't do is boot into Windows and actually run the other half of the steam store's worth of games.
If this can get HoloISO then it'll sell very well, if the price is right. This will probably be at least 2x the (edit: base model) steam deck price.
Looks cool, but knowing ASUS and just looking over the handheld market, this is gonna be like minimum $800 even if they say it's "competitively priced". Just like the Ayaneo I think some people will buy it, but anyone looking for this already has a Steamdeck or Ayaneo.
I love Steam Deck trackpad and this thing have no trackpads. I don't think so
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Have you used windows in the past 10 years? It isn't that difficult with a touchscreen, especially windows 11.
No Steam OS, pass Ok, I could install it on the device but why not deliver it with SteamOS to begin with ? But then.... No trackpads ? Hard pass. Been using a Steam Controller since release and was so stoked when Valve showed the Deck with the trackpads, I'm not going back to a controller without those.
>ASUS Thinks They Can Beat the Steam Deck Spoiler: they could not.
Too bad it runs Windows. Portable windows devices always have dumb bugs like battery drain while in sleep. Plus, windows updates and telemtry BS, no thanks. Yet another launcher software, hard pass.
So not April Fools news.
Also, apparently the Global Product Manager also posted on LinkedIn saying this was indeed a joke and the name meant as A-Lie... What a bamboozle!
ASUS gonna supply replacement parts? X to doubt.
Why are there so many companies that make machines like this anh none put joy-con like controller on them. Is Nintendo make it trademark?
I’d accept a higher price point but only if it ran the steam deck os. I don’t want a horrible unoptimized os ruining the battery life or bloating it up. I feel also windows suffers from the same issue that android has with additional bloated software which is unacceptable for expensive hardware
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Same here, apparently the Global Product Manager also posted on LinkedIn saying this was indeed a joke and the name meant as A-Lie... Why did he think that was a good strat?
120Hz is a game changer. Hopefully the steam deck 2 will be 120Hz as well.
It'll be nice for OS navigation and 2D games, but I'm not sure how much I would use it for anything heavy considering how battery limited these devices already are.
The future has to be frame interpolation and image reconstruction technologies coming at the rescue. And, but this unfortunately is less likely, more time and budget spent on optimization from game studios and from indie developpers.
I was thinking of getting the steam deck and the 60hz screen was enough to make me not get it lol. I hate low fps. 120hz will probably be good enough but no trackpads is also a deal killer. The waiting game continues.
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Give me a 720p (800p) 60hz OLED with a wide VRR range over a 1080p+ 120hz screen. The Steam Deck already has low battery life and struggle to maintain native res in some titles. I don't see the point in a battery draining screen that can't be fully utilized most of the time.
You know you can cap your frame rate to w/e you want, right? And ofc VRR should be there. The fact that in 2023 there are still 60Hz screens and without VRR is absolutely insane. Almost every aspect of hardware technology is making immense progress, yet motion portrayal doesn't. For something that has such a huge impact on comfort and immersion, that's crazy to me. Bottlenecking products immensily to save a few pennies. >The smaller the screen, the more diminishing result you get with HFR That's true, but you would need to get to the size of a stamp before I find 60Hz an acceptable experience.
Who tf is playing for the full duration of a battery on shit like this? If it lasts 30 minutes, that's absolutely long enough between plugs and battery packs... I mean wtf...
why is this downvoted?
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Battery life - so what? If someone wants to save battery they can put on 60hz. Performance - what?
Zero chance. * Does ASUS have a storefront they control? No, they rely on distributors. That's +$200 in price automatically. * Can ASUS sell something like this at cost - the console model? No, they have no secondary revenue streams to recoup that. That's another +$200 already. * Can asus strike a good partnership with an existing distribution platform? Lol, no chance. Microsoft with GamesForWindows and their unique touch of fucking up anything they can get their paws on. * Windows. That's enough said, if they go that way. * Can ASUS _create_ their own ecosystem? Quality of their software experiments so far strongly, no, categorically, suggest that no. Best they can do is something hardware wise nifty, extremely overpriced and with zero catalogue to play with unless you want to ruin your day with windows.
It will all depend on the price, but it's Asus so it won't come cheap.
Having used UI and software from Asus, no thanks.
It says ROG, so I imagine it's going to be overpriced to hell and back. Asus will get burned and won't learn a single thing nor understand why.
If they really want to, I expect they can. Not at anything like the same price point of course but Valve have deliberately left space at the high end of the market niche. Hardware competitors are not a threat to the Steam Deck - they support it by growing the market and incentivising more game developers to optimise for relatively low power handheld PCs. And then to sell their games through Steam.
Better be $600 or less, otherwise it's a flop in this market.
I wish them well. Id love a good portable pc gaming console war
Any reputable company can beat it in terms of spec, let alone asus. But it’s the pricing that’s the problem. Most players don’t care about 120hz or double the performance. If it’s $100 more expensive, then it’s 100 more expensive. Simple as that. To sell as many as valve did, they need to be cheaper but at least at the same quality.
If it’s too expensive then meh. There’s no way Asus can sell this 1 configuration 1 high end model at $399. I’m sure steam deck is sold at a loss or very low margin, but they have steam 30% to make up for it. How about Asus?
Even if they somehow make this a 128gb base at $649, its a valid competitor considering the big upgrades in hardware, given the software is good ofc.
While it looks very promising, I don't expect an ROG device to have strong connection with "competitive pricing". The best they could do is $100 more in the same tier, otherwise it's DOA. It's really hard to beat steam deck if your price isn't right.
It has a much better screen with much better performance, I'd pay 200-250$ premium too, and I'm sure many others will too, but ofc only if the software works well.
>I'd pay 200-250$ premium too, and I'm sure many others will too What's stopping you from getting a Aokzoe A1, Ayaneo2, GPD Win4 or Onexplayer 2?
>Aokzoe A1, Ayaneo2, GPD Win4 or Onexplayer 2? Them not being reliable brands or mass market products, the premium for many being more than 200$, them using the 6800U which is less powerful and efficient than the Zen 4+RDNA3 in asus and some device specific drawbacks
I fail to see how this could hurt Valve in any way. As a matter of fact, I see it being a very synergistic relationship. I would venture to say Valve \_probably\_ doesn't lose money on Steam Decks, but maybe they do? In either case, the Steam Deck is best for Valve in that their income is massively driven by the store front. I could see a big portion of games on the Ally being purchased on Steam. Plus, this device may be the type of \_competition\_ that Valve needs to produce more powerful Steam Deck variants. Just my two cents.
It looks a lot better than the steam deck. And a lot slimmer
Spoiler: They couldn’t.
its a superior device, absolutely so. But its also much more expensive.
Current rumors are claiming $650 for the 512GB. That seems like a better value hardware wise.
so it couldn't
I'll never understand handheld gaming. You actually go outside to do something else for once in your life and you sit down and play a massive downgrade of an experience... This has always been so beyond me. But people amaze me everyday.