Valve talks performance of the Steam Deck, Big Picture UI being replaced and Gamescope

Slightly off topic, but I'm curious about this section on Steamworks:

QuoteOnce you are set up in your Linux environment / developer kit, you will be able to use the provided debugging tools to run game builds through a remote debugger, and profile performance. Access to the tools is still a work-in-progress and this page will be updated with more information in the coming days.

Anyone know what they have planned for profiling? Gpuvis?

i wonder what they mean by run...
run without all the features (cutscenes from guilty gear, sound effects from trackmania etc) count as run? because according to protonDB it count, i hope they arent taking this site serious and they are doing some serious QA with an version of proton that isnt avaliable yet for public consumption (but i dont know what they would do that, maybe to caught microsoft by surprised and not let then have any time to react? wishfull thinking)

They've been working on cutscenes for a while. They've implemented enough so that games no longer crash when they're trying to play something that they can't (that's what the test-screen in-game videos are about) and they're working on getting the video to appear instead. I heard a rumour that they were doing that by re-encoding every video on their end into a more sensible format, and then swapping it in as needed; I haven't investigated whether that's actually true, though.

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: elmapuldigital foundry did an framerate count on some of the footage of games running on steam deck

I guess I found the wrong video, but still quite interesting:
Valve Steam Deck Spec Analysis: Can It Really Handle AAA PC Gaming?
("Proton really needs to deliver!")

This is the one you're after.

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: elmapuldigital foundry did an framerate count on some of the footage of games running on steam deck

I guess I found the wrong video, but still quite interesting:
Valve Steam Deck Spec Analysis: Can It Really Handle AAA PC Gaming?
("Proton really needs to deliver!")

yes, wrong video, the video that i saw had ~1 hour, but just an small part of it was performance test

Quoting: CatKillerGabe Newell should probably try to avoid implying that the hardware is only for boys, though.

In case anyone thinks I'm just being random here, it was an interview with IGN, talking about the Deck and the Switch, where he said

QuoteSo I think Nintendo does a great job targeting the audience they do with the content that they have. And that's going to be different. Like when you pick this up, it feels much more like the ergonomics for somebody who's used to playing with an expensive game controller, right? Because it's bigger and it's bulkier than a Switch. And if we're right, that's the right trade-off to be making for the audience that we're going after

A perfectly reasonable interpretation of his thought process here (although not the only one) is that "the Switch is for filthy casuals with their childlike and girly hands, but the Deck is for PCMR with their big manly hands."

I doubt it was a conscious thought, but biases rarely are. The Valve promo videos show girls being allowed to play, at least.


Last edited by CatKiller on 26 July 2021 at 10:31 pm UTC

specifically limiting FPS to 30 for power saving feature aside..

I have heard almost no mention of freesync on this device from valve, or on forums such as this either, what am i missing? surely this is the exact instance where freesync would be perfect in allowing smooth FPS all the way down to 30 from 60.

There are going to be many titles where proton's overhead or Anti-cheat rears itself sporadically. Be that due to unavoidable shaders compilation happening in realtime (or if people get sick of waiting for shader compiling and hit 'skip)'or frame drops from DRM and many other such things like loading areas from an SD card.
Let alone the lower the resolution you go (800p) the more CPU load you place on the device as is the way with every PC. Vulkan does not fully mitigate this and games often use CPU for many other reasons like physics etc.. my point being that there will be frame 'dips' on this device.

So is there any indication that this device will support freesync for smooth mobile gaming ? or is it 'film like' 30fps gaming or 'arcade' 60fps with the settings cranked down low ?

Quoting: Horiit's better to have a stable and consistent 30FPS than fluctuating between e.g. 40-60.

If the game can hit 60 and then occasionally drops to 40 (which can look smooth with freesync) then i disagree as mostly you could be enjoying the game at 60 apart from some occasional dips. Rather than accepting a compromise such as 30fps locked (outside of power saving.)


Last edited by Lofty on 27 July 2021 at 2:04 am UTC

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: CatKillerGabe Newell should probably try to avoid implying that the hardware is only for boys, though.

In case anyone thinks I'm just being random here, it was an interview with IGN, talking about the Deck and the Switch, where he said

QuoteSo I think Nintendo does a great job targeting the audience they do with the content that they have. And that's going to be different. Like when you pick this up, it feels much more like the ergonomics for somebody who's used to playing with an expensive game controller, right? Because it's bigger and it's bulkier than a Switch. And if we're right, that's the right trade-off to be making for the audience that we're going after

A perfectly reasonable interpretation of his thought process here (although not the only one) is that "the Switch is for filthy casuals with their childlike and girly hands, but the Deck is for PCMR with their big manly hands."

I doubt it was a conscious thought, but biases rarely are. The Valve promo videos show girls being allowed to play, at least.

Ha, I would interpret it as being for full sized adults, and not kids that would drop it. I mean we should face the fact that the Switch, and Nintendo in general targets more of kids and grown kids... the joy-cons are absolutely too small for my hands to comfortably use, and I have to use my Pro controller to play games on it (at least it is one of the nicest controllers I have.) Gabe probably has the same complaint about the joy-cons as I do. They are made for smaller hands.

If anything he is implying that the Steam Deck is for men and women, not boys and girls.

Quoting: slaapliedjeHa, I would interpret it as being for full sized adults, and not kids that would drop it. I mean we should face the fact that the Switch, and Nintendo in general targets more of kids and grown kids... the joy-cons are absolutely too small for my hands to comfortably use, and I have to use my Pro controller to play games on it (at least it is one of the nicest controllers I have.) Gabe probably has the same complaint about the joy-cons as I do. They are made for smaller hands.

If anything he is implying that the Steam Deck is for men and women, not boys and girls.

Sure, intending it to mean "this is a premium product made from premium materials, offering premium performance at a premium price, for grown-up gaming," is also a perfectly plausible interpretation, and is likely what he was consciously intending.

We all know of PC gaming's widespread reputation for welcoming inclusiveness, of course.

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: slaapliedjeHa, I would interpret it as being for full sized adults, and not kids that would drop it. I mean we should face the fact that the Switch, and Nintendo in general targets more of kids and grown kids... the joy-cons are absolutely too small for my hands to comfortably use, and I have to use my Pro controller to play games on it (at least it is one of the nicest controllers I have.) Gabe probably has the same complaint about the joy-cons as I do. They are made for smaller hands.

If anything he is implying that the Steam Deck is for men and women, not boys and girls.

Sure, intending it to mean "this is a premium product made from premium materials, offering premium performance at a premium price, for grown-up gaming," is also a perfectly plausible interpretation, and is likely what he was consciously intending.

We all know of PC gaming's widespread reputation for welcoming inclusiveness, of course.

Ha! Yeah. This is kind of embarrassing to point out, but one of the reasons there is the reputation with PC gaming really stems from the absolute pain in the ass it historically has been to get working right. You have to deal with getting appropriate hardware, get the right drivers... hell even the operating system.

Then you have console gaming. Stick the cart, disk, etc in, and away you go. The sad thing is the two have been merging for years. Now you have your video game console that has to be connected to the internet, has to download patches for the games and OS constantly, and in general is far less stable than the ones from yesteryear.

So yeah, there's an elitism from people who game on the computer, as there are challenges to be met, but also rewards as they are very much less limited to resolutions and effects, based on how much $$ you're willing to spend. Consoles are much easier to develop for in this regard, as everyone can just target the most common. Sure computers have APIs and such to try to make development easier these days, but it wasn't always so.

The Steam Deck is the second attempt at making a console out of a PC, instead of a Console becoming a PC like the last couple generations of consoles (with the exception of Nintendo's as they like to do their own thing. Ha, well you even have the Atari VCS now which is just a console or a PC depending on how you want to use it. One guy is turning his into a MIDI music station with Linux installed, and it is introduction into Linux and he's very excited about the prospect.

Hopefully people are excited about the prospect of a Linux handheld!