Some Steam Decks ship with an x2 SSD instead of an x4 SSD

I understand that they're supply constrained, and they don't think it will make a difference... but they didn't think the fan model would make a difference either. Invisible SKUs are bad for consumer confidence, and bad for the one fixed target console model. It's all a bit Amazon Marketplace.

I don't think many people will complain about this, however I can see someone still might that they got an inferior product while paying the same price as the better one.

This isn't just with the Steam deck though. I see a similar thing in Dell laptops, different PCIe speeds and even different brands.

I see a similar thing in Dell laptops, different PCIe speeds and even different brands.

At work we use Alienware laptops basically as portable servers to take with you in the field. People started noticing that some of them perform better than others, and once we looked more closely, we found at least 4 different SSD models by 3 different manufacturers, even though it was supposed to be the same model.

I don't think many people will complain about this.

Ooh but they will, welcome to 2022

You can see how many lanes are being used by the ssd (or any device) with the 'lspci -vv' command.
 
sudo lspci -vv 

Look for the LinkCap and LinkSta for the ssd.
 
LnkCap: Port #1, Speed 8GT/s, Width x4, ASPM L1, Exit Latency L1 unlimited
ClockPM- Surprise- LLActRep- BwNot- ASPMOptComp+
LnkCtl: ASPM L1 Enabled; RCB 64 bytes, Disabled- CommClk+
ExtSynch- ClockPM- AutWidDis- BWInt- AutBWInt-
LnkSta: Speed 8GT/s (ok), Width x4 (ok)
TrErr- Train- SlotClk+ DLActive- BWMgmt- ABWMgmt-

Yeah there's gonna be no difference. You're gonna run up against other bottlenecks before ever maxing out the SSD. Though that won't stop the average Redditor from making a fuss over it.


Last edited by Colorblindmonk on 29 June 2022 at 2:56 pm UTC

Yeah there's gonna be no difference. You're gonna run up against other bottlenecks before ever maxing out the SSD. Though that won't stop the average Redditor from making a fuss over it.

Well, silently changing the specs for some is bound to annoy people. If Valve would have been upfront about it, done a blogpost explaining it and providing their benchmarks, i guess nobody really would complain.
But changing it an hoping noone will notice is bound to be perceived as deceptive and not taking the customer serious...


Last edited by Termy on 29 June 2022 at 3:49 pm UTC

Yeah there's gonna be no difference. You're gonna run up against other bottlenecks before ever maxing out the SSD. Though that won't stop the average Redditor from making a fuss over it.

Well, silently changing the specs for some is bound to annoy people. If Valve would have been upfront about it, done a blogpost explaining it and providing their benchmarks, i guess nobody really would complain.
But changing it an hoping noone will notice is bound to be perceived as deceptive and not taking the customer serious...

But... they didn't change it and hope no one will notice? It looks like they have pretty clearly explained that they've made this switch for some units.

But changing it an hoping no one will notice is bound to be perceived as deceptive and not taking the customer serious...

Indeed,

Imagine if ford changed one of their engines from a V8 to a straight 4 ! There would be hell to pay.

Whilst this is an extreme it's the same principal and should be be illegal without it being WELL publicized. Especially to those that have pre ordered.

All manufacturers are doing this now. As far as I'm concerned as long as there is no visible performance or reliability differences, it is fine.

It's when companies like dell do it without even SAYING they did it, and then it gets worse performance, that I have issues with it.

Also, for all those people whining about this change, would you rather get your steamdeck now, or wait another year for it? Because if valve doesn't do small changes like this, that is what will happen. As long as you don't encounter issues and it works just as well as the other units, why should you even care?

Also, for all those people whining about this change, would you rather get your steamdeck now, or wait another year for it? Because if valve doesn't do small changes like this, that is what will happen. As long as you don't encounter issues and it works just as well as the other units, why should you even care?

I'd rather they sell what they marketed. Like mirv said, they should just say nvme ssd. They're doing this to try and differentiate the price point between the 64GB model and the two higher end models. Bad messaging on their part in my opinion. If it doesn't make a difference then they shouldn't point it out. If they do then they should sell what they advertise.

This is actually so common that people would probably be surprised. Over a certain timespan, purchase a stack of the same model of some computer, tear them apart and you *will* find differences.

And it's been like this since forever. I recall home computers back in the 80s when we had a ball tinkering with those things: The same model could even have different chipsets on the motherboard. All depending on what production line it came out of.

- Nobody pre-ordered it. Technically, we just reserved a place in the queue. So, as long as we get whatever's on the page when the purchase is actually done, I don't think there's anything we can do about it

That's a rather good point.

What about the price difference between a PCIe Gen 3 x4 vs PCIe Gen 3 x2 SSD of the same brand?

Frankly I couldn't give less of a crap (at the moment). I expect a loading time difference of like half a second or at least within margin of error, most of what I'm gonna be running I'm gonna be running off of a MicroSD anyway. I can see why people might be upset but we haven't seen benchmark differences yet as far as I know so it's too early to tell if this is a "It's whatever, I'm just glad to get my steam deck sooner" or "oh man what were they THINKING"

Don't get me wrong, this isn't me defending playing two barrel russian roulette with hard drive quality within the same pricetag skews, I know how it feels like to watch someone defend a really bad decision and I don't intend to frustrate people in that manner, it's just more me saying we don't know if this will really make a meaningful enough difference to get the pitchforks out yet like we had to with what happened with the REMake games and their bad engine updates that doubled the filesize of the games and introduced bugs.

This is actually so common that people would probably be surprised. Over a certain timespan, purchase a stack of the same model of some computer, tear them apart and you *will* find differences.

And it's been like this since forever. I recall home computers back in the 80s when we had a ball tinkering with those things: The same model could even have different chipsets on the motherboard. All depending on what production line it came out of.

I'm actually surprised that isn't common knowledge. Do people really believe everything is made exactly the same and sole sourced? Everything that's mass produced has multiple suppliers resulting in varying parts. Hell, there might even be assembly/quality differences if Deck's are made in different factories. I've run into that before with other items.


Last edited by denyasis on 29 June 2022 at 11:15 pm UTC

This is actually so common that people would probably be surprised. Over a certain timespan, purchase a stack of the same model of some computer, tear them apart and you *will* find differences.

And it's been like this since forever. I recall home computers back in the 80s when we had a ball tinkering with those things: The same model could even have different chipsets on the motherboard. All depending on what production line it came out of.

Absolutely. Those companies usually made no effort to communicate those changes at all too. So Valve is ahead by at least communicating the changes, no matter how minor they are.

And it's been like this since forever. I recall home computers back in the 80s when we had a ball tinkering with those things: The same model could even have different chipsets on the motherboard. All depending on what production line it came out of.

Sometimes even the LEDs were different, even down to there being different shades of what was ostensibly the same colour. I wonder if anyone was ever upset to get the lime-green LED instead of the darker green one?

What about the price difference between a PCIe Gen 3 x4 vs PCIe Gen 3 x2 SSD of the same brand?

Same stick from same manufacture from different supplier/locations have different prices (~10% or more).

Listings of PCIe 3.0 X4 all over the place: speed from 3000 to ~1000 (same NVMe or M.2), price too. Feels like everyone hiding what type of memory cells are (SLC, MLC TLC). Most PCIe 3.0 X2 at similar speeds (~900 MB/s) and price, memory cell type(?). Some x4 cheaper than x2 other more pricey (same capacity).

Make you own conclusions. Myself, x2 or x4, kinda do not care what much. External CPU cache was lottery back in the day, HDD with same serial number/date had different chips, RAM never been 100% identical and so much more. It's not like buying 8 core high performance CPU, but getting 4 core mobile one...