Honestly I think it’s probably too soon for the kind of significant performance increase Valve is wanting for the Steam Deck 2. Not to mention that the OLED deck just came out. That said, even if these chips don’t make it to a Deck 2 I’m sure we’ll see them in competing devices.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/19261005
It depends on efficiency, it’s all good and well having more performance, but if the battery life is only 2 hours it’s useless. I imagine Valve will wait a couple years yet.
More performance often means that you can throttle it to a greater degree and hopefully still get more performance at a similar or better efficiency.
Yeah you are not wrong, but why have a more expensive chip just to throttle it, better to keep the cost of the deck down so more people can afford it.
Isn’t it what Apple is doing? They downclock some of their components to extend battery life and make their machines run less noisy, which in my opinion is a clever move. As much as I hate Apple, I have to admit that their hardware is good.
which in my opinion is a clever move.
Well that’s an interesting take? We have these things called “power profiles” that are not new. It’s just hamstringing performance…
Idk man, their laptops are pretty over engineered imo. Bad cooling just so they can get rid of vents, touchbar that holds important system commands that just crashes…
But mostly they get better efficiency because there’s no hardware variation to account for. And even then, their mx processors were causing a shit ton of compatibility issues with some of the most popular mac software. I would assume a lot of those are ironed out by now though
Just guessing, I really don’t expect a Steam Deck release this year. But 2025 seems quite likely to me.
Edit: Maybe the next Steam Deck will be based on Zen 6? It is expected roughly two years after the Steam Deck OLED release.
The Zen6 architecture might adopt an advanced manufacturing process, potentially combining 3nm and 2nm technologies, to further enhance performance and efficiency. The expected launch of the Zen6 “Medusa” CPUs is projected for the 2025-2026 period, showcasing AMD’s strategic planning for future developments. - Source
It’s too soon for Valve, but I’m sure AMD would love to sell chips to everyone, including those not Valve.
…or for the Deckard
The relevant metric is how much faster it is at the same power draw. The Z1 Extreme/7840U/8840U are faster compared to the Deck’s APU, but at equal power limits there isn’t too much in it.
Yeah, the Z1 chips mostly out perform the deck by throwing more power at the chip, which isn’t great for a handheld with limited battery capacity.
also whether or not all the power on that chip is able to be used or if its just going to thermal throttle at 50% load
It all depends on how well the performance scales at very low power like 10W for example.
I kind of wonder if they would switch to ARM for the next one
@solberg @Fubarberry It already requires a colossal effort to run Windows games on Linux. Adding ARM to the equation would only be a solution looking for a problem.
We’ll get there eventually, but I think x86 to arm support is still too far out.
Maybe they’ll release that one in Australia.
Yall can hope! Do people import ones from Asia?
Usually from third party eBay and Amazon sellers. There’s a price premium, but not bad if you’re willing to wait for a sale.
IDK. Looks like it’d take up quite a lot of space in there. They still need a battery and all other crap.
I wonder if Valve will try and stick the same cadence of mainstream consoles to try and piggyback off that industry recognition
I think with games getting more demanding, they will have to release a more powerful Deck in the next 2-4 years, probably closer to 2.
The deck is already too weak to play most modern games. You can’t play Madden 24 with a stable 30 FPS and sports games are perfect for handheld gaming devices.
The ROG ALLY seems to want to release new models every year or so to keep up and if the steam deck doesn’t do the same I fear their sales will plummet until a new model comes out.
I don’t think that Rog Ally is very successful though. Do you have some sales numbers? And releasing a new model every year will add complexity as they will need to support different hardware platforms, etc.
I also agree that it would have been great if the Deck had more oomph, but they do compensate with great software support and real dedication on their side.
The Deck is basically a Series S with when you factor in the much lower resolution.
if the steam deck doesn’t do the same I fear their sales will plummet until a new model comes out.
What will happen is the Deck will consistently have smoother gaming performance as developers optimize their games for the hardware, just like they do with consoles.
No sense in bothering with that for a piece of hardware that gets a new generation every year.
Also Valve probably doesn’t care if consumers choose a different handheld. Their goal was to create/expand a market to sell games, and they’ve already done that. Their work is basically done at this point. Same idea behind Steam Machines that were 100% developed by 3rd parties.
Most consoles go 7+ years without performance upgrades. I hope Valve follows the same pattern while continuing to optimize SteamOS.
I’m guessing we’ll get a shorter lifespan, maybe 4 years.
I think if there are substantial increases in performance and efficiency then yes, they’ll have to, especially for the latter. That’s something home consoles don’t have to concern themselves with.
