Is it too late to get a Steam Deck? Should I wait for Deck 2?
Yeh. Better wait for the 3 just to be safe.
Technically speaking I can't see anything that's>Good>Doesn't run acceptably on a Steam deckFor the foreseeable future.Maybe something Valve has cooking won't run great on it and that's why they're putting out the Steam Machine, but at the same time you could just stream that one game from a desktop, and play the rest natively, since in home streaming is way less retarded than cloud gaming.
>>730638804Have you not followed the tech headlines lately? There probably won't be a Deck 2 in the current climate.
>>730638804the oled is still great. deck 2 won't be out for a long time, valve already said they're waiting on a new tech breakthrough
>>730638804If you do, buy a cheap dock so you can hook up a keyboard and mouse and play the 50% of games that aren't normally compatible.
>>730639518I mean if you don't mind not being able to use the screen really, you can get a cheap anker usb-c dongle with power delivery and use a TV.
>>730638804I literally just ordered one like an hour ago.My reasoning was that every game I want to play on it works fine right now, and I'm really starting to lose interest in new games.Unless a game comes out that I'm foaming at the mouth to play on a handheld for some reason, I don't honestly care if it's "Too late" or not.I'll enjoy my games. When I complete them, I'll see about a Steam Deck 2 if it's out and looks good at that time.
>>730639576Funny enough the 4 games I gave a shit that came out last year ran great on a steam deck.
>>730638804Steam Deck 2 is likely roughly 2 years off. Depends on your financial situation.
>>730638804At this rate, we'll be getting a Steam Deck lite instead. There'll be a commercial where a rat in a maze finds it and fucks it.
>>730639652That's because 99% of games run on the deck regardless of valve's verified status. I've played hundreds of games on my deck thus far and at worst I've only had to change a proton version or download someone's controller config, both of which take two seconds.
>>730639792I mean "deck verified" status didn't play into at all.
>>730639792I had to use ProtonTricks to run Batman Arkham Asylum. That's the worst I've run into.Needed a font called "Impact" and .net 8.0 to run the Advanced Launcher mod.
I bought a 256 LCD when it was on sale a few years ago, before the oled dropped and didn't use it for years until I finally ended up giving it to my younger cousin last february. I've been eyeballing the oled recenly though. I think the price of a deck now is a better value now than it was a few years ago with how expensive gaming laptops are now.
its probably the best time to buy a deck, the next 5 years of game dev is gonna be optimization because noone can afford PCs which is what the industry which is good because the last 10 AAA games have been awful UE5 trash
How's the Lenovo Legion Go S compare? Seems higher res, screen size, brightness but lacks oled.
>>730640330You're putting too much faith in companies.Game dev studios have tossed everything into the "Graphics = good game. Look at how good our lighting is" basket.Getting shareholders to pivot that to "Look at how high our frame rate is on their third world GPU" is not something they will want to do.
>>730640421Higher Res, less battery life, only like a (20%?) performance increase, and a trackpad so small it might as well not be there.
right now a deck is very outdated unless you want to play pc games like RTS where you can use the trackpads or if you really use them for other things but don't pick it for recent AAAs, the performance and battery life are a joke for those.I hope the companies somehow port the switch 2 versions of the games to the deck because they will run better than just playing the pc version
>>730640820>right now a deck is very outdatedBy what metric? Z2 chips are still being made and preform exactly like the Deck's APU.
>>730640820>I hope the companies somehow port the switch 2 versions of the games to the deck because they will run better than just playing the pc versionTerrible idea, that's just a bad console port. All the deck needs are graphics settings and or lossless, which it already has.
>>730641063>losslessDeck user hereI fucking hate that shit.Lossless is the worst possible option when seeking higher performance out of the Deck. I cannot stand how much it has taken off.Adding 100ms of input lag is not a solution to low FPS.
>>730641130>Adding 100ms of input lag is not a solution to low FPS.Don't go like 4x dude
>>730638804Wait for the next one or Steam Machine. It's just not powerful enough to consider using seriously, even in 2023 when I bought one. It'll run emulators and old ass games from before 2015 just fine, but you can't get it to do shit beyond that unless it's some indie title.
>>730641252I'm playing The Witcher 3 on it right now.Granted I'm playing it at 30 FPS so I can play at high settings, but still.Fucking Elden Ring can run at a locked 30 FPS on the thing.No handheld is going to run every game at 60FPS right now. If you're looking at a Steam Deck, you're going in knowing that fact.
>>730641252I was just playing nightreign a second ago. It'll run nearly everything fine unless you demand 60 or death. Even then there's options.
>>730640421>buying anything without touchpads
deck is always a good buy if you own a dGPU and stream with Apollo/Artemis
>>730638804Steam Deck 2.0 should be out either next year or in two years, you should wait until then. The chip that would give Valve their next gen leap is the AMD Medusa Halo but heavily cut-down and semi-customized.
>>730640820imagine wanting to play anything AAA made in the last 5 years, the steam deck is just emulation and games made before 2014. if you wanna play anything new you play it locally streamed from your gaming pc
People thought it was too late like 3 years ago. Arguably correct since the OLED came out, but I dunno man.
>>730641753Sounds like wishful thinking
>>730641753It's also Valve is leaning hard on FEX for the next Deck. It could be ARM.
>>730642071Eh, I don't know the OLED's nice but I wouldn't really say it's THAT much of an improvement that the LCD one is completely worthless.They're about the same imo.
>>730642125I had some significant light-bleed on my LCD. OLED eliminated that completely.Doesn't the OLED model have a slightly more efficient chip AND a higher battery capacity?
>>730638804It runs every game worth playing at good settings at native framerates
>>730642227Those are things that are technically true, but I don't think anyone just playing games is really going to care all that much.
>>730642106ARM isn't ready yet, maybe Steam Deck 3.0 if there is a Steam Deck 3.0. AMD is the only company that'll have a chip ready soon.>Nvidia doesn't give a shit about Linux>Intel doesn't have a chip that can go to 4-15W>Qualcomm has efficient chips but the performance doesn't even compare to the Steam Deck's>AMD is the only chip manufacturer that has a chip for Valve that would be capable of that through some customization since it's a chiplet (Medusa)>>730642104It's true, AMD insiders are saying it, Valve even said it themselves that there are no chips right now that hit that. Valve said they wanted a generational leap and the only chip that's been coming up to be that are chips with Zen 6 and RDNA 5.
>>730642024for emulation the Ayn Thor replaced the deck for me, Deck is just really big and the Thor is one of the few emulation device with a real handheld form factor
If you can find a used Steam Deck for under $300. It's one of the cheapest entries to PC gaming available.Steam Deck's hardware still holds up. It'll play everything except Unreal5 games.
Just buy a Switch 2
>>730641753not a fucking chance, steam machine is already looking like it might not happen under 1k which is just pure retard
>>730641252>Steam MachineWhat a scam, for that same price you could buy a Switch2, a PS5 and still have money left for games.
deck 2 is not coming out until 2028
>>730643349We don't have the price for the steam machine yet.The "Leak" was a Czech online store allowing people to pre-order. It's common practace in that contry to give a "Preliminary" price and allow people to pre-order. When the product's price is announced you're refunded the difference if your pre-order price was higher than the announced price.
>>730643781>practace>contry Did I just have a fucking stroke?
>>730642814You're retarded if you actually believe those third world Europoor retail prices, man?
just the ram alone in the fucking things are worth like 500 bucks now, sure they probably secured the first few batches at lower prices but valve is calculating the 2nd and 3rd batch prices are going to be way higher so the price they launch will have to be higher than anticipated, theres no shot this thing comes in under 700 bucks on the most optimistic day which is going to still put a bunch of people off since its going to be iGPU that needs run heavy upscaling from 720p to play anything AAAthe device is just in a horrible area pricing wise because it not going to run things normies wanna play on maxed settings and its going to essentially be a 700+ dollar emulation and sunshine/moonlight client. if they made it like 300 bucks it would have to be so anemic that its basically just another steamlink clientalso any sophisticated consumers that want to do these things will just end up going with a chink mini pc or a NUC
Just realize, Valve will have to use Medusa Point and use less CPU cores but more GPU compute units of RDNA 3.5+ since it's monolithic. Medusa Halo would screw over the Deck 2's efficiency because it's a chiplet.
>spend a autistic amount of time setting up steam input hotkeys and shit for very PC centric games>keep testing it until it feels comfortable and natural (to me)>never play the game again, feel happy with what I haveis this autism
>>730638804Just get the SD1. It'll be a long time before there will be a new SD worth getting (either it's an AMD and overpriced, or it's a Snapdragon and coming out in like 2030)
>>730641378Personally my ideal for the steam deck is like 45FPS. 30FPS is ok if it's a slower paced game but for anything action oriented, 45FPS is a good sweet spot for playability and battery life for me.
>>730645493I think I've just gotten so used to 30 FPS again that I stopped caring.I'm not going to say I can put up with the 15 FPS games from the PS1 era or something, but as long as it's a steady 30 FPS without stutters/drops I accept that more than a fluctuating 40/45.
>>730645427If they use Medusa Point, they can go cheap, they'll even get the upscaling part of FSR 4 as a bonus.
Since buying it couple of months ago I played Shadows of the Tomb Raider, Witcher 3 and Hogwarts Legacy on it (not mentioning non graphically demanding games).The only game that had some noticeable dips was Hogwarts, but it was still very much playable.
>>730641439Why the fuck don't other manufacturers over put a proper touchpad on their devices? It's one of the main things the deck is praised for, yet none of them bother adding it.If good integrated controls didn't matter, I'd play games on my phone with faggy detachable controls.
>>730638804Just get the steam deck, handhelds are best for PlayStation to PlayStation 3 games anything with a higher fidelity then that just doesn't work well on the tiny screen and drains the battery too quickly buying a $1000 handheld with the expectation of playing triple A games is a waste of money.
>>730638804>Should I wait for Deck 2?Not coming anytime soon. Valve has talked about over and over about how they're not gonna make a Deck 2 until there's a "generational improvement" in mobile tech. Evidently they don't consider the more powerful AMD APUs like the Z1E and Z2E a generational leap, likely because there's not that much performance gain, and the performance gain they do have is basically proportional to more power draw since they're really just repurposed laptop chips. If anything, it appears that Valve is looking to ARM for their next device, which could feasibly be just an emulation app on your phone. All of this is to say nothing of the current market conditions for releasing a new device. If you really need some extra juice compared to the Deck, there's other handhelds with more powerful chipsets that officially support SteamOS, I have the Legion Go S but that's mostly because the Steam Deck isn't sold in my region>>730638964SAAARos is the only upcoming game I expect to be really good that definitely wouldn't run on the Deck, considering not even the Z1E/Z2E handhelds can tank Returnal. Although it's not even technically announced for PC at this point
>>730638804Amazing machine. Was in the market for a handheld and was torn between switch 2 (for the hybrid model) or a Steam Deck OLED. Went for the former and its super comfy. I was intimidated at first reading about all the "fidgeting" you had to do due to it running Linux, but that was exaggerated by people. Pirating is ease as hell, refunds are fast, no subscription to play online, light on the hand, and great haptics. Only bad thing for me is that it drains about 10% overnight. I just shut it down instead of using sleep.
>>730646949I meant latter.
>>730645740Fair enough, I usually jump from my main PC to my Steam Deck so the jump from 60 to 30 is a lot more grating for me.
>>730641252>it'll only play all the games worth playingDrat. Cancelled my order.
>>730646949Honestly if you're remotely ok at troubleshooting shit in windows and are willing to just google shit, it's not that hard to tinker with the Steam Deck. I think the most I ever had to do is fuck around with setting up japanese locales and having to do weird installations for niche and old doujin games. But consider the average normalfag's competency when it comes to basic IT shit and it's easy to understand why it seems intimidating
