Steam Deck
www.steamdeck.com
November 16

New OLED screen. New APU. And lots of small hardware improvements.

  • MudMan@kbin.social
    31·
    1 year ago

    Yeah, they made the SoC run cooler and at lower power, so I wonder why they didn’t just let it push to 20W instead of keeping it at a max TDP of 15W.

    Maybe their custom APU just can’t yield any more performance at all and just flattens out above that? I know the 6800U and 7800U handhelds tend to flatten out above 25-30W. I’ve moved on from my Deck to a Windows handheld, but I still really like the tweaks they’ve made to this.

    • SkySyrup@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      you can change the TDP of the steam deck, and it yields comparatively very minor performance improvements at 20 Watts of power.

    • Deconceptualist@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      If I recall the early benchmarks by The Phawx, the Deck got the best performance-per-watt around 11 W TDP. So yeah at 15 W and up, it flattens out. Pushing it harder just drains the battery for diminishing FPS returns.

      I think he says the sweet spot for *800Us was closer to 18 W, but I don’t remember that as clearly.

      • MudMan@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        My hands-on experience with both is that the Deck sings in the 12-15 range and the stock 6800 wants to be 15-20. After that the extra heat and noise doesn’t justify the gains unless you really want to play something that is just at the edge.

        • Deconceptualist@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I only have a Deck but 9 watts has been the magic number for me. Good battery life and very little fan noise in most games. I even run RDR2 at that with Cryobyte’s “prettiest” settings, and it stays darn close to 30 FPS. I may have bumped down far shadows and water a notch but honestly it still looks great.

          • MudMan@kbin.social
            1·
            1 year ago

            It’s definitely a matter of taste, but you still get a lot of performance per watt on the Deck between 9 and 12, so I typically prefer to crank it up a notch and aim for 35-40fps instead.

            Which option is preferable probably depends on how sensitive you are to low fps vs fan noise, so there’s no right answer.