Steam Deck ~ PC Switch

[Theodora]

Wrong thread SumDrunkGuy.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Yeah, I'm sure a $300 smartphone plays games that look better than PC games

 

[WaterDrinker]

My reservation queue got bumped up, YAY! It originally said the wait was october-december and it now says september-december which means I got bumped up.

 

[The Decline]

I've had my Steam Deck for about a week, it's very nice. So far I've only tested actual Steam games, but I eventually want to setup a ton of emulators and dos games. It's amazing how far Linux has come as a gaming platform.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

My unboxing.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

My unboxing.

 

[Dadd]

Looks like crpgs would be annoying to play with this machine. Thoughts?

 

[Zarniwoop]

My unboxing.

He got unbanned without playing Fallout?

 

[The Decline]

FYI, the queue is gone and all the models are in stock if anyone wants to buy one. I suggest the cheapest one, you can always upgrade it later and games work fine from the microsd. You can hot swap the cards as well as install other OSes on them, I have one that boots Batocera for emulation.

 

[Zarniwoop]

FYI, the queue is gone and all the models are in stock if anyone wants to buy one. I suggest the cheapest one, you can always upgrade it later and games work fine from the microsd. You can hot swap the cards as well as install other OSes on them, I have one that boots Batocera for emulation.

Fake news, the base model uses shitty SD card storage instead of NVME SSD like the others. It's a LOT slower.

 

[The Decline]

FYI, the queue is gone and all the models are in stock if anyone wants to buy one. I suggest the cheapest one, you can always upgrade it later and games work fine from the microsd. You can hot swap the cards as well as install other OSes on them, I have one that boots Batocera for emulation.

Fake news, the base model uses shitty SD card storage instead of NVME SSD like the others. It's a LOT slower.

Hardly makes a difference in practice. Games load nearly as fast directly from an SD card.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Looks like crpgs would be annoying to play with this machine. Thoughts?

surpisingly ok even for non steam game

 

[Zarniwoop]

FYI, the queue is gone and all the models are in stock if anyone wants to buy one. I suggest the cheapest one, you can always upgrade it later and games work fine from the microsd. You can hot swap the cards as well as install other OSes on them, I have one that boots Batocera for emulation.

Fake news, the base model uses shitty SD card storage instead of NVME SSD like the others. It's a LOT slower.

Hardly makes a difference in practice. Games load nearly as fast directly from an SD card.

How about copying a few GB of music etc, SD cards are painfully slow for sustained transfer.

Looks like crpgs would be annoying to play with this machine. Thoughts?

surpisingly ok even for non steam game

There's even videos of people playing Stellaris on it.

 

[kites]

better hold on to yer butt 'n get ready, s fate with destiny to pumch some rats for waterchits ,friend

 

[jimster]

Looks like crpgs would be annoying to play with this machine. Thoughts?

Haven't tried a crpg on it yet, but there's a ton of buttons to bind to keys, and the touchpad is pretty great for everything except for FPS (yeah some people can make it work, but the majority won't git as gud as they play with a mouse). For anything point-and-click it's not bad at all.

One issue with old pc games is the text might not scale well with the small screen. Some games have mods to change text size.

I'm thinking of playing ToEE for the first time on it, found a mod for adjusting the font size, but not sure how it will control...

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

My unboxing.

I'm -$116 in the hole currently or I'd jump on it. I can't afford a turd on the street atm. I hope it's still on sale tomorrow. I'll be paid then. My first Steam purchases will be Fallout, Control, and Redaxium.

 

[manifest]

Imagine paying $130 extra for a $20 SSD.

 

[Fedora Master]

Imagine paying $130 extra for a $20 SSD.

Imagine playing your Steam Deck in public like a child

 

[manifest]

Imagine paying $130 extra for a $20 SSD.

Imagine playing your Steam Deck in public like a child

That's hardly the most shameful thing SumDrunkGuy chooses to do in full view of others, or, indeed, the Lord. Personally, I have no use for such a device, but with the state of computer hardware prices these days (aforementioned SSDs notwithstanding) I can see why it might appeal to fucking retards who somehow have no desktop.

 

[Hace El Oso]

My unboxing.

You should do an LP, SDG.

 

[Chinese Jetpilot]

While I can't see myself using it outdoors, I've surprisingly been using it for couch gaming, particularly for games which I don't have quite enough time for when using my PC. Currently playing XCOM Long War and System Shock 2 w/mods on it; the lower resolution screen is closer to the native resolution of the games textures than my 1440p display, and I really like the ability to just put the game to sleep and pick up right where you left off.

 

[Chinese Jetpilot]

A Linux user has created a script for the Steam Deck that increases the size of the swap file, lowers the frequency in which it writes to the SSD, and enables TRIM (which is disabled by default). He also goes into how to set a minimum VRAM amount, which, when coupled with the larger swap file, increases performance for more demanding games by 8%-15%.



https://github.com/CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities

 

[rusty_shackleford]

A Linux user has created a script for the Steam Deck that increases the size of the swap file, lowers the frequency in which it writes to the SSD, and enables TRIM (which is disabled by default). He also goes into how to set a minimum VRAM amount, which, when coupled with the larger swap file, increases performance for more demanding games by 8%-15%.



https://github.com/CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities

I strongly advise against enabling continuous trim, there's no reason to enable it and it will lower your overall IO performance.
on modern lunix systems trim is typically done periodically via fstrim. As the steamdeck is arch linux based and fstrim's systemd job is enabled by default(iirc?), it almost guaranteed does trim this way.

Ubuntu, Debian, and Redhat all use and recommend periodic fstrim over continuous trim:
https://wiki.debian.org/SSDOptimization#Mounting_SSD_filesystems
https://access.redhat.com/documenta...administration_guide/fs-discard-unused-blocks
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1034169/is-trim-enabled-on-my-ubuntu-18-04-installation

and an older but lengthy thread on the kernel mailing list on the subject:
https://www.spinics.net/lists/raid/msg40866.html

 

[Chinese Jetpilot]

A Linux user has created a script for the Steam Deck that increases the size of the swap file, lowers the frequency in which it writes to the SSD, and enables TRIM (which is disabled by default). He also goes into how to set a minimum VRAM amount, which, when coupled with the larger swap file, increases performance for more demanding games by 8%-15%.



https://github.com/CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities

I strongly advise against enabling continuous trim, there's no reason to enable it and it will lower your overall IO performance.
on modern lunix systems trim is typically done periodically via fstrim. As the steamdeck is arch linux based and fstrim's systemd job is enabled by default(iirc?), it almost guaranteed does trim this way.

Ubuntu, Debian, and Redhat all use and recommend periodic fstrim over continuous trim:
https://wiki.debian.org/SSDOptimization#Mounting_SSD_filesystems
https://access.redhat.com/documenta...administration_guide/fs-discard-unused-blocks
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1034169/is-trim-enabled-on-my-ubuntu-18-04-installation

and an older but lengthy thread on the kernel mailing list on the subject:
https://www.spinics.net/lists/raid/msg40866.html

I don't have any technical background on Linux, so that very well may be the case. Though he does mention the script sets the TRIM to periodic (weekly) for the internal SSD and is disabled by default in Steam Deck, and there may be a reason as to why (if that is indeed truly disabled). A Valve rep had mentioned performing TRIM on some microSD cards causes them to lose data, so they may have disabled it system wide to prevent that from happening; though if that's true, I'm wondering why they didn't just disable it for mounted drives. Or maybe it's related to the 64GB model using eMMC storage?

 

[The Decline]

The swap file and VRAM settings seem interesting, but I haven't had any issues with downloads to my sd card.