Just wondering if releasing the steam deck 2 on arm would be a huge deal. I know arm is famous for being more efficient, but would it still be better, even when using FEX?
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Unless they can make Proton performance work emulating both the windows environment layer and a different CPU arch then I’d be very surprised to see this happen.
That’s exactly what they’re doing on the steam frame. I guess we’ll see how it works out there.
Valve are doing the ARM experiment with the Steam Frame.
They mentioned not wanting to release a Steam Deck 2 until there was a significant performance upgrade available.
In my opinion an ARM chip with the FEX translation overhead isn’t going to be it just yet, it will probably be another AMD SoC.
We don’t know. Valve has said they have no plans for a Steam Deck 2 any time soon, not until they can offer whatever they consider to be a substantial enough upgrade. It’s possible ARM could be a means to that end, but we don’t know. FEX probably needs to make a lot more progress before they can even consider it. Maybe it will by the time Deck 2 enters the conversation. We don’t know.
I hope they release it around 2028-30. PS6 will be out for a year or two, Switch 3 will be far away, so perfect time for me to buy a new “console”.
IMO: the steam deck is basically a Sony PlayStation 4 in a handheld format. If gamedevs would optimise their games, like they used to, we would not need a Steamdeck 2.
I mean, can’t really tell while FEX has not been extensively tested, can we?
Valve has a great track record with (their contributuons too and use of) Wine, the devs are extremely competent and have been on this for ages, and Valve had any freedom to not choose an ARM chip, as low-power AMD alternatives became viable.
Can you go lower-power with ARM? Probably, but according to Valve it comes with a 10-20% performance hit for x86 Games at the moment. That means efficency takes a hit as well, whereas I would assume for 20% you are as efficient as an x86 chip at best.
My guess is that Valve isn’t doing this to chase some efficiency, but for strategic reasons. They are growing independent from Microsoft, now they want to get independent from the oligopoly that is x86 as well. One thing we cannot forget in this discussion is that ARM is likely much cheaper to get, with much more vendors available, and custom designs being quite common.
Maybe we will see custom ARM hardware with FEX acceleration from/for Valve and suddenly the overhead is almost gone.
I think we’re moving toward an arm-ish future in general. Apple silicon is proof the capability is there, but similarly to EV adoption the industry will play a bigger role in steering us to remain with x86.
The biggest advantage of ARM for Apple is that Appple can make their own ARM chips. They’ve been trying to in-house the whole supply chain for a long time.
The same is not true for pretty much any other manufacturer including Microsoft and Valve.
Can’t know for sure. Valve probably doesn’t even know. But I think it’s highly likely.
What would change? Better battery life. This was a big focus on SD and SD OLED as well. It’s why they were never particularly powerful, and still aren’t.
Depends on how you loosely you feel about “why”. Was battery life a consideration? Sure. But it wasn’t really the primary consideration. Valve’s current track record is that they are masters at making a product that’s surprisingly workable out of scrapyard parts that they got for cheap.
Valve didn’t design the Steam Deck’s chip - AMD designed it for Microsoft initially before the deal fell through. Then AMD offered the chips to Valve for cheap to recoup the costs.
Likewise, Valve didn’t intentionally choose the parts in the upcoming Steam Machine. Valve just bought AMD’s excess stock. That’s why the Steam Machine uses such an unusual and unbalanced CPU/GPU combo.
I honestly think SD2 is going to use x86, not for any particular reason, but because AMD is most likely going to have excess stock that’s x86 at the time that Valve designs it
Valve didn’t design the Steam Deck’s chip
No but they did choose it, specifically. There were certainly more powerful options available, ones that the Steam Deck’s imitators used, but they wanted a good balance of efficiency. One that’s yet to be topped.
Valve just bought AMD’s excess stock. That’s why the Steam Machine uses such an unusual and unbalanced CPU/GPU combo.
Source?
Frankly, it seems somewhat self-evident based on the fact that Valve chose a Hawk Point 2 CPU (last gen laptop CPU with 2 big and 4 little cores) with a last gen laptop RX7600M GPU on a desktop, and also the fact that Valve calls them “semi-custom.”
But here’s the analysis: https://youtu.be/sJI3qTb2ze8
You mean like a wrist watch? /s
Not likely, but a lot of good reasons too.
