Yeah, gamers Nexus was saying that the stream deck guys were telling them that they were waiting for the tech to get good enough to be able to call the device steam deck 2, but that's probably a couple of years out.
I think ARM is their end goal, it's really the only option for a handheld console, as today ARM is the only way you'll get enough performance/power rate to make it both good on battery with good enough performance.
Win-win for everyone if they invest in an open source x86 to ARM project, similar like they did with Wine.
The Switch is more than proof enough that pretty much any modern game engine can compile to an ARM target with zero issues (though Nvidia's low level APIs help, not sure about Qualcomm).
But there's zero chance older PC games would ever be updated, and by older I don't mean ancient, some AAA studios stop issuing updates in about one year after release.
So it all comes down to being able to emulate X86 on ARM... The best example we have is Apple, and games run but with a massive performance hit. Microsoft's implementation is borderline unusable. I'm not sure what to expect from Valve.
Won't ever happen, Apple is a hardware and device company that also makes software to go with it; Valve is a software company that also makes hardware to go with it.
And to go arm would mean throwing out the majority of their current store. Plus arm gaming performance is trash, apples chips struggle to run games 10 years old at 1080p 60fps.
Apple made its own chips with the Woz and then became a software company with that dude who got cancer. Only with the M1 did they design their own hardware again. Or am I getting this wrong?
What's to stop Valve from owning the vertical?
And to go arm would mean throwing out the majority of their current store.
That really depends on the game studio support or how good the translation is. Wine games sometimes have better performance than when running on Windows (how they do that magic is beyond me), but adding another layer to translate from x86 to ARM isn't insane. Even Apple wants to do it and they hate compatibility.
Plus arm gaming performance is trash, apples chips struggle to run games 10 years old at 1080p 60fps.
Apple is trash - that we can agree on, but does the chipset really hinder an APU from getting a better GPU? Nvidia is going to enter the ARM space and if they have an inbuilt GPU to make it an APU, then it might blow the Apple chips out of the water in terms of gaming.
Anyway, all I'm saying is I'd welcome "Made for Linux" hardware.
Aren't the AMD in Deck 1 using x86 architecture? It would be impossible to change to ARM now. That would mean starting at square 1 and redesigning everything. And games compatibility would be thrown out the window.
Back then, we really couldn't engage with a display manufacturer to do exactly what we were after because they didn't really understand the product category, or who would be buying the screen, or why it would matter. Now that picture has changed and we're able to get custom work done.
Why would literally any of those questions be of concern to the screen manufacturer? And I don't understand, did Valve begin work on this in 1918? How could anyone not understand the product category?
Display manufacturers may understand what Valve might want in a screen, but they might not understand how many units of a screen of such a specification they would be able to sell — is it going to be a custom job for just a few thousand of valve’s experimental console (which may have different degrees of success), or is it going to be something that they can sell to more people and a wider audience.
From what I've seen of the Steam Deck there's not far that it can go to improve as of the moment but in the next 10 years there's going to be needing another one as newer games like GTA 6 and stuff come around and eventually be on PC the tech is going to really show it's age.
Valve’s hardware strategy up to this point has been to push into new markets via hardware innovation. So I’m very skeptical that the hypothetical successor to the deck is a more powerful version of the deck. They’ll let other hardware manufacturers push those limits and reap the benefits via software sales. The deck was exceptionally successful in that regard, it’s literally opened an entire market segment.
Whatever the “Deck 2” comes to be, I expect it will be poised to capture a different market segment, possibly AR/VR or even modular handheld hardware (totally unfounded speculation), but I sincerely doubt they have much interest in releasing a more powerful version of the same thing every few years.
Who knows, though. Valve’s gonna valve and the only thing they do with any consistency is change things up.
I disagree. I feel more like Steam has been focusing on being able to decouple from Windows. The hardware it has developed was paired with other initiatives to move beyond the Windows desktop. They are now at a point where they've basically created their own Switch that can run without Windows.
I wouldn't be surprised if Steam finally makes consumer Linux on the desktop a thing.
I think it's well in valves wheelhouse after proton to do something similar and revolutionise x86 to ARM translation. But at the moment better chips still need to arrive for that too be good enough for a product to built around. Which is why it's the first thing i think of when they say they need technology to advance more before they make a new steam deck.
Architecture emulation for current gen games is exceptionally unlikely right now. At a fundamental level, wine/proton doesn't change the instructions the code describes, rather it translates the input and output. It's a reimplementation of the same instructions in Windows. For architecture crossing you'd either have to create virtual hardware, which adds tremendous overhead, or recompile the binary. Recompilation is theoretically possible, but for x86_64 to ARM64, for games no less, it's beyond the realm of mortals. It's like how some jokes can't be translated between languages; the structure and vocabulary is just too different.
Microsoft and Apple have some form of x86 to Arm translation at the moment. Also I know it's not something that's really done now. I'm not arguing it can be done right this second cause valve are talking about that there's something they want to do but can't yet and need technology to get a bit better before they move on with their plan. I'm saying this feels like the most logical thing that they're waiting for.
Edit: 2.5-3.5x faster cpu and 2x faster gpu at slightly higher tdp (23W vs 19W). Even if the arm x86 emulation has 40% overhead it'd still be faster and more efficient especially at lower power limits where arm shines.
This is based on benchmarks from Qualcomm, not Internet reviews right? IDK if I'd be buying tickets for the hype train just yet.
Shifting all the software to work on ARM is going to take time. By the time Valve got everything running on ARM, AMD would have released something equal or better by then.
This is not based on benchmarks from qualcomm, it's based on benchmarks revievers ran on demo units.
You don't need to shift the software to work on arm. Most essential things already work and the ones that don't can be emulated. All valve needs to do is to make it seamless. And unless they also switch to arm its a long shot for amd to achieve a 2x uplift in a single generation.
AMDs 7000 series APUS (and Z1) aren't efficient enough, no performant enough to really warrant a real upgrade if valve is going for a console like experience.
Sure you can get 10% more performance at the same power level, but why bother? Valve had to custom design their own APU to hit their power goals, and there's no way chasing that yearly 0-10% gains is going to pay off.
It seems like a minor increment over the Steam Deck. Valve is targeting performance per watt, and what's available in a handheld right now isn't going to start running The Quarry at high settings and 60 FPS.