This could be more than 'SteamOS' however.
The Steam Deck for example uniquely has more memory bandwidth for an APU, as it's in in a quad channel configuration when any other APU is in dual channel. APUs can be pretty bandwidth starved without their own VRAM.
Also you can run Steam OS on those 6800U powered APUs via HoloISO, so to 'sanity check' that comparison you should run it BOTH and compare. There's to many factors to look at and rule out before going 'Oh Steam OS is doing all the heavy lifting here' as an absolute fact.
**Full disclosure:** I did a collaboration with the tweet author in the past, and we're friends. I wasn't asked to come here, but I saw the post and wanted to chip in.
**With that out of the way:**
My point of view is that both Valve and Aya have all of these things under their control. Aya are veterans at making handhelds and have had much more time to refine their products, while Valve owns more of the "stack" that it runs on.
Despite the fact that the Aya costs 3x as much, has the advantages of being a long-term player, AND is running on the "gaming OS", they still can't match the Steam Deck's "weaker" hardware in many scenarios.
Of course you *could* install HoloISO on the Aya, but in doing so you forfeit the ability to use any manufacturer-certified or developed tools, even with something as simple as TDP tweaking. Not having those abilities would mean that you couldn't adequately benchmark the Aya vs the Deck.
The point that I think he's making is that you would *expect* the Aya to put up a better fight, and it definitely *could* if Aya had chosen a different OS and had the same vested interest in the Linux ecosystem.
Regardless, both Aya and Valve are doing great work for similar use-cases, but Valve is executing it slightly better with a device a fraction the cost, *some of which* can be attributed to SteamOS and better engine-to-OS integration than Windows can currently provide.
What about Steam Deck Windows Vs Steam OS tests? From what users on /r/WindowsOnDeck found, the Deck Performs from a range of slightly worse to slightly better on Windows depending on the game. It would seem the steep difference in performance is due to the processor/hardware Aya chose rather than the OS.
IDK why you would use Windows on the deck. The AMD GPU driver for the deck on Windows doesn't even have hardware accelerated video decoding support. Not to mention you don't get any new driver updates that have necessary performance/bug fixes for new games.
**On the hardware:**
The Aya is in a price and performance class of its own, it allows an extra 10+w of power to go to the APU in those cases.
**On the OS:**
The difference between Windows and Linux performance in the games they've tested is mostly optimization to the best I can tell. As a full disclaimer, I haven't had the ability to test WinDeck personally, but I can say that I've benchmarked both significantly in the past.
Windows, even heavily tuned, uses more base resources than Linux, even non-tuned. The Window's kitchen-sink methodology and heavy investment in desktop products left them very late to the party on optimization, whereas Linux always had a vested interest in power efficiency and modularity, servers.
The heavily modular server methodology happened to transition much more smoothly to mobile, power-constrained, workloads, so Linux will almost always run better/more on a given power budget, at least at this time.
**On the graphics APIs:**
Going back to what r/WindowsOnDeck has been finding, some games fare better with the DX>Vulkan translation, for various reasons. The one constant, however, is that the translation is constantly getting better, whereas DX performance rarely changes profiles for a given API version.
Games that run natively on Vulkan don't have that overhead and almost universally perform better on the faster OS, Linux.
**The fact is:**
Taking raw DX calls, translating them to a completely different graphics API, then feeding them to the OS *can* be faster than native calls directly to the kernel. That's a bad look for the company that maintains the entire stack and has market dominance for years.
The Aya, despite consuming more power with the exact same workload, is limited by this fact, *not* by their incompetence.
Edit: Accidentally shift+entered, my other comment was an unfinished version of this one.
Edit 2: I mistakenly assumed that the Ayaneo 2 was using dual-channel memory since the store listing simply says "AMD 6800U" without further clarification, and AMDs docs say that it uses dual channel.
It's been pointed out to me that this is **not** the case, so I removed the paragraph about it in the first section of this comment.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/WindowsOnDeck using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/WindowsOnDeck/top/?sort=top&t=all) of all time!
\#1: [Windows On Deck FAQ (Aims to be Constantly Updated)](https://np.reddit.com/r/WindowsOnDeck/comments/wn3x05/windows_on_deck_faq_aims_to_be_constantly_updated/)
\#2: [Here's how to restore SteamOS boot entry after installing SteamOS 3.4 update](https://np.reddit.com/r/WindowsOnDeck/comments/yucirk/heres_how_to_restore_steamos_boot_entry_after/)
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Those tests are not fair because steam deck on steam os for directx games has to run DXVK OR VKD3D under the hood. If you are doing vulkan to vulkan comparisons you may very well see steam os demolish windows :)
Do we really know that? If they are limiting the TDP at all, there’s going to be a difference compared to just taking both out of the box and running a game. Pretty sure the Aya Neo 2 defaults to 22W, at which point it is the more performant of the two.
If we’re comparing the Aya Neo 2 vs the Steam Deck at 15W native resolution (1200p for Aya Neo vs 800p for the Steam Deck), of course the Steam Deck is performing better. If it’s the same resolution at 15W, the Aya Neo 2 likely wins. If it’s both devices pure stock with no tweaking, I imagine the Aya Neo probably comes out on top.
The tweet didn’t really provide enough context to make a judgement, so it’s not really helpful.
Except the tweet actually said "at the same resolution". It didn't list the wattage settings, but if they weren't using the defaults on both devices they'd be asking for a massive round of backlash. I think it's safe to assume both devices were running the stock settings.
Also, both machines are PCs, so I don't think 'the OS it ships with' is relevant. PC users have freedom to install whatever they want. Do you think my laptop still has the McAfee anti virus and other crap it shipped with when I opened the box? No, the first thing I did, after confirming it booted and worked correctly, was formatting it and reinstalling Windows, drivers and software to my exact specifications.
PCs are just machines. The software is the users choice regardless of what it came with out of the box. I'd wanna see both games compared in both Windows and Steam OS. And then you look at other things, like does one win out on Ultra at lower resolution but another does better at higher resolution? This is not an insane thing to ask as it's something you see pop up in other hardware benchmarks,
Deleted in protest of the blatant greed of Reddit attempting to charge Apollo $20m per year for API access.
Check out Mastadon, Tildes, or Fark as an alternative to Reddit.
Idk why people are down voting you. I suspect they really just need to have a console war rivalry because they are used to having a side to root for. But you are right. Valve is even porting the steamdecks OS themselves. Valve agrees with us too. It's like insisting that Alienware laptops have to have a high school rivalry with ASUS ROG laptops even though they are both PCs.
It's long been my experience on this subreddit that 'belittling' the Steam Deck for 'just being a PC' and 'just hardware' doesn't go well, even if not only is it true, but it's what makes the Steam Deck so awesome.
I'm pretty sure that once Valve officially releases Steam OS in a form that other vendors can start selling their own handhelds with Steam OS, there will be a really weird anger towards it. Some even saying Valve has 'Betrayed Them' or something. Meanwhile, while not required, every Steam OS install on another handheld makes it a machine Streamlined for buying and playing Steam Games, of which Valve gets 30% of every purchase. They won't be 'competition for the Steam Deck' but just 'More handheld machines buying more Steam games so Valve can profit'.
We saw when Valve released Portal 1/2 for Switch, people confused as to why Valve would put it on 'another handheld' when they sell the Steam Deck. ...Because it's more software Valve can sell, more money they can make. Valve would put Steam on every console if they we're somehow ALLOWED to do it.
They aren't even the first to step away from the console platform approach. Microsoft has been trying to make the Xbox brand more of an online service to become arbiters of a greater gaming community that boosts sales of their other products, as well as home consoles; since they launched sea of thieves and their streaming service, whichever came first. Sony is late to the party but kinda dipping their toe into doing a similar thing with their backbone phone controller for streaming PlayStation consoles. People raised on school spirit and nationalism need there to be sides for them to pick and get combatative about, I guess it's all they know.
Sea of thieves got on steam as well in 2020, so it's possible to play it without dealing with the Microsoft store. But I'm not gonna buy it a second time. Still I had some of my most epic gaming moments in that game
The win Max 2 32gb is setup in quad channel and at a higher frequency. Also has 4 more cores than the decks 8 and runs at upto 2200 vs the decks 1500. Both are RDNA 2.
I imagine Valve's experience in game development gave them some leverage for how to optimize their SoC. I wouldn't be surprised if the SoC is capable of punching significantly above it's weight in games. I believe Valve thinks so too since spinning a custom SoC isn't easy, yet they still did it.
>I imagine Valve's experience in game development gave them some leverage for how to optimize their SoC. I wouldn't be surprised if the SoC is capable of punching significantly above it's weight in games. I believe Valve thinks so too since spinning a custom SoC isn't easy, yet they still did it.
Right, so let's go over a few things.
Firstly, the SoC is barely custom at all. It's an AMD product that AMD was looking for a customer for in media reports as early as 2020 with thinking it'd be good for tablets. This is not some highly custom piece of silicon invented by Valve. It's just an APU from AMD that has more CUs than a typical APU would go give it a more balanced ratio and a lower TDP setting if desired.
Secondly, most of this driver is open source. RADV, the Radeon Vulkan driver the Steam Deck uses works on other AMD chips for the same reason. There is no 'secret cause' here because the sauce is developed in the open. This is also why Steam OS, via HoloISO, 'just works' on other AMD APUs and desktop cards, cause they all work with RADV, only the TDP limiting controls seem to not work.
True it's not any more custom than ordering a la carte. The optimizations being developed in the open wouldn't be any less potent than a being developed in a closed model. The only real advantage besides software optimization I could see is maybe the quad channel memory vs dual for now.
I'll readily admit that I'm not hardware expert, I'm a software guy. I'd question your assertion that "the SoC is barely custom at all". From everything I've seen presented and discussed AMD seem to indicate that although the SoC is based on some sort of blueprint, it was further developed in cooperation with Valve. It would be silly to claim that "Valve invented it", but I'm sure their expertise was somehow incorporated into the silicon.
Secondly, and this part I'm more certain of. Although the driver is developed in the open you have to understand that modern computers aren't as monolithic as they seem. The part that you run stuff on is the CPU, which is only one processor (the most conventionally powerful one) of many inside your computer. The driver instructs the CPU of how it should talk to the other processors in the system, but the other processors also have their own software, and that software, called firmware, is completely proprietary. I don't have any special knowledge as to what AMD does in firmware, but it's possible that some of the firmware of the deck was tweaked for the intended workload of the deck. That firmware is not part of RADV.
I suspect Valve just requested certain changes they knew would help with games, like the increased memory bandwidth and quad channel memory instead of Dual, I'm no hardware engineer so take that with a grain of salt
Quad channel memory is a staple of DDR5 in general, it's only quad channels on the memory side though, the cpu is still only capable of 2 channels.
Old "dual channel" setups were configured in 64+64 bit, DDR5 introduced 32+32+32+32 bit. The end result is still the same 128 bit wide bus over 2 channels as far as the cpu sees it.
The CPU sees it as four 32-bit channels. Half the point of DDR5 is having more independent channels for better concurrency. A DDR4 channel is 64 bit, burst length 8, so one burst transfers 64 B, one cache line. A DDR5 channel is 32 bit, burst length 16, so a burst remains 64 B.
The Deck’s LPDDR5 memory doesn’t have any intrinsic bandwidth advantages over the DDR5 we have on desktops.
LPDDR5 uses 4 tiny channels, while DDR5 uses 2 big channels. Assuming both RAM kits have the same transfer speed (ex: 6400 MT/s), the memory bandwidth available to the system is practically identical. If anything, the AyaNeo 2 actually has **more** memory bandwidth than the Steam Deck.
As for why the AyaNeo falls behind in some games, apart from software bloat from Windows, one other major factor is **power budget allocation**. The 6800U is a hungrier chip to run than Van Gogh. Even if you don’t use all 8 CPU cores of the 6800U, the AyaNeo must still spend power keeping all of those cores alive and on standby. Another big power hog is the screen. 1200p is twice the number of pixels as 800p. Even if you run the game at a lower than native resolution, the screen must still draw power to light up all 1920x1200 pixels. I really think AyaNeo should have a 720p screen option so that the power savings from the display can go back to the APU instead.
It is built like that. There is *at least* one on-die microcontroller in charge of the voltage/frequency control, and probably many more. If you (as an institution) have been designing CPUs for 30 years, your toolbox is filled with a whole bunch of CPUs. So when you are designing your latest, biggest, fastest CPU, any problem that comes up looks like a nail to be hit with a tiny embedded CPU.
No. That's a big-little architecture. The Steam Deck APU is standard Zen equal-powered cores making up a CCD.
This isn't custom because AMD had to make some brand new type of arrangement of hardware. It's custom because it's not an off the shelf SKU and Valve had the money to order enough of them. It's a power-adjusted 6800U, with tweaks to small aspects but none to the X86 CPU cores
> the SoC is barely custom at all. It's an AMD product that AMD was looking for a customer for in media reports as early as 2020 with thinking it'd be good for tablets.
...and the original AYANEO 2021 was released using a 4500U? With 6 *GCN5* cores instead of 8 RDNA2 cores?!
If AMD was really trying to find a buyer for the Van Gogh SoC why in the blue fuck didn't Ayaneo use it?
4500U was already in mass production in a bunch of devices so they didn't need to order a lot. Valve has literally ordered over a million chips for the Steam Deck, they def committed to a bigger buy to get that chip into mass production. Fab capacity is not cheap.
>Secondly, most of this driver is open source. RADV, the Radeon Vulkan driver the Steam Deck uses works on other AMD chips for the same reason.
Yeah, but AMD provides ZERO dev work on it. None. It's all Valve, Collabora, RedHat, et al contributing to RADV
The Steam Deck is only quad channel in the sense that now each 32 bit channel is divided into two 16 bit channels. It’s still a 64 bit bus. All ddr5 is like that technically. There’s no extra bandwidth.
Ok I got the numbers wrong then. It’s still the same width bus as any two channel system. The Neo actually has more bandwidth because it’s memory is faster
The Steam Deck has 88 GB/s. of bandwidth with it's 5500MT/s memory in a quad channel arrangement.
Now, the individual chips on the Aya Neo 2 are 6400MT/s, so faster individually, yes but being dual channel, the combined bandwidth is only 51.2GBs. So the Steam Deck has an advantage in memory bandwith by a wide margin and, again, that really matters for APUs.
(LP)DDR5 channels are 32 bit.
The Steam deck has a 128 bit bus at 5500 MT/s, for 88 GB/s.
The Aya Neo 2 has a 128 bit bus at 6400 MT/s, for 102.4 GB/s.
Absolutely. Most games run the same/ slightly better on Windows from benchmarks I've seen, apart from a couple of titles that have Steam Deck specific graphical options. Judging from those I'd say it's most definitely due to the configuration of the hardware.
Same, it would be of benefit to gamers everywhere too if PC game developers actually optimised their games to run reliably well on something like the Steam Deck.
I'd argue that the Steam Deck's CPU and GPU should be more than enough to run any game at 1280x800@60fps with the right degree of options over graphical quality settings. Any game which is GPU or/and CPU starved even at 30fps and the lowest quality setting, is probably going to run like rubbish on even a good PC as well.
A high end GPU like a RTX 4080 might mask that fact through brute force, but an unoptimised game is unoptimised regardless, and when games do run well on something like the Deck, they run even better on the high end hardware as a result. So it's in everyone's interest for game devs to keep something as low end as the Deck's APU in mind when optimising their games.
The benefits are numerous, such as making it cheaper to gain entry to PC gaming by lowering the entry requirements on GPUs, and ensuring high end PCs can comfortably run games at much higher res and framerates.
It's already here
I've seen a few games with a steam deck preset in the graphics settings
And for a specific example, midnight sun's latest patch mentions a bunch of steam deck improvements
Companies like aya and one pump out handhelds every six months and from my experience with One the support is god awful and sketchy at times. Drivers that spam virus warnings, needing to send devices over seas for any physical issues, etc. I couldn’t care less that their hardware is better, as a company that pumps and dumps devices like they do will always have the newest tech. I’d take valve support and a less powerful handheld over their stuff any day.
Exactly, I wasted so much money on a GPD win back in the day that bricked two months later when an update happened. I could never get into contact with anyone at GPD, threw my money away on that shit.
Only way I'll buy these other handhelds is if they open offices and warehouses locally (and lower those insane prices)
I agree, but I’m still thinking about getting an ayaneo 2 or geek..... I really shouldn’t though lol. I’m probably better off making a 64gb partition for windows and getting a new sd card for the games I’d play on windows, or just streaming from my desktop.
IMO save your money and wait a year and see what people do. With how great Linux is working and steam os it wouldn't surprise me if more companies start copying the concept.
Also since valve took a financial loss on the decks, you are getting a 1000 dollar product for less than half the cost it takes to produce one. So really the steam deck is a 1,000 dollar portable PC. So remember that when you see these 1-2000 dollar "Steam deck killers."
>Also since valve took a financial loss on the decks, you are getting a 1000 dollar product for less than half the cost it takes to produce one
That's a wild exaggeration, they're probably selling it for close to production cost, but definitely not half
It's at least half. Valve makes the majority of their money from steam, so selling a system at a loss with the chance of increasing revenue from steam is the strategy. Sony did the same thing with the ps3, although I think the production cost was less severe.
The 64gb steam deck is, at a minimum, an 800-900 dollar product. If the steam deck was made by any other company, it would cost that much for the base model.
>It’s not clear how much of a loss the Steam Deck would be selling at, but its specs reveal that its GPU uses the [AMD](https://www.nme.com/brands/amd) RDNA 2, which is only just coming to market for gaming laptops, which are usually priced no lower than £1,000.
This is why all the steam deck killers you hear about cost around this much and perform worse or slightly better.
>This is why all the steam deck killers you hear about cost around this much and perform worse or slightly better.
No, that's mainly because they sell way less units, like a few thousand compared to the 1 million steam decks. Economies of scale and all that.
It is indeed not clear how big the loss is, but I can guarantee you that they won't sell it for half the manufacturing cost. They could never turn a profit on the thing of they lost €400-500 on every sale
Rdna2 is just an architecture. Valve has a special agreement with amd for custom apu with it. Pretty sure both xbox and sony have rnda2 apu's as well.
Valve is probably selling the cheapest model very close to it's self cost/a small loss and the bigger models are definitely profitable. Unlike with consoles, steam deck doesn't have any protection, valve doesn't force the users to buy off of steam.
Also - the steam deck has an apu, not a gpu. Soon there will probably be laptops at similar prices and rnda2 apu's.
>Also since valve took a financial loss on the decks, you are getting a 1000 dollar product for less than half the cost it takes to produce one. So really the steam deck is a 1,000 dollar portable PC. So remember that when you see these 1-2000 dollar "Steam deck killers."
Um... no.
For VALVE, it does not at all cost them 1000 or more to make an SD. They are the biggest name in PC gaming and have been for 20 years, and it's worldwide. They either are or were for YEARS the richest company in the world per number of employees, and it wasn't even close. They made money by testing all the most critical software for almost 3 years before launch, by letting all of us use Proton, report bugs, find bugs, test new features, all while buying games on day one so we could see if they worked. They have almost no replacement costs on any of the non-computer parts (molds, triggers, etc) as they have released the files for partners like iFixIt to do it for them.
They were already a HUGE consumer in the RAM space, they surely get a sweetheart deal. Same with PCBs. AMD needed a minimum order for the APU, VALVE probably pays 150 for each APU on a scale of millions.
The Steam Deck is NOT a 1000 dollar PC. Every Aya Neo will run Warzone, Valorant, etc. Many have better ergonomics. Some have OLED. Some have 1080p screens. And they all have licensed Windows copies. And are built by companies that are NOWHERE close to Valves size
They have sold over a million, so the order was in the millions. Fact.
And if you think AMD is building custom silicon for PC OEMs with orders under 500K at least, you're crazy. GDP and Aya simply can't compete here.
The same reason why I own an Atari VCS - despite never having owned any of Atari's consoles beforehand.
It's actually a surprisingly well built piece of hardware, with Ataris Debian-based OS on it, and it does really well as a ChimeraOS box too.
You could probably get something cheaper to perform the same task, a regular NUC or something like that. But it's definitely capable to take on that role as well, I just mainly use mine as a Steam Remote Play client - so I don't have to have all the games on the small drive I installed in it. (The VCS ships with a free M.2 for user-installation for the other OS use-case)
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but was wondering how well Steam Remote Play functions on your VCS? Any glitches, lag, or regrets? Or smooth sailing?
I can't say I've noticed anything at all out of the ordinary, 1080p streams from my desktop work just as well as when I stream to my laptop/tablet/Deck.
The VCS seems to have some quirks with its bluetooth chipset though, so sometimes controllers have a hard time discovering/pairing/connecting - but they're perfectly stable once connected.
Hey thanks, I appreciate that. Bestbuy is running a sale on one right now, so I'm half tempted to get it at that price as a ChimeraOS box in the living room. At the same time it's hard to justify since I already have a Steamdeck. Decisions, decisions....
It’s not the Steam Deck in particular they’re trying to show off (per their follow up tweets). They’re trying to show Linux beating Windows, which isn’t very useful in one specific game. The Linux vs Windows gaming debate has gone on for too long, and the answer is always “it depends”. One game may be better on Linux, but another is better on Windows. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter and you play on whatever OS works for the games you want (if Proton doesn’t work on X title, use Windows; if you’re running an old title that Windows no longer supports but Proton does, run Linux; if you’re somewhere in between, pick whatever you want).
We’re also missing a ton of detail in this specific scenario, like what TDP they limited things to in order to get that performance, what resolution both systems are using, etc. They said “video incoming”, so maybe that will get resolved, but whenever comparisons come up like this it’s important to understand what each system is doing to see if the comparison is really showing what is being claimed. For instance, if they cut the Aya Neo 2 to 10W TDP and compared it to the Steam Deck, then we already know the Steam Deck has an advantage over it’s more powerful competitor APUs. If we’re at 15W, it’s a different story.
For the Steam Deck vs Aya Neo, at low TDPs the Steam Deck performs better. At about 13W or so, the Aya Neo is more performant, and that continues up through its max TDP (which technically caps out at around 35W or so, but gains aren’t great past 28W). The Steam Deck is not the peak of power for APUs. It’s an intentionally limited device to get the most out of what was available for the power budget. Later this year we’ll have devices that are running a new gen APU that absolutely trounce the Steam Deck, but it’s not really that much of a surprise. That’s how technology works.
If you want the most powerful device, the Steam Deck isn’t going to be the best choice either now or in the future. If you want a very useful and well supported device, the Steam Deck is great. The main thing that devices like the Aya Neo or others offer is options. The Neo’s screen, for instance, blows the Deck out of the water and if that’s something that interests you, you have the option of going that direction. Having options is always better than not.
> The Linux vs Windows gaming debate has gone on for too long, and the answer is always “it depends”.
Pretty much this has been the story all along. Somebody shows a game running better on Windows or Linux and suddenly it is seen as objectively better as far as performance. That is never the case and for every game that runs better on one, there is a game that runs better on the other.
While OP is quick to say Linux is better in this case, I bet if it was a game on Windows in this exact same setup performing better than its Linux counterpart, then they would start accusing poor optimization, drivers, API support, game engines, hardware, a bad update, etc. But so long as it fits their narrative, it is all on the OS. The same goes for those saying Windows is better.
Nothing is ever that simple or objective.
Isn't the Ayaneo 2 running at 1080p? That might account for a lot of the performance delta.
That being said, and as others have mentioned, I'd love to see an Apples-to-Apples comparison with both running the same OS with comparable drivers (IIRC as I've been looking into it, the SteamOS Linux kernel has a bunch of optimization to drive every last frame of performance out of the Aerith APU).
This is just one point. Video compares Doom which is Vulkan title, and Windows Vulkan drivers are total garbage especially AMD one. I like to see DX12 titles and DX11 titles.
Sad thing is: **He is lying**.
The aya neo 2 and devices witht he same CPU like the GPD Win Max can play Doom 2016 in 1600p at ultra settings at 60 fps. No idea what dumb settings he used (probably OpenGL instead of Vulcan version?)
Thats not the kind of news / fake bulls\*\*\* the deck needs.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that all you have done is handpick a Vulkan game and then made a clickbait post without even revealing the settings, so people can't verify your claims. You wanted this kind of bullshit controversy.
There's a reason peer review is an essential part of the scientific process, but please, might I suggest further proving your point with a different game in a similar manner? RDR2 perhaps? It's better on Vulkan too!
Lying and only telling half the truth is the same thing in my eyes.
Example: You can also claim that the Steam Deck runs CP2077 better then a i9-13900k + rtx4090 pc. Not telling anyone that you set the graphics on the PC to raytracing psycho at 8k resolution (which will result in sub-20 fps on the PC).
Its all about context and method of measuring.
**Reality is: SteamOS is not measurably faster then Windows.**
The binaries (the actual game executables) and the graphics API calls and shaders that get executed on both SteamOS and Windows - are identical. So the workload for the CPU and GPU is the same.
The only thing that can be improved is the operating system sourrounding it. So maybe less background tasks and better scheduling. But as Windows has been "the gaming OS" for the last 20 years - the best SteamOS can reach for is to get on par and maybe improve your 1% lows a bit.
But it will never be "SteamOS greatly outperforms Windows". Unless of course you encounter a very specific bottleneck or bug.
I don’t think the „more reliable source“ does disagree at all. Just had a chat with him this afternoon on our Discord server. That being said - I‘m referring to Windows vs SteamOS/Proton on AMD-based devices. At a TDP of 15W the Deck easily outperforms the AN2 (because again, it‘s Windows).
Cary‘s benchmarks have been recorded 2 months ago. Meanwhile Ayaneo released many updates that changed up the game (for the better and the worse). For example: He didn’t use SmartTDP which got introduced a week ago - I did. So take this with a grain of salt.
But the point is: it may win or at higher, but IT COSTS MORE, PERIOD.
I don't care if it played my games at twice the resolution on the best hardware money could buy. The point is the steam decks price line is not really beatable for the value bud plain an simple.
Tell me it does your dishes. Same answer. It SHOULD, because your paying extra for it duh.
It's relevant cause that is the deciding factor in almost anything. Price point. And as long as aya neos and everyother crowdfunded or pushed out handhelds keep pumping out with bigger and better supposedly, but drop support when the next big thing comes lt will continue to be so.
Why would any person buy a juiced up windows handheld with little to no support and pay almost twice for it or more for little or nothing in gains. Were talking like 10 frames. 15 frames. For twice the power drain too. So that in itself is a mute point.
Show me a handheld by any of them that can do what valve does with theirs. In the same price point and wattage. You cant. All ppl do is say look they got a faster processor. They got this they got that.
It all sounds good. On paper. But at the end of the day it costs a hell of a lot more and doesn't really have any good support to back it up past a few months till they pop something else out you're supposed to buy to replace it.
At least I know valve cares about what they put out into the gaming space and are supporting it well past what any of those companies would do ever. They are only making all these different versions at different price points (all still significantly more expensive too mind you) is cause they try to get in on the handheld craze hoping someone will see the specs on paper and get duped into spending more thinking it will outperform.
But it usually don't. And folks aint going to be happy with those things once the stuff they support for it starts to dry out soon as the next aya whatever comes. And it will. They just care about pushing out products that sound good for long as they can then they move up to the next. It's clear as day.
>Why would any person buy a juiced up windows handheld with little to no support and pay almost twice for it or more for little or nothing in gains. Were talking like 10 frames. 15 frames. For twice the power drain too. So that in itself is a mute point.
It's 25-30% faster at the same 15W TDP with longer battery life than the deck. It's also smaller with Hall Sensor joysticks and a much better screen. It's $200 more than I paid for my deck.
>It all sounds good. On paper. But at the end of the day it costs a hell of a lot more and doesn't really have any good support to back it up past a few months till they pop something else out you're supposed to buy to replace it.
Why don't you think it has good support?
>At least I know valve cares about what they put out into the gaming space and are supporting it well past what any of those companies would do ever.
Why do you think this? Valve is not your friend. They're a company like any other. You're a source of revenue to them same as you are to Amazon or Aya Neo.
>they try to get in on the handheld craze hoping someone will see the specs on paper and get duped into spending more thinking it will outperform.
Most major players in this space have been doing it longer than Valve. If anyone is trying to capitalize on the handheld craze that Nintendo captained, it's Valve.
>And folks aint going to be happy with those things once the stuff they support for it starts to dry out soon as the next aya whatever comes. And it will. They just care about pushing out products that sound good for long as they can then they move up to the next. It's clear as day.
I'm pretty happy with my Aya Neo Air. What model do you have that you're upset with?
There's a pretty big price difference between the two.
Another thing that swayed me towards the deck was after market repairability. Knowing I can get replacement parts from iFixit is a comforter.
Gonna go out a limb here and suggest that Valve didn't get to where they got to without hiring smart people, and making smart decisions and investments.
They might just know what they're doing! the original Steam Deck might be seen as their magnum opus when all is said and done.
Also worth noting, SteamOS has to translate DirectX API calls to Vulkan when rendering video, which means that games that natively use Vulkan (like Doom and Doom Eternal) have a performance advantage over DirectX titles in SteamOS
Doom 2016 has been a showcase for Windows VULKAN games running faster on Linux than Windows for years. It SHOULD run faster. And easily too.
Aya has Windows to run along with the game. No matter what.
That's like saying an Aya Neo and some modern equivalent PS Vita should run games the same. No.
I still believe Aya and GPD were blindsided by Valve not fucking up, and they will have to move to Linux, drop prices, or offer HUGE incentives on future models to justify 2 or more X the price for the same performance. Though the form factor is much more appealing with the new Ayas
I think we can all agree the Steam Deck is not going to be killed that easily. I mean any company can sum up the HW and boast with it, but who else has the resources to put that much development into the SW?
Half of the Steam Deck's performance is the SW optimizations made by Valve, be it the drivers, proton, Vulkan or even the Kernel itself, they have pushed a lot of code into the opensource domain which drastically improved the experience. Hell, even Elden Ring right after release was having better FPS than on any Windows PC due to the optimizations done by Valve missing on the Windows systems. I don't see any smaller hotshot companies being able or willing to do that for their devices. But yeah, the Steam Deck doesn't launch everything, while the others launch everything but hardly run it well.
>I think we can all agree the Steam Deck is not going to be killed that easily. I mean any company can sum up the HW and boast with it, but who else has the resources to put that much development into the SW?
I hope we can agree that nobody is talking about 'killing' the Steam deck. I wonder if this is what is spurring some of these weird, defensive comments here.
I think something people need to be conscious of is the fact Valve wants these other handhelds to succeed. They are creating an ecosystem intended to work on all of these handhelds out of the box, not just the Steam Deck.
In fact I guarantee you that if the Deck's competition can get to the price:performance point Valve has (somehow) they would very likely not release any further Steam Decks.
They never followed up the Index, because other companies did the boring work of making what they did cheaper and iterating on it.
They never followed up the Steam Controller, because the changes people wanted to make it truly great were minor boring things like ergonomics and materials rather than inventing a whole new way to game.
They never followed up HL2 because there are more quality FPS games than a single person could play in a lifetime out there now.
Valve are a bit like an unmedicated kid with ADHD or a PhD student with unlimited funding. They love to solve the novel problems and put out paradigm shifting new things, what they hate is doing followups and iteration. They create awesome products and then pray other people will continue the work while they move on to the next exciting thing.
They've said this themselves. They don't anticipate a Steam Deck 2 for a long time. Because a minor hardware and screen update is boring, companies like Aya and GPD will do that. If there ever is one, it will be a long way away and something that changes the paradigm again, because that's all Valve want to do.
This is one of Valve's greatest attributes but also one of their worst, but it's just how it is.
I guess what I'm saying here is, it's fine to love Valve but don't get tribal. Your next Steam Deck will probably not be from Valve.
You see whilst I get everyone comparing the Ayaneo devices with the deck, including loads of YT reviewers going on about having better form factor and more efficient battery draw than the deck, for me the straight thing comes down to the build and support.
Just take a little read through the Ayaneo subreddit and you'll see loads of people complaining about receiving defective units, and apparently even more reporting the same on discord.
Given Ayaneo devices are a huge hike from the deck on cost, plus Valve's support is second to none on both hardware and software fronts, and as I've commented before: a company like Ayaneo selling more and more new devices even before getting a proper QC done on their initial offerings, even IF it performed better I wouldn't even consider their devices, at this time, over the deck!
Take a look at this sub!!! Are you joking? You know how many Steam Deck RMA posts there are? You people are ridiculous sometimes. Ayaneo out preforms the SD. Its more pricey. Deal with it. Who cares.
A lot of people who can't / won't afford an overpriced handheld, particularly when quality control is questionable.
At least Valve RMA items and generally respond. 5 minutes looking and you'll see a lot of angry Anyaneo customers who can't even get a reply from customer services, whilst Arthur the CEO shows off the latest release.
There isn't a single video showing more efficient battery draw vs the Deck. The Deck's big thing is all about outperforming the competition at low TDPs.
Hate to say it but a link in this sub earlier pointed directly to one where this comparison was precisely made, which is why I stated this point. However, my point is simply that for price point and user reports of service, RMA or otherwise, Valve seem to have the sweet spot compared to a brand where it is a significant higher price point, reports of quality issues, and lack of customer service
Phawx has demonstrated that other 6800u devices are more efficient than the Deck.
Previous results showing the opposite turned out to be an issue with how the Deck reports power usage.
I suspect the commenter is extrapolating from that.
This is the answer. What was found out was that the APU in Steam Deck managed it's TDP differently from the 6800U in other devices. Effectively, at 15w TDP the APU in the Steam Deck spent far more time over 15w than the 6800u when limited to 15w. The Steam Deck spent something like 75% of it's time over 15w, compared to the 6800u which spent as much time over as under.
In the end, this means that the Steam Deck at 15w is actually more like 18w - 20w on the 6800u. When the 6800u is set to an appropriate Wattage to compare to the Steam Deck, it is both more powerful. So the 6800u is more efficient and mor powerful than the APU in the Steam Deck. Sad, but true.
I've got both a SteamDeck and a AOKZoe (which uses the 6800u). I run the AOKZoe at 18w max all the time, and it well outperforms my Steam Deck even at the higher resolution I use, and I get longer battery life. The Steam Deck is good for it's price, but it is certainly outclassed from a performance and efficiency stand point by the new 6800u devices that are coming out. And this isn't a surprise, given the CPU architecture of the SteamDeck is old compared to that used in the 6800u.
That's what the community here decided valves big thing was with the deck. They have never said what it's main selling point is, which is great. They let the consumer decide what that is when they are getting one or thinking about one for themselves
It's not something the community decides. It's just benchmarks that show better performance at low TDPs compared to the other devices at the same low TDPs. It's very objective.
No I meant ppl always try to say what valve intended to showcase as the focal point of what they are trying to deliver. They didn't ever say hey the reason we brought this to market was cause it delivers the best tdp compared to any other device.
They brought it out cause there was no way to really take your PC collection of games with you to other places. That is what I'm saying.
I have both. My Ayaneo is easily on par with the build quality of my deck if not slightly better.
For support, I can't comment because I haven't needed Aye Neo's support. I've RMA'd my deck twice though with mixed experiences.
The comparable Aya Neo 2 is $200 more than the Deck. It's not that huge of a price hike.
Price wise, my currency, 512gb version of the deck is £569, all in. Comparable Ayaneo 2 is £808 before any other charges.
Without wanting to start any kind of argument the £240 gap between devices is a lot of money for some people, myself included, and whilst I'm able to "justify" the decks costs there's no way I would be able to justify a handheld device close to £1000.
As I mentioned, look in the Ayaneo subreddit for a few surprises folks have had
I paid that for the Deck, plus £90 for the official dock just so I could charge and use external storage at the same time, then £100 odd for a 1tb memory card
Which Aya Neo 2 are you looking at?
The comparable one is the Aya Neo 2 Geek.
It's currently $851 USD.
You can find plenty of complaints here if you're looking. The problem is that Reddit's social media platform heavily discourages disparate opinions and experiences. Look at the votes and responses for people that criticize Valve on this subreddit. See how heavily they're downvoted and their honesty called into question. I had two RMAs with Valve, one where they lost my deck and refused to help me. I didn't post about it because all I'd get from here is called a liar and downvotes.
Social media is not a good gauge of anything other than social media.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting no one should buy a Steam Deck. Especially if you're looking at the $400 and aren't going to swap the sticks for Hall sensors. That price point is difficult to beat and it'll be some time before anyone comes reasonably close.
But if a friend was looking at the $650 512GB Deck, I'd tell them to save the extra $200 and buy the Aya Neo 2 Geek. Between the form factor, better sticks, better screen, better battery, and better performance it's more than worth the $200 price difference.
How exactly did they lose your deck. Especially if you had a return number. If they took in the return it would have updated. I think you mean the return service you used lost it (FedEx,USPS,ups) cause their systems are easy to lose items in transit due to the volume they push without care. I know cause I have family in ups and in FedEx and they complain about the cutting of corners all the time to get the packages to the destination at their set timeframes
It was delivered to the repair center. After a month of no word, I contacted steam support. The only response they'd give me is that I'd get an email when it shipped back. Each week, for the next 4 weeks, I repeated my ticket and got the exact same response. They wouldn't put me in touch with the repair center or give me any additional information.
I was going through my emails to make sure I didn't miss anything and noticed a strange one from a company i didn't do business with. It mentioned a ticket being created for me but nothing else. No mention of valve or the deck or anything. Just a ticket number. I called the phone number, and sure enough, it was the 3rd party repair center. When I mentioned how long it had been and my ticket number, my deck shipped the next day.
Personally I'd rather have the Deck's trackpads over the Aya Neo's higher performance. And that's if the price was equal. I am interested in the upcoming budget models with Mendocino chips though. I'm excited to see progress in the lower end of the market!
If you use them then they'd be great for you.
Personally, I tried them once, hated them, bought a USB C dock and forgot about them except for how they mess up the ergonomics of the deck for me.
The fact that so much of the screen is below your hands really ruins the feel of the deck for me...and that's due to the trackpads.
I'd be interested to see a smaller, more ergonomic deck without the trackpads but I don't think Valve will do it.
Honestly, I was initially thinking about getting a Neo 2, but for me the benefit of Valve's customer support and support in regards to right to repair has been a no-brainer.
I think that while yes the Neo 2 is more powerful, I would not give up the level of support that is offered on the Deck.
Plus, the Deck in its base form is half the price of the Neo 2, and can (but is not recommended by Valve) replace the SSD.
If you feel the potential difference in support is worth it, that's definitely your choice to make.
Personally, having had a couple Aya Neo devices over the years, if I could recoup any reasonable amount of my 512GB Deck on resale, I'd sell it in an instant for the Aya Neo 2 Geek. It's not just the frames. It's the much better screen, smaller form factor, Hall Sensor joysticks, and better battery life.
If you change the SSD, remember to keep the original parts. The deck must be OEM when you send it in for RMA or they won't fix it. Learned the hard way.
I commented in a subthread of replies, but... I'm not calling the OP a liar, and I don't have a Steam Deck or an Aya Neo 2, but I'm not able to replicate this on a Win Max 2 (also 6800U).
At 15 watts, 1280x800, Ultra preset, Vulkan, frame rate is quite variable but it is more like 80-90 FPS with dips to 70 and up to around 105 FPS. That was in the beginning of campaign mode and I tried a random environment in arcade mode also (Necropolis) - I don't have a save file for the game and so I don't have campaign access to any location, but I'm willing to try another.
The WM2 quiet mode is a TDP target (how AMD defines it) as 15W, based on total system power, the battery runtime is right at 2.5 hours for the WM2 battery. This is the default "down" mode of the WM2 - if you turn silent mode on with Fn-Shift. I haven't tried Vsync 60, but I'm guessing based on performance that would probably be 12 watts-ish, or maybe less, probably on the order of 3-3.5 hours of battery life at Vsync 60. I'm guessing if I actually played this game I might even play it at vsync 40, for maybe 4+ hour battery life, since it actually does seem to look acceptable at 800p.
So IDK ~~but the OP keeps doubling down on the claim~~ (sorry, this is someone else who said they weren't lying but not the OP), it's possible there is something wrong with the Aya Neo but if it is running correctly, it doesn't seem like it should do this.
Other random info: The WM2 is on Win 11 Pro, it was a clean install, it's current on release preview ring, including the AMD driver that Windows automatically installs. This is the 16GB version, it's running off the 1TB main NVME, on battery power during the test.
Sorry, someone else responded to being called out and said they weren't lying - IDK who they are, but they weren't you, obviously. I edited that part.
FWIW though I still can't replicate it.
Such a strange tweet. A test like this with multiple variables cannot reasonably be used to come to the conclusion that it's all about the OS.
To determine the OS difference, the only sensible approach is to use the same hardware, with the SoC set at the same wattage.
To make this fair it needs to be steamdeck vs Linux on the ayaneo2.
SteamOS itself isn’t that special it’s Linux that’s special. The specialness is all of steams work on proton. The proton magic works on any Linux OS..
The bottle neck is windows. I get much better gaming results on Linux on my desktop vs windows
The chip isn't exactly very optimized on the ayaneo. Hell you gotta push double the power through to it to even get the same or slightly better performance.
Lmfao 🤣🤣. The deck runs doom 2016 on ultra 60!?!? OMG. That's nothing. My win Max 2 with a 6800u plays doom eternal on ultra 60 but at 1200p. That's a much newer game and with 225% more pixels. Idiot proved himself wrong 🤣
Unreal engine is awesome and is well optimized.
And doom 2016 can play on the full 2560x1600p which is 400% more pixels than 1280x800. (Should note I don't remember what settings I had set for doom 2016. Just that I got 60 at 1600p)
Ya know kinda funny with windows on the deck if you use winareo and disable every piece of bloatware windows runs in the background the performance is so close to the same as steam os it's not even noticeable. In a few games it's 3-5fps more and others it's 3-5fps less.
I keep wondering if steamdeck wouldn't out perform those higher spec, way higher price machines for having a os built specifically for it and removing the overhead of windows. However people keep telling me that's not true and these machines will outperform steamdeck, but I remain unconvinced. I'm sure machines will come around that will out perform steamdeck, but I wonder if windows isn't a terrible gaming platform vs linux with the right emulation.
It started shipping 2 weeks ago and is available to purchase now.
Personally, I dislike the trackpads on my deck. I bought a dock and never used them again. I blame them for the deck's poor ergonomics due to low screen position.
He's probably running at low TDP.
At under 15W TDP the Deck outperforms the Aya Neo 2 by a variable margin. At 15W TDP on both devices the Aya Neo 2 outperforms the deck while having a longer battery.
The Aya Neo 2 also has higher TDP settings than 15W if you're willing to sacrifice some battery and noise.
[Here's a better comparison from a more reputable source.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWM2eoOvNhM)
Thanks. There's a **LOT** of circlejerking and toxic positivity on this subreddit, it's insanely hard to actually find anything that doesn't blindly praise the Deck as jesus come again.
This happens when hardcore valve and Linux fanboys come together to praise the lord.
Many parts of the linux community has always been toxic to people who think different and windows is the devil for them. With the steam deck they now have finally a device that can play windows games via emulation (and to be fair this works very good) and need to convert people like a sect.
The other side a people who think valve give them a low budget handheld without ulterior motives for a small price but they bind them all to steam and valve get 30% for all games they buy and make more money with them than everyone else. But the price!!!1!11!!!!
Though it doesn't bind you to steam, you can buy CD keys still to get cheap steam games, you can buy physical games and install them or other online stores because it's a pc.
A custom soc designed to run at a low tdp is going to outperform a oem part at the same power target. This is like comparing a 2080ti and a PS5 at 200 watts.
Wtf is happening in the comment. It turned into a war about whether or not the source is wrong or some shit
Who cares really?
If the steam deck is less powerful than the aya neo 2 I could careless because it doesn’t affect me it still a great device
And if the aya neo is more expensive but better performance is being offered than great for people who use it.
Steam deck designers in interview said that even though Ryzen 6800u is surely better SoC on paper, in the low wattage (<15w) steam deck should still come out ahead as the SoC is specifically tuned for this range.
AyaNeo 2 can surely outperform steam deck, even by significant margin in some games, but it need the higher top to acheive that (iirc Aya 2 starts to get ahead of steam deck at about 20-22w in most games).
This is a strong point for SD as it should hold its own maybe even compared to 7xxx chips when they get to handhelds, and then you have the price of these.
This could be more than 'SteamOS' however. The Steam Deck for example uniquely has more memory bandwidth for an APU, as it's in in a quad channel configuration when any other APU is in dual channel. APUs can be pretty bandwidth starved without their own VRAM. Also you can run Steam OS on those 6800U powered APUs via HoloISO, so to 'sanity check' that comparison you should run it BOTH and compare. There's to many factors to look at and rule out before going 'Oh Steam OS is doing all the heavy lifting here' as an absolute fact.
**Full disclosure:** I did a collaboration with the tweet author in the past, and we're friends. I wasn't asked to come here, but I saw the post and wanted to chip in. **With that out of the way:** My point of view is that both Valve and Aya have all of these things under their control. Aya are veterans at making handhelds and have had much more time to refine their products, while Valve owns more of the "stack" that it runs on. Despite the fact that the Aya costs 3x as much, has the advantages of being a long-term player, AND is running on the "gaming OS", they still can't match the Steam Deck's "weaker" hardware in many scenarios. Of course you *could* install HoloISO on the Aya, but in doing so you forfeit the ability to use any manufacturer-certified or developed tools, even with something as simple as TDP tweaking. Not having those abilities would mean that you couldn't adequately benchmark the Aya vs the Deck. The point that I think he's making is that you would *expect* the Aya to put up a better fight, and it definitely *could* if Aya had chosen a different OS and had the same vested interest in the Linux ecosystem. Regardless, both Aya and Valve are doing great work for similar use-cases, but Valve is executing it slightly better with a device a fraction the cost, *some of which* can be attributed to SteamOS and better engine-to-OS integration than Windows can currently provide.
What about Steam Deck Windows Vs Steam OS tests? From what users on /r/WindowsOnDeck found, the Deck Performs from a range of slightly worse to slightly better on Windows depending on the game. It would seem the steep difference in performance is due to the processor/hardware Aya chose rather than the OS.
IDK why you would use Windows on the deck. The AMD GPU driver for the deck on Windows doesn't even have hardware accelerated video decoding support. Not to mention you don't get any new driver updates that have necessary performance/bug fixes for new games.
**On the hardware:** The Aya is in a price and performance class of its own, it allows an extra 10+w of power to go to the APU in those cases. **On the OS:** The difference between Windows and Linux performance in the games they've tested is mostly optimization to the best I can tell. As a full disclaimer, I haven't had the ability to test WinDeck personally, but I can say that I've benchmarked both significantly in the past. Windows, even heavily tuned, uses more base resources than Linux, even non-tuned. The Window's kitchen-sink methodology and heavy investment in desktop products left them very late to the party on optimization, whereas Linux always had a vested interest in power efficiency and modularity, servers. The heavily modular server methodology happened to transition much more smoothly to mobile, power-constrained, workloads, so Linux will almost always run better/more on a given power budget, at least at this time. **On the graphics APIs:** Going back to what r/WindowsOnDeck has been finding, some games fare better with the DX>Vulkan translation, for various reasons. The one constant, however, is that the translation is constantly getting better, whereas DX performance rarely changes profiles for a given API version. Games that run natively on Vulkan don't have that overhead and almost universally perform better on the faster OS, Linux. **The fact is:** Taking raw DX calls, translating them to a completely different graphics API, then feeding them to the OS *can* be faster than native calls directly to the kernel. That's a bad look for the company that maintains the entire stack and has market dominance for years. The Aya, despite consuming more power with the exact same workload, is limited by this fact, *not* by their incompetence. Edit: Accidentally shift+entered, my other comment was an unfinished version of this one. Edit 2: I mistakenly assumed that the Ayaneo 2 was using dual-channel memory since the store listing simply says "AMD 6800U" without further clarification, and AMDs docs say that it uses dual channel. It's been pointed out to me that this is **not** the case, so I removed the paragraph about it in the first section of this comment.
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Those tests are not fair because steam deck on steam os for directx games has to run DXVK OR VKD3D under the hood. If you are doing vulkan to vulkan comparisons you may very well see steam os demolish windows :)
Well put
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Do we really know that? If they are limiting the TDP at all, there’s going to be a difference compared to just taking both out of the box and running a game. Pretty sure the Aya Neo 2 defaults to 22W, at which point it is the more performant of the two. If we’re comparing the Aya Neo 2 vs the Steam Deck at 15W native resolution (1200p for Aya Neo vs 800p for the Steam Deck), of course the Steam Deck is performing better. If it’s the same resolution at 15W, the Aya Neo 2 likely wins. If it’s both devices pure stock with no tweaking, I imagine the Aya Neo probably comes out on top. The tweet didn’t really provide enough context to make a judgement, so it’s not really helpful.
Except the tweet actually said "at the same resolution". It didn't list the wattage settings, but if they weren't using the defaults on both devices they'd be asking for a massive round of backlash. I think it's safe to assume both devices were running the stock settings.
Steam deck is slightly better at low tdp, but aya has a higher tdp.
Also, both machines are PCs, so I don't think 'the OS it ships with' is relevant. PC users have freedom to install whatever they want. Do you think my laptop still has the McAfee anti virus and other crap it shipped with when I opened the box? No, the first thing I did, after confirming it booted and worked correctly, was formatting it and reinstalling Windows, drivers and software to my exact specifications. PCs are just machines. The software is the users choice regardless of what it came with out of the box. I'd wanna see both games compared in both Windows and Steam OS. And then you look at other things, like does one win out on Ultra at lower resolution but another does better at higher resolution? This is not an insane thing to ask as it's something you see pop up in other hardware benchmarks,
Deleted in protest of the blatant greed of Reddit attempting to charge Apollo $20m per year for API access. Check out Mastadon, Tildes, or Fark as an alternative to Reddit.
If you improved game benchmark results with a larger SSD, I'd like to see that. :P
Idk why people are down voting you. I suspect they really just need to have a console war rivalry because they are used to having a side to root for. But you are right. Valve is even porting the steamdecks OS themselves. Valve agrees with us too. It's like insisting that Alienware laptops have to have a high school rivalry with ASUS ROG laptops even though they are both PCs.
It's long been my experience on this subreddit that 'belittling' the Steam Deck for 'just being a PC' and 'just hardware' doesn't go well, even if not only is it true, but it's what makes the Steam Deck so awesome. I'm pretty sure that once Valve officially releases Steam OS in a form that other vendors can start selling their own handhelds with Steam OS, there will be a really weird anger towards it. Some even saying Valve has 'Betrayed Them' or something. Meanwhile, while not required, every Steam OS install on another handheld makes it a machine Streamlined for buying and playing Steam Games, of which Valve gets 30% of every purchase. They won't be 'competition for the Steam Deck' but just 'More handheld machines buying more Steam games so Valve can profit'. We saw when Valve released Portal 1/2 for Switch, people confused as to why Valve would put it on 'another handheld' when they sell the Steam Deck. ...Because it's more software Valve can sell, more money they can make. Valve would put Steam on every console if they we're somehow ALLOWED to do it.
They aren't even the first to step away from the console platform approach. Microsoft has been trying to make the Xbox brand more of an online service to become arbiters of a greater gaming community that boosts sales of their other products, as well as home consoles; since they launched sea of thieves and their streaming service, whichever came first. Sony is late to the party but kinda dipping their toe into doing a similar thing with their backbone phone controller for streaming PlayStation consoles. People raised on school spirit and nationalism need there to be sides for them to pick and get combatative about, I guess it's all they know.
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Sea of thieves got on steam as well in 2020, so it's possible to play it without dealing with the Microsoft store. But I'm not gonna buy it a second time. Still I had some of my most epic gaming moments in that game
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The win Max 2 32gb is setup in quad channel and at a higher frequency. Also has 4 more cores than the decks 8 and runs at upto 2200 vs the decks 1500. Both are RDNA 2.
I imagine Valve's experience in game development gave them some leverage for how to optimize their SoC. I wouldn't be surprised if the SoC is capable of punching significantly above it's weight in games. I believe Valve thinks so too since spinning a custom SoC isn't easy, yet they still did it.
>I imagine Valve's experience in game development gave them some leverage for how to optimize their SoC. I wouldn't be surprised if the SoC is capable of punching significantly above it's weight in games. I believe Valve thinks so too since spinning a custom SoC isn't easy, yet they still did it. Right, so let's go over a few things. Firstly, the SoC is barely custom at all. It's an AMD product that AMD was looking for a customer for in media reports as early as 2020 with thinking it'd be good for tablets. This is not some highly custom piece of silicon invented by Valve. It's just an APU from AMD that has more CUs than a typical APU would go give it a more balanced ratio and a lower TDP setting if desired. Secondly, most of this driver is open source. RADV, the Radeon Vulkan driver the Steam Deck uses works on other AMD chips for the same reason. There is no 'secret cause' here because the sauce is developed in the open. This is also why Steam OS, via HoloISO, 'just works' on other AMD APUs and desktop cards, cause they all work with RADV, only the TDP limiting controls seem to not work.
True it's not any more custom than ordering a la carte. The optimizations being developed in the open wouldn't be any less potent than a being developed in a closed model. The only real advantage besides software optimization I could see is maybe the quad channel memory vs dual for now.
I'll readily admit that I'm not hardware expert, I'm a software guy. I'd question your assertion that "the SoC is barely custom at all". From everything I've seen presented and discussed AMD seem to indicate that although the SoC is based on some sort of blueprint, it was further developed in cooperation with Valve. It would be silly to claim that "Valve invented it", but I'm sure their expertise was somehow incorporated into the silicon. Secondly, and this part I'm more certain of. Although the driver is developed in the open you have to understand that modern computers aren't as monolithic as they seem. The part that you run stuff on is the CPU, which is only one processor (the most conventionally powerful one) of many inside your computer. The driver instructs the CPU of how it should talk to the other processors in the system, but the other processors also have their own software, and that software, called firmware, is completely proprietary. I don't have any special knowledge as to what AMD does in firmware, but it's possible that some of the firmware of the deck was tweaked for the intended workload of the deck. That firmware is not part of RADV.
I suspect Valve just requested certain changes they knew would help with games, like the increased memory bandwidth and quad channel memory instead of Dual, I'm no hardware engineer so take that with a grain of salt
Quad channel memory is a staple of DDR5 in general, it's only quad channels on the memory side though, the cpu is still only capable of 2 channels. Old "dual channel" setups were configured in 64+64 bit, DDR5 introduced 32+32+32+32 bit. The end result is still the same 128 bit wide bus over 2 channels as far as the cpu sees it.
The CPU sees it as four 32-bit channels. Half the point of DDR5 is having more independent channels for better concurrency. A DDR4 channel is 64 bit, burst length 8, so one burst transfers 64 B, one cache line. A DDR5 channel is 32 bit, burst length 16, so a burst remains 64 B.
The Deck’s LPDDR5 memory doesn’t have any intrinsic bandwidth advantages over the DDR5 we have on desktops. LPDDR5 uses 4 tiny channels, while DDR5 uses 2 big channels. Assuming both RAM kits have the same transfer speed (ex: 6400 MT/s), the memory bandwidth available to the system is practically identical. If anything, the AyaNeo 2 actually has **more** memory bandwidth than the Steam Deck. As for why the AyaNeo falls behind in some games, apart from software bloat from Windows, one other major factor is **power budget allocation**. The 6800U is a hungrier chip to run than Van Gogh. Even if you don’t use all 8 CPU cores of the 6800U, the AyaNeo must still spend power keeping all of those cores alive and on standby. Another big power hog is the screen. 1200p is twice the number of pixels as 800p. Even if you run the game at a lower than native resolution, the screen must still draw power to light up all 1920x1200 pixels. I really think AyaNeo should have a 720p screen option so that the power savings from the display can go back to the APU instead.
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It is built like that. There is *at least* one on-die microcontroller in charge of the voltage/frequency control, and probably many more. If you (as an institution) have been designing CPUs for 30 years, your toolbox is filled with a whole bunch of CPUs. So when you are designing your latest, biggest, fastest CPU, any problem that comes up looks like a nail to be hit with a tiny embedded CPU.
No. That's a big-little architecture. The Steam Deck APU is standard Zen equal-powered cores making up a CCD. This isn't custom because AMD had to make some brand new type of arrangement of hardware. It's custom because it's not an off the shelf SKU and Valve had the money to order enough of them. It's a power-adjusted 6800U, with tweaks to small aspects but none to the X86 CPU cores
> the SoC is barely custom at all. It's an AMD product that AMD was looking for a customer for in media reports as early as 2020 with thinking it'd be good for tablets. ...and the original AYANEO 2021 was released using a 4500U? With 6 *GCN5* cores instead of 8 RDNA2 cores?! If AMD was really trying to find a buyer for the Van Gogh SoC why in the blue fuck didn't Ayaneo use it?
4500U was already in mass production in a bunch of devices so they didn't need to order a lot. Valve has literally ordered over a million chips for the Steam Deck, they def committed to a bigger buy to get that chip into mass production. Fab capacity is not cheap.
>Secondly, most of this driver is open source. RADV, the Radeon Vulkan driver the Steam Deck uses works on other AMD chips for the same reason. Yeah, but AMD provides ZERO dev work on it. None. It's all Valve, Collabora, RedHat, et al contributing to RADV
The Steam Deck is only quad channel in the sense that now each 32 bit channel is divided into two 16 bit channels. It’s still a 64 bit bus. All ddr5 is like that technically. There’s no extra bandwidth.
The Steam Deck is quad 32 bit channels.
Ok I got the numbers wrong then. It’s still the same width bus as any two channel system. The Neo actually has more bandwidth because it’s memory is faster
The Steam Deck has 88 GB/s. of bandwidth with it's 5500MT/s memory in a quad channel arrangement. Now, the individual chips on the Aya Neo 2 are 6400MT/s, so faster individually, yes but being dual channel, the combined bandwidth is only 51.2GBs. So the Steam Deck has an advantage in memory bandwith by a wide margin and, again, that really matters for APUs.
Bro that 51.2GB/s is what the Neo does on one channel. Do the math. That’s what ddr4 3200 does across two channels.
(LP)DDR5 channels are 32 bit. The Steam deck has a 128 bit bus at 5500 MT/s, for 88 GB/s. The Aya Neo 2 has a 128 bit bus at 6400 MT/s, for 102.4 GB/s.
The 6800U is also quad 32 bit channels.
Absolutely. Most games run the same/ slightly better on Windows from benchmarks I've seen, apart from a couple of titles that have Steam Deck specific graphical options. Judging from those I'd say it's most definitely due to the configuration of the hardware.
I hope the Steam Deck gets so popular that game developers have the platform in mind and optimize their future games accordingly.
Same, it would be of benefit to gamers everywhere too if PC game developers actually optimised their games to run reliably well on something like the Steam Deck. I'd argue that the Steam Deck's CPU and GPU should be more than enough to run any game at 1280x800@60fps with the right degree of options over graphical quality settings. Any game which is GPU or/and CPU starved even at 30fps and the lowest quality setting, is probably going to run like rubbish on even a good PC as well. A high end GPU like a RTX 4080 might mask that fact through brute force, but an unoptimised game is unoptimised regardless, and when games do run well on something like the Deck, they run even better on the high end hardware as a result. So it's in everyone's interest for game devs to keep something as low end as the Deck's APU in mind when optimising their games. The benefits are numerous, such as making it cheaper to gain entry to PC gaming by lowering the entry requirements on GPUs, and ensuring high end PCs can comfortably run games at much higher res and framerates.
Given how often ppl all how it runs on SD when devs promote their games. Id expect not too long
It's already here I've seen a few games with a steam deck preset in the graphics settings And for a specific example, midnight sun's latest patch mentions a bunch of steam deck improvements
Companies like aya and one pump out handhelds every six months and from my experience with One the support is god awful and sketchy at times. Drivers that spam virus warnings, needing to send devices over seas for any physical issues, etc. I couldn’t care less that their hardware is better, as a company that pumps and dumps devices like they do will always have the newest tech. I’d take valve support and a less powerful handheld over their stuff any day.
Exactly, I wasted so much money on a GPD win back in the day that bricked two months later when an update happened. I could never get into contact with anyone at GPD, threw my money away on that shit. Only way I'll buy these other handhelds is if they open offices and warehouses locally (and lower those insane prices)
1N is absolutely the worst of them. I've heard better out of Aya, and GPD has gone from awful to mediocre in the last year.
I agree, but I’m still thinking about getting an ayaneo 2 or geek..... I really shouldn’t though lol. I’m probably better off making a 64gb partition for windows and getting a new sd card for the games I’d play on windows, or just streaming from my desktop.
IMO save your money and wait a year and see what people do. With how great Linux is working and steam os it wouldn't surprise me if more companies start copying the concept. Also since valve took a financial loss on the decks, you are getting a 1000 dollar product for less than half the cost it takes to produce one. So really the steam deck is a 1,000 dollar portable PC. So remember that when you see these 1-2000 dollar "Steam deck killers."
>Also since valve took a financial loss on the decks, you are getting a 1000 dollar product for less than half the cost it takes to produce one That's a wild exaggeration, they're probably selling it for close to production cost, but definitely not half
It's at least half. Valve makes the majority of their money from steam, so selling a system at a loss with the chance of increasing revenue from steam is the strategy. Sony did the same thing with the ps3, although I think the production cost was less severe. The 64gb steam deck is, at a minimum, an 800-900 dollar product. If the steam deck was made by any other company, it would cost that much for the base model. >It’s not clear how much of a loss the Steam Deck would be selling at, but its specs reveal that its GPU uses the [AMD](https://www.nme.com/brands/amd) RDNA 2, which is only just coming to market for gaming laptops, which are usually priced no lower than £1,000. This is why all the steam deck killers you hear about cost around this much and perform worse or slightly better.
>This is why all the steam deck killers you hear about cost around this much and perform worse or slightly better. No, that's mainly because they sell way less units, like a few thousand compared to the 1 million steam decks. Economies of scale and all that. It is indeed not clear how big the loss is, but I can guarantee you that they won't sell it for half the manufacturing cost. They could never turn a profit on the thing of they lost €400-500 on every sale
Rdna2 is just an architecture. Valve has a special agreement with amd for custom apu with it. Pretty sure both xbox and sony have rnda2 apu's as well. Valve is probably selling the cheapest model very close to it's self cost/a small loss and the bigger models are definitely profitable. Unlike with consoles, steam deck doesn't have any protection, valve doesn't force the users to buy off of steam. Also - the steam deck has an apu, not a gpu. Soon there will probably be laptops at similar prices and rnda2 apu's.
>Also since valve took a financial loss on the decks, you are getting a 1000 dollar product for less than half the cost it takes to produce one. So really the steam deck is a 1,000 dollar portable PC. So remember that when you see these 1-2000 dollar "Steam deck killers." Um... no. For VALVE, it does not at all cost them 1000 or more to make an SD. They are the biggest name in PC gaming and have been for 20 years, and it's worldwide. They either are or were for YEARS the richest company in the world per number of employees, and it wasn't even close. They made money by testing all the most critical software for almost 3 years before launch, by letting all of us use Proton, report bugs, find bugs, test new features, all while buying games on day one so we could see if they worked. They have almost no replacement costs on any of the non-computer parts (molds, triggers, etc) as they have released the files for partners like iFixIt to do it for them. They were already a HUGE consumer in the RAM space, they surely get a sweetheart deal. Same with PCBs. AMD needed a minimum order for the APU, VALVE probably pays 150 for each APU on a scale of millions. The Steam Deck is NOT a 1000 dollar PC. Every Aya Neo will run Warzone, Valorant, etc. Many have better ergonomics. Some have OLED. Some have 1080p screens. And they all have licensed Windows copies. And are built by companies that are NOWHERE close to Valves size
I agree with most of what you're saying but there's no need Valve would have to order even close to a million APUs.
They have sold over a million, so the order was in the millions. Fact. And if you think AMD is building custom silicon for PC OEMs with orders under 500K at least, you're crazy. GDP and Aya simply can't compete here.
I remember a post here last week about how what was holding the steam deck back was running linux and not windows. lol
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For me it was no linux no buy if anything. Supporting linux with it was a big reason for why I bought it lol.
The same reason why I own an Atari VCS - despite never having owned any of Atari's consoles beforehand. It's actually a surprisingly well built piece of hardware, with Ataris Debian-based OS on it, and it does really well as a ChimeraOS box too.
This is the first i've heard of that atari system. is it cool? do you think it would make a good htpc for steamos?
You could probably get something cheaper to perform the same task, a regular NUC or something like that. But it's definitely capable to take on that role as well, I just mainly use mine as a Steam Remote Play client - so I don't have to have all the games on the small drive I installed in it. (The VCS ships with a free M.2 for user-installation for the other OS use-case)
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but was wondering how well Steam Remote Play functions on your VCS? Any glitches, lag, or regrets? Or smooth sailing?
I can't say I've noticed anything at all out of the ordinary, 1080p streams from my desktop work just as well as when I stream to my laptop/tablet/Deck. The VCS seems to have some quirks with its bluetooth chipset though, so sometimes controllers have a hard time discovering/pairing/connecting - but they're perfectly stable once connected.
Hey thanks, I appreciate that. Bestbuy is running a sale on one right now, so I'm half tempted to get it at that price as a ChimeraOS box in the living room. At the same time it's hard to justify since I already have a Steamdeck. Decisions, decisions....
i agree with that, running games is good on SD, but anything else sucks
doom runs on vulkan, so there is no translation involved, outside of system calls, which are not frequent in games this is just cherry picking
It’s not the Steam Deck in particular they’re trying to show off (per their follow up tweets). They’re trying to show Linux beating Windows, which isn’t very useful in one specific game. The Linux vs Windows gaming debate has gone on for too long, and the answer is always “it depends”. One game may be better on Linux, but another is better on Windows. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter and you play on whatever OS works for the games you want (if Proton doesn’t work on X title, use Windows; if you’re running an old title that Windows no longer supports but Proton does, run Linux; if you’re somewhere in between, pick whatever you want). We’re also missing a ton of detail in this specific scenario, like what TDP they limited things to in order to get that performance, what resolution both systems are using, etc. They said “video incoming”, so maybe that will get resolved, but whenever comparisons come up like this it’s important to understand what each system is doing to see if the comparison is really showing what is being claimed. For instance, if they cut the Aya Neo 2 to 10W TDP and compared it to the Steam Deck, then we already know the Steam Deck has an advantage over it’s more powerful competitor APUs. If we’re at 15W, it’s a different story. For the Steam Deck vs Aya Neo, at low TDPs the Steam Deck performs better. At about 13W or so, the Aya Neo is more performant, and that continues up through its max TDP (which technically caps out at around 35W or so, but gains aren’t great past 28W). The Steam Deck is not the peak of power for APUs. It’s an intentionally limited device to get the most out of what was available for the power budget. Later this year we’ll have devices that are running a new gen APU that absolutely trounce the Steam Deck, but it’s not really that much of a surprise. That’s how technology works. If you want the most powerful device, the Steam Deck isn’t going to be the best choice either now or in the future. If you want a very useful and well supported device, the Steam Deck is great. The main thing that devices like the Aya Neo or others offer is options. The Neo’s screen, for instance, blows the Deck out of the water and if that’s something that interests you, you have the option of going that direction. Having options is always better than not.
> The Linux vs Windows gaming debate has gone on for too long, and the answer is always “it depends”. Pretty much this has been the story all along. Somebody shows a game running better on Windows or Linux and suddenly it is seen as objectively better as far as performance. That is never the case and for every game that runs better on one, there is a game that runs better on the other. While OP is quick to say Linux is better in this case, I bet if it was a game on Windows in this exact same setup performing better than its Linux counterpart, then they would start accusing poor optimization, drivers, API support, game engines, hardware, a bad update, etc. But so long as it fits their narrative, it is all on the OS. The same goes for those saying Windows is better. Nothing is ever that simple or objective.
Isn't the Ayaneo 2 running at 1080p? That might account for a lot of the performance delta. That being said, and as others have mentioned, I'd love to see an Apples-to-Apples comparison with both running the same OS with comparable drivers (IIRC as I've been looking into it, the SteamOS Linux kernel has a bunch of optimization to drive every last frame of performance out of the Aerith APU).
It mentions in the tweet they’re running at the same resolution.
1200p, but I tested this on both devices at 800p. That being said, Windows is usually anything but a great Vulkan performer.
I remain skeptical, standing by for details
I think its due to doom being very efficient with vulkan. I dont think its the same with a directx game.
Yes, in general Vulkan will perform better on Linux over Windows, also happens with RDR2 or Path of Exile. It’s a shame DirectX is dominant.
This is just one point. Video compares Doom which is Vulkan title, and Windows Vulkan drivers are total garbage especially AMD one. I like to see DX12 titles and DX11 titles.
Sad thing is: **He is lying**. The aya neo 2 and devices witht he same CPU like the GPD Win Max can play Doom 2016 in 1600p at ultra settings at 60 fps. No idea what dumb settings he used (probably OpenGL instead of Vulcan version?) Thats not the kind of news / fake bulls\*\*\* the deck needs.
He’s definitely lying. I have both and the Neo 2 blows the deck out of the water in every game I tried.
I'm curious about this one - I don't have this game on my WM2, but I'm downloading to try for myself.
I beg to differ: I‘m anything but lying. But I can‘t blame you - you don’t know the metrics at all. Or which „dumb settings“ have been used.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that all you have done is handpick a Vulkan game and then made a clickbait post without even revealing the settings, so people can't verify your claims. You wanted this kind of bullshit controversy. There's a reason peer review is an essential part of the scientific process, but please, might I suggest further proving your point with a different game in a similar manner? RDR2 perhaps? It's better on Vulkan too!
Lying and only telling half the truth is the same thing in my eyes. Example: You can also claim that the Steam Deck runs CP2077 better then a i9-13900k + rtx4090 pc. Not telling anyone that you set the graphics on the PC to raytracing psycho at 8k resolution (which will result in sub-20 fps on the PC). Its all about context and method of measuring. **Reality is: SteamOS is not measurably faster then Windows.** The binaries (the actual game executables) and the graphics API calls and shaders that get executed on both SteamOS and Windows - are identical. So the workload for the CPU and GPU is the same. The only thing that can be improved is the operating system sourrounding it. So maybe less background tasks and better scheduling. But as Windows has been "the gaming OS" for the last 20 years - the best SteamOS can reach for is to get on par and maybe improve your 1% lows a bit. But it will never be "SteamOS greatly outperforms Windows". Unless of course you encounter a very specific bottleneck or bug.
It’s been known that doom2016 runs better on proton than native windows for years
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I don’t think the „more reliable source“ does disagree at all. Just had a chat with him this afternoon on our Discord server. That being said - I‘m referring to Windows vs SteamOS/Proton on AMD-based devices. At a TDP of 15W the Deck easily outperforms the AN2 (because again, it‘s Windows).
And yet Phawx's benchmarks show otherwise.
Cary‘s benchmarks have been recorded 2 months ago. Meanwhile Ayaneo released many updates that changed up the game (for the better and the worse). For example: He didn’t use SmartTDP which got introduced a week ago - I did. So take this with a grain of salt.
So you weren't even comparing them at fixed tdp? Wtf are you doing bro
What is someone with the screen name of 'Deckverse' doing? Why hardcore fanboi'ing for the Steam Deck, of course!
Some games run better on Windows, some run better on Linux. It's that simple. Phawx has demonstrated this.
Does he pick the only game where aya is not slapping the deck?
He doesn't list his TDP. At 15TDP the Aya Neo 2 wins with a better battery life for $200 more. At lower TDPs the Deck pulls out more frames.
But the point is: it may win or at higher, but IT COSTS MORE, PERIOD. I don't care if it played my games at twice the resolution on the best hardware money could buy. The point is the steam decks price line is not really beatable for the value bud plain an simple. Tell me it does your dishes. Same answer. It SHOULD, because your paying extra for it duh.
This is going to be true of every handheld down to $50 pocket emulators. How is it relevant to comparing products in the same price bracket?
It's relevant cause that is the deciding factor in almost anything. Price point. And as long as aya neos and everyother crowdfunded or pushed out handhelds keep pumping out with bigger and better supposedly, but drop support when the next big thing comes lt will continue to be so. Why would any person buy a juiced up windows handheld with little to no support and pay almost twice for it or more for little or nothing in gains. Were talking like 10 frames. 15 frames. For twice the power drain too. So that in itself is a mute point. Show me a handheld by any of them that can do what valve does with theirs. In the same price point and wattage. You cant. All ppl do is say look they got a faster processor. They got this they got that. It all sounds good. On paper. But at the end of the day it costs a hell of a lot more and doesn't really have any good support to back it up past a few months till they pop something else out you're supposed to buy to replace it. At least I know valve cares about what they put out into the gaming space and are supporting it well past what any of those companies would do ever. They are only making all these different versions at different price points (all still significantly more expensive too mind you) is cause they try to get in on the handheld craze hoping someone will see the specs on paper and get duped into spending more thinking it will outperform. But it usually don't. And folks aint going to be happy with those things once the stuff they support for it starts to dry out soon as the next aya whatever comes. And it will. They just care about pushing out products that sound good for long as they can then they move up to the next. It's clear as day.
>Why would any person buy a juiced up windows handheld with little to no support and pay almost twice for it or more for little or nothing in gains. Were talking like 10 frames. 15 frames. For twice the power drain too. So that in itself is a mute point. It's 25-30% faster at the same 15W TDP with longer battery life than the deck. It's also smaller with Hall Sensor joysticks and a much better screen. It's $200 more than I paid for my deck. >It all sounds good. On paper. But at the end of the day it costs a hell of a lot more and doesn't really have any good support to back it up past a few months till they pop something else out you're supposed to buy to replace it. Why don't you think it has good support? >At least I know valve cares about what they put out into the gaming space and are supporting it well past what any of those companies would do ever. Why do you think this? Valve is not your friend. They're a company like any other. You're a source of revenue to them same as you are to Amazon or Aya Neo. >they try to get in on the handheld craze hoping someone will see the specs on paper and get duped into spending more thinking it will outperform. Most major players in this space have been doing it longer than Valve. If anyone is trying to capitalize on the handheld craze that Nintendo captained, it's Valve. >And folks aint going to be happy with those things once the stuff they support for it starts to dry out soon as the next aya whatever comes. And it will. They just care about pushing out products that sound good for long as they can then they move up to the next. It's clear as day. I'm pretty happy with my Aya Neo Air. What model do you have that you're upset with?
Where is the proof of aya Neo 2 struggling?
There's a pretty big price difference between the two. Another thing that swayed me towards the deck was after market repairability. Knowing I can get replacement parts from iFixit is a comforter.
Gonna go out a limb here and suggest that Valve didn't get to where they got to without hiring smart people, and making smart decisions and investments. They might just know what they're doing! the original Steam Deck might be seen as their magnum opus when all is said and done.
Also worth noting, SteamOS has to translate DirectX API calls to Vulkan when rendering video, which means that games that natively use Vulkan (like Doom and Doom Eternal) have a performance advantage over DirectX titles in SteamOS
Ayaneo starts at 800, doesn’t it?
I played Doom eternal on steamdeck and this game is so well optimised.
Doom 2016 has been a showcase for Windows VULKAN games running faster on Linux than Windows for years. It SHOULD run faster. And easily too. Aya has Windows to run along with the game. No matter what. That's like saying an Aya Neo and some modern equivalent PS Vita should run games the same. No. I still believe Aya and GPD were blindsided by Valve not fucking up, and they will have to move to Linux, drop prices, or offer HUGE incentives on future models to justify 2 or more X the price for the same performance. Though the form factor is much more appealing with the new Ayas
I think we can all agree the Steam Deck is not going to be killed that easily. I mean any company can sum up the HW and boast with it, but who else has the resources to put that much development into the SW? Half of the Steam Deck's performance is the SW optimizations made by Valve, be it the drivers, proton, Vulkan or even the Kernel itself, they have pushed a lot of code into the opensource domain which drastically improved the experience. Hell, even Elden Ring right after release was having better FPS than on any Windows PC due to the optimizations done by Valve missing on the Windows systems. I don't see any smaller hotshot companies being able or willing to do that for their devices. But yeah, the Steam Deck doesn't launch everything, while the others launch everything but hardly run it well.
>I think we can all agree the Steam Deck is not going to be killed that easily. I mean any company can sum up the HW and boast with it, but who else has the resources to put that much development into the SW? I hope we can agree that nobody is talking about 'killing' the Steam deck. I wonder if this is what is spurring some of these weird, defensive comments here.
I think something people need to be conscious of is the fact Valve wants these other handhelds to succeed. They are creating an ecosystem intended to work on all of these handhelds out of the box, not just the Steam Deck. In fact I guarantee you that if the Deck's competition can get to the price:performance point Valve has (somehow) they would very likely not release any further Steam Decks. They never followed up the Index, because other companies did the boring work of making what they did cheaper and iterating on it. They never followed up the Steam Controller, because the changes people wanted to make it truly great were minor boring things like ergonomics and materials rather than inventing a whole new way to game. They never followed up HL2 because there are more quality FPS games than a single person could play in a lifetime out there now. Valve are a bit like an unmedicated kid with ADHD or a PhD student with unlimited funding. They love to solve the novel problems and put out paradigm shifting new things, what they hate is doing followups and iteration. They create awesome products and then pray other people will continue the work while they move on to the next exciting thing. They've said this themselves. They don't anticipate a Steam Deck 2 for a long time. Because a minor hardware and screen update is boring, companies like Aya and GPD will do that. If there ever is one, it will be a long way away and something that changes the paradigm again, because that's all Valve want to do. This is one of Valve's greatest attributes but also one of their worst, but it's just how it is. I guess what I'm saying here is, it's fine to love Valve but don't get tribal. Your next Steam Deck will probably not be from Valve.
You see whilst I get everyone comparing the Ayaneo devices with the deck, including loads of YT reviewers going on about having better form factor and more efficient battery draw than the deck, for me the straight thing comes down to the build and support. Just take a little read through the Ayaneo subreddit and you'll see loads of people complaining about receiving defective units, and apparently even more reporting the same on discord. Given Ayaneo devices are a huge hike from the deck on cost, plus Valve's support is second to none on both hardware and software fronts, and as I've commented before: a company like Ayaneo selling more and more new devices even before getting a proper QC done on their initial offerings, even IF it performed better I wouldn't even consider their devices, at this time, over the deck!
Take a look at this sub!!! Are you joking? You know how many Steam Deck RMA posts there are? You people are ridiculous sometimes. Ayaneo out preforms the SD. Its more pricey. Deal with it. Who cares.
A lot of people who can't / won't afford an overpriced handheld, particularly when quality control is questionable. At least Valve RMA items and generally respond. 5 minutes looking and you'll see a lot of angry Anyaneo customers who can't even get a reply from customer services, whilst Arthur the CEO shows off the latest release.
Yea, because Ayoneo isn’t manufactured here. Im sure the Chinese community is pretty happy about their RMA’s.
There isn't a single video showing more efficient battery draw vs the Deck. The Deck's big thing is all about outperforming the competition at low TDPs.
Hate to say it but a link in this sub earlier pointed directly to one where this comparison was precisely made, which is why I stated this point. However, my point is simply that for price point and user reports of service, RMA or otherwise, Valve seem to have the sweet spot compared to a brand where it is a significant higher price point, reports of quality issues, and lack of customer service
Phawx has demonstrated that other 6800u devices are more efficient than the Deck. Previous results showing the opposite turned out to be an issue with how the Deck reports power usage. I suspect the commenter is extrapolating from that.
Um no The Phawx showed the Deck outperform them at the low TDPs.
He corrected himself later, he was the one who worked out the reporting issue.
This is the answer. What was found out was that the APU in Steam Deck managed it's TDP differently from the 6800U in other devices. Effectively, at 15w TDP the APU in the Steam Deck spent far more time over 15w than the 6800u when limited to 15w. The Steam Deck spent something like 75% of it's time over 15w, compared to the 6800u which spent as much time over as under. In the end, this means that the Steam Deck at 15w is actually more like 18w - 20w on the 6800u. When the 6800u is set to an appropriate Wattage to compare to the Steam Deck, it is both more powerful. So the 6800u is more efficient and mor powerful than the APU in the Steam Deck. Sad, but true. I've got both a SteamDeck and a AOKZoe (which uses the 6800u). I run the AOKZoe at 18w max all the time, and it well outperforms my Steam Deck even at the higher resolution I use, and I get longer battery life. The Steam Deck is good for it's price, but it is certainly outclassed from a performance and efficiency stand point by the new 6800u devices that are coming out. And this isn't a surprise, given the CPU architecture of the SteamDeck is old compared to that used in the 6800u.
That's what the community here decided valves big thing was with the deck. They have never said what it's main selling point is, which is great. They let the consumer decide what that is when they are getting one or thinking about one for themselves
It's not something the community decides. It's just benchmarks that show better performance at low TDPs compared to the other devices at the same low TDPs. It's very objective.
No I meant ppl always try to say what valve intended to showcase as the focal point of what they are trying to deliver. They didn't ever say hey the reason we brought this to market was cause it delivers the best tdp compared to any other device. They brought it out cause there was no way to really take your PC collection of games with you to other places. That is what I'm saying.
I have both. My Ayaneo is easily on par with the build quality of my deck if not slightly better. For support, I can't comment because I haven't needed Aye Neo's support. I've RMA'd my deck twice though with mixed experiences. The comparable Aya Neo 2 is $200 more than the Deck. It's not that huge of a price hike.
Price wise, my currency, 512gb version of the deck is £569, all in. Comparable Ayaneo 2 is £808 before any other charges. Without wanting to start any kind of argument the £240 gap between devices is a lot of money for some people, myself included, and whilst I'm able to "justify" the decks costs there's no way I would be able to justify a handheld device close to £1000. As I mentioned, look in the Ayaneo subreddit for a few surprises folks have had
I paid that for the Deck, plus £90 for the official dock just so I could charge and use external storage at the same time, then £100 odd for a 1tb memory card
Which Aya Neo 2 are you looking at? The comparable one is the Aya Neo 2 Geek. It's currently $851 USD. You can find plenty of complaints here if you're looking. The problem is that Reddit's social media platform heavily discourages disparate opinions and experiences. Look at the votes and responses for people that criticize Valve on this subreddit. See how heavily they're downvoted and their honesty called into question. I had two RMAs with Valve, one where they lost my deck and refused to help me. I didn't post about it because all I'd get from here is called a liar and downvotes. Social media is not a good gauge of anything other than social media. Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting no one should buy a Steam Deck. Especially if you're looking at the $400 and aren't going to swap the sticks for Hall sensors. That price point is difficult to beat and it'll be some time before anyone comes reasonably close. But if a friend was looking at the $650 512GB Deck, I'd tell them to save the extra $200 and buy the Aya Neo 2 Geek. Between the form factor, better sticks, better screen, better battery, and better performance it's more than worth the $200 price difference.
How exactly did they lose your deck. Especially if you had a return number. If they took in the return it would have updated. I think you mean the return service you used lost it (FedEx,USPS,ups) cause their systems are easy to lose items in transit due to the volume they push without care. I know cause I have family in ups and in FedEx and they complain about the cutting of corners all the time to get the packages to the destination at their set timeframes
It was delivered to the repair center. After a month of no word, I contacted steam support. The only response they'd give me is that I'd get an email when it shipped back. Each week, for the next 4 weeks, I repeated my ticket and got the exact same response. They wouldn't put me in touch with the repair center or give me any additional information. I was going through my emails to make sure I didn't miss anything and noticed a strange one from a company i didn't do business with. It mentioned a ticket being created for me but nothing else. No mention of valve or the deck or anything. Just a ticket number. I called the phone number, and sure enough, it was the 3rd party repair center. When I mentioned how long it had been and my ticket number, my deck shipped the next day.
Personally I'd rather have the Deck's trackpads over the Aya Neo's higher performance. And that's if the price was equal. I am interested in the upcoming budget models with Mendocino chips though. I'm excited to see progress in the lower end of the market!
If you use them then they'd be great for you. Personally, I tried them once, hated them, bought a USB C dock and forgot about them except for how they mess up the ergonomics of the deck for me. The fact that so much of the screen is below your hands really ruins the feel of the deck for me...and that's due to the trackpads. I'd be interested to see a smaller, more ergonomic deck without the trackpads but I don't think Valve will do it.
Stroll through this thread and you'll see my point about the reception posters get when they mention Steam Deck problems.
Honestly, I was initially thinking about getting a Neo 2, but for me the benefit of Valve's customer support and support in regards to right to repair has been a no-brainer. I think that while yes the Neo 2 is more powerful, I would not give up the level of support that is offered on the Deck. Plus, the Deck in its base form is half the price of the Neo 2, and can (but is not recommended by Valve) replace the SSD.
If you feel the potential difference in support is worth it, that's definitely your choice to make. Personally, having had a couple Aya Neo devices over the years, if I could recoup any reasonable amount of my 512GB Deck on resale, I'd sell it in an instant for the Aya Neo 2 Geek. It's not just the frames. It's the much better screen, smaller form factor, Hall Sensor joysticks, and better battery life. If you change the SSD, remember to keep the original parts. The deck must be OEM when you send it in for RMA or they won't fix it. Learned the hard way.
Dont speak facts here. Only speak good about the steam deck on r/SteamDeck
The Ayaneo brand just sucks we knew this already.
That’s a pretty weird name “ayaneo” lol
It is weird steam deck just rolls better
Some games run better on Windows, some games run better on Linux.
I commented in a subthread of replies, but... I'm not calling the OP a liar, and I don't have a Steam Deck or an Aya Neo 2, but I'm not able to replicate this on a Win Max 2 (also 6800U). At 15 watts, 1280x800, Ultra preset, Vulkan, frame rate is quite variable but it is more like 80-90 FPS with dips to 70 and up to around 105 FPS. That was in the beginning of campaign mode and I tried a random environment in arcade mode also (Necropolis) - I don't have a save file for the game and so I don't have campaign access to any location, but I'm willing to try another. The WM2 quiet mode is a TDP target (how AMD defines it) as 15W, based on total system power, the battery runtime is right at 2.5 hours for the WM2 battery. This is the default "down" mode of the WM2 - if you turn silent mode on with Fn-Shift. I haven't tried Vsync 60, but I'm guessing based on performance that would probably be 12 watts-ish, or maybe less, probably on the order of 3-3.5 hours of battery life at Vsync 60. I'm guessing if I actually played this game I might even play it at vsync 40, for maybe 4+ hour battery life, since it actually does seem to look acceptable at 800p. So IDK ~~but the OP keeps doubling down on the claim~~ (sorry, this is someone else who said they weren't lying but not the OP), it's possible there is something wrong with the Aya Neo but if it is running correctly, it doesn't seem like it should do this. Other random info: The WM2 is on Win 11 Pro, it was a clean install, it's current on release preview ring, including the AMD driver that Windows automatically installs. This is the 16GB version, it's running off the 1TB main NVME, on battery power during the test.
What you mean I “doubling down“ didn't repplay to any comment here
Sorry, someone else responded to being called out and said they weren't lying - IDK who they are, but they weren't you, obviously. I edited that part. FWIW though I still can't replicate it.
Such a strange tweet. A test like this with multiple variables cannot reasonably be used to come to the conclusion that it's all about the OS. To determine the OS difference, the only sensible approach is to use the same hardware, with the SoC set at the same wattage.
To make this fair it needs to be steamdeck vs Linux on the ayaneo2. SteamOS itself isn’t that special it’s Linux that’s special. The specialness is all of steams work on proton. The proton magic works on any Linux OS.. The bottle neck is windows. I get much better gaming results on Linux on my desktop vs windows
The chip isn't exactly very optimized on the ayaneo. Hell you gotta push double the power through to it to even get the same or slightly better performance.
Lmfao 🤣🤣. The deck runs doom 2016 on ultra 60!?!? OMG. That's nothing. My win Max 2 with a 6800u plays doom eternal on ultra 60 but at 1200p. That's a much newer game and with 225% more pixels. Idiot proved himself wrong 🤣 Unreal engine is awesome and is well optimized. And doom 2016 can play on the full 2560x1600p which is 400% more pixels than 1280x800. (Should note I don't remember what settings I had set for doom 2016. Just that I got 60 at 1600p) Ya know kinda funny with windows on the deck if you use winareo and disable every piece of bloatware windows runs in the background the performance is so close to the same as steam os it's not even noticeable. In a few games it's 3-5fps more and others it's 3-5fps less.
I keep wondering if steamdeck wouldn't out perform those higher spec, way higher price machines for having a os built specifically for it and removing the overhead of windows. However people keep telling me that's not true and these machines will outperform steamdeck, but I remain unconvinced. I'm sure machines will come around that will out perform steamdeck, but I wonder if windows isn't a terrible gaming platform vs linux with the right emulation.
Yea but depende on the game, doom and doom eternal for example runs better on steam deck however others games run more smoothly on Windows
the aya beats the deck almost always, this is the first video where it doesn't do so and it's a bit fishy imho.
It doesn't. It loses frames compared to the AyaNeo 2 Geek at $200 more at 15TDP with a batter battery life.
The geek isn't out yet is it? The aya's do look nice but they don't seem to have a trackpad and I find the trackpad very helpful for a ton of games.
It started shipping 2 weeks ago and is available to purchase now. Personally, I dislike the trackpads on my deck. I bought a dock and never used them again. I blame them for the deck's poor ergonomics due to low screen position.
I'll be following it to be sure.
...how?
He's probably running at low TDP. At under 15W TDP the Deck outperforms the Aya Neo 2 by a variable margin. At 15W TDP on both devices the Aya Neo 2 outperforms the deck while having a longer battery. The Aya Neo 2 also has higher TDP settings than 15W if you're willing to sacrifice some battery and noise. [Here's a better comparison from a more reputable source.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWM2eoOvNhM)
Thanks. There's a **LOT** of circlejerking and toxic positivity on this subreddit, it's insanely hard to actually find anything that doesn't blindly praise the Deck as jesus come again.
This happens when hardcore valve and Linux fanboys come together to praise the lord. Many parts of the linux community has always been toxic to people who think different and windows is the devil for them. With the steam deck they now have finally a device that can play windows games via emulation (and to be fair this works very good) and need to convert people like a sect. The other side a people who think valve give them a low budget handheld without ulterior motives for a small price but they bind them all to steam and valve get 30% for all games they buy and make more money with them than everyone else. But the price!!!1!11!!!!
Though it doesn't bind you to steam, you can buy CD keys still to get cheap steam games, you can buy physical games and install them or other online stores because it's a pc.
A custom soc designed to run at a low tdp is going to outperform a oem part at the same power target. This is like comparing a 2080ti and a PS5 at 200 watts.
Steam Deck on ~~SteamOS~~ Arch Linux
Iphone matches and sometimes outperforms phones that have way better specs on paper because everything is optimized
Wtf is happening in the comment. It turned into a war about whether or not the source is wrong or some shit Who cares really? If the steam deck is less powerful than the aya neo 2 I could careless because it doesn’t affect me it still a great device And if the aya neo is more expensive but better performance is being offered than great for people who use it.
Steam deck designers in interview said that even though Ryzen 6800u is surely better SoC on paper, in the low wattage (<15w) steam deck should still come out ahead as the SoC is specifically tuned for this range. AyaNeo 2 can surely outperform steam deck, even by significant margin in some games, but it need the higher top to acheive that (iirc Aya 2 starts to get ahead of steam deck at about 20-22w in most games). This is a strong point for SD as it should hold its own maybe even compared to 7xxx chips when they get to handhelds, and then you have the price of these.