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[DF] Steam Deck vs Xbox Series S: Can Valve's Portable Match The Entry-Level Next-Gen Console?

Bullet Club

Member



If Xbox Series S represents the baseline for next generation console development, can Valve's Steam Deck keep up running the same games at the same settings (or similar!) albeit at reduced resolution? That's the conceit behind this fascinating video from Oliver Mackenzie, tackling a range of challenging games - as well as legacy titles.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Without watching the video: hell no.

I'm watching it, and you're right. Series S is basically running better in all the scenarios and they have to lower settings lower than Series S guesstimates to reach similar performances.

Surprisingly, Cyberpunk is running at PC High equivalent preset on Series S with a 60 FPS target. That's pretty good for the tiny box.

The only place Steamdeck pulls ahead is BC games where Series S is locked to One S settings.
 
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These comparisons are never revisted. I want them to go back and test those PS4 equal $400 PCs they built in 2013 and see how they run Spiderman later this year. Here is an example from Gamespot:


I don't even think those PCs would meet the minimum specs for Horizon, yet if you bought a PS4 in 2013 you could play the SEQUEL to Horizon.
 

Ev1L AuRoN

Member
I will say one thing about the Steam Deck: A bunch of games that run at 30 on the PS4, run at 60 with Ease on the Deck.
That is to be expected thanks to the CPU, but often they achieve that by lowering the IQ. It's not a perfect match.
540~720p60 on Steam Deck
VS
900~1080p30 on PS4.
 

jaysius

Banned
Silly comparison. A 399 handheld was never meant to toe to toe with a modern console. Still a great piece of tech. They have more powerful handheld PCs out there for 3 times the price of you want them.
Yea this is shit tier youtube content, like not even that Austin clown would come up with this trash.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
These comparisons are never revisted. I want them to go back and test those PS4 equal $400 PCs they built in 2013 and see how they run Spiderman later this year. Here is an example from Gamespot:

[/URL]

I don't even think those PCs would meet the minimum specs for Horizon, yet if you bought a PS4 in 2013 you could play the SEQUEL to Horizon.
If the hardware was more powerful then, it’ll still be more powerful today.

The advantage the PS4 has is that it’s a single machine, that Sony gets to focus solely on and push as far as it can go. If the PC had that same level of attention of pushing that hardware, it would absolutely run those games.

As powerful as PC gaming is, it’d be even more impressive if the games were designed to take advantage of every drop of power, like with consoles.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
Silly comparison. A 399 handheld was never meant to toe to toe with a modern console. Still a great piece of tech. They have more powerful handheld PCs out there for 3 times the price of you want them.
Maybe the point of benchmarks is to show the performance of both and not to try to magically make the weaker hardware perform better? Not everything is about war.
 
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Lysandros

Member
As powerful as PC gaming is, it’d be even more impressive if the games were designed to take advantage of every drop of power, like with consoles.
Is this some kind of sarcasm? In order to take advantage of 'every drop of power' of 'a' gaming PC (?) you would have to make it fixed spec/single SKU, in other words a console.
 
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DukeNukem00

Banned
These comparisons are never revisted. I want them to go back and test those PS4 equal $400 PCs they built in 2013 and see how they run Spiderman later this year. Here is an example from Gamespot:


I don't even think those PCs would meet the minimum specs for Horizon, yet if you bought a PS4 in 2013 you could play the SEQUEL to Horizon.


The problem with such ancient hardware is that those architectures are no longer supported. Plus the vram amount in 2013 was tiny, so you will get bottlenecked by that. But in the absence of those issues, yeah, you can absolutely still outperform a base xbox. Keep in mind that almost no game runs stable on a ps4 or xbone. Low res, low details and fucked up framerate in near every game that was launched in their lifetime.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Is this some kind of sarcasm? In order to take advantage of 'every drop of power' of 'a' gaming PC (?) you would have to make it fixed spec/single SKU, in other words a console.

Right, so that’s the advantage consoles have - and the reason an old PS3 from 2013 can still manage modern games.

The hardware itself didn’t magically get more powerful.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
why would they? they aren't even remotely comparable hardware wise, while the Series S uses the same hardware architecture
You don't need to be "comparable hardware wise" to compare shit. They're both hot portable gaming products.

Why compare PS5 constantly to a 3080ti super duper $5K edition? Not the same hardware vendors either.
 

01011001

Banned
You don't need to be "comparable hardware wise" to compare shit. They're both hot portable gaming products.

that was not the point of this comparison, the point was to see if the Deck is fit to stay afloat during this console gen. and you can do that by comparing it to the worst performing system of the generation

Why compare PS5 constantly to a 3080ti super duper $5K edition? Not the same hardware vendors either.

noone does that tho.
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
that was not the point of this comparison, the point was to see if the Deck is fit to stay afloat during this console gen. and you can do that by comparing it to the worst performing system of the generation



noone does that tho.
I understand the purpose, but include it in the mix.

As for the bolded, they always do that.
 

01011001

Banned
I'm not sure what it looks like now, but last year I did a look at laptops in the $500 range and about half of them were at or below the Switch in graphical power.

wtf? my 500€ laptop from about 5 years ago is on Switch level of GPU performance.

almost literally, I also was able to run Doom 2016 at ~480p40fps (I just wanted to try for the lulz and downloaded the demo)
 

SomeGit

Member
I'm watching it, and you're right. Series S is basically running better in all the scenarios and they have to lower settings lower than Series S guesstimates to reach similar performances.

Surprisingly, Cyberpunk is running at PC High equivalent preset on Series S with a 60 FPS target. That's pretty good for the tiny box.

The only place Steamdeck pulls ahead is BC games where Series S is locked to One S settings.


There's no 60FPS mode in Cyberpunk on the Series S. It's 30, still impressive.
 
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01011001

Banned
I understand the purpose, but include it in the mix.

As for the bolded, they always do that.

no, noone does that. fanboys interpret videos wrongly because they have to make everything into a system war, but no... noone compares a 3080ti to the PS5.

what happens is that digital foundry shows how the game can look completely maxed out (which needs a good GPU to showcase), and then often uses PS5 settings to find a more optimised set of settings to use on a mid range PC, because console settings are often designed to be a good compromise between fidelity and performance.

that is what happens, noone actually tries to compare any console to a high end PC
 
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Romulus

Member
Wait, are we comparing a handheld in which most games are not optimized to take advantage of versus highly optimized code running on a full blown console?
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
no, noone does that. fanboys interpret videos wrongly because they have to make everything into a system war, but no... noone compares a 3080ti to the PS5.

what happens is that digital foundry shows how the game can look completely maxed out, and then often uses PS5 settings to find a more optimised set of settings to use on a mid range PC, because console settings are often designed to be a good compromise between fidelity and performance.

that is what happens, noone actually tries to compare any console to a high end PC
Jean Claude Van Damme Ok GIF
 

FStubbs

Member
wtf? my 500€ laptop from about 5 years ago is on Switch level of GPU performance.

almost literally, I also was able to run Doom 2016 at ~480p40fps (I just wanted to try for the lulz and downloaded the demo)
Well you had better luck than what I saw last year online. What's the GPU in that laptop?
 

Soapbox Killer

Grand Nagus
It's not that crazy of a comparison. They both do solid job at punching above their weight class and both are extremely good values considering what you get for the price. This will be an overly extended generation and cross-gen wont end any time soon, if ever.
 

CrustyBritches

Gold Member
Can a Zen 2 4c/8t CPU, RDNA 2 8CU GPU, and 25W total system power consumption handheld match a Zen 2 8c/16t, RDNA 2 20CU GPU, with 80W total system power consumption console? Tune in to find out!
 
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Fredrik

Member
The things with Steam Deck is that you can change the settings to get better performance, on Series S (and every other console) you’re stuck with whatever performance the devs think you should be okay with. Also, smaller screen makes lower resolution less of a problem.
Conclusion: Steam Deck is awesome.
 

intbal

Member
2022 has been a really bad year for DF.
John no longer cares about anything made after 2001. There aren't enough new ray tracing developments to keep Alex interested. Too few games being released to require the services of Tom or the other rarely seen producers.
Richard basically just turned the channel over to Oliver. "Here ya go, son. Keep it alive until the holiday season!"
 

Romulus

Member
I'm not sure what it looks like now, but last year I did a look at laptops in the $500 range and about half of them were at or below the Switch in graphical power.


The Switch is terrible hardware, its just highly optimized. A $500 laptop now will get you an I5 11th gen with 16gb of RAM. The GPU will probably be in house, but those specs absolutely smoke the Switch and it's not even designed for gaming whatsoever.
 

Mahavastu

Member
These comparisons are never revisted. I want them to go back and test those PS4 equal $400 PCs they built in 2013 and see how they run Spiderman later this year. Here is an example from Gamespot:

[/URL]

I don't even think those PCs would meet the minimum specs for Horizon, yet if you bought a PS4 in 2013 you could play the SEQUEL to Horizon.
Hmm, Horizon Forbidden West looked pretty bad on the base PS4: there was the same flickering you had at the PS5 Performance Mode, just that you only had 1080p to begin with, so it looked even worse. I could not play it for a longer period.

I hope with the new patches they now use on the same PS4 the same new upscaling as they do performance mode on the PS5, which would really improve image quality. Since I currently do not have access to the PS4 I can not check myself.
 
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