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Steam Deck |OT| Nintendo Switch 2

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
I can't wait until the official dock comes out. I want to use my Deck in the living room for indie games and less demanding AA and AAA games using FSR to my 4K display, and stream from my gaming PC for all the new hotness games. I thought about using my friend's 3D printer to craft one of the many cool designs floating around on the internet, but thought nah, I'd rather have something official with a warranty I could just swap out if something goes wrong.
 
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got my spot in line, placed my order. had an anticipated arrival date of 07/02 and i go on vacation tomorrow - perfect!

shipping delayed to 07/06, when I'm already gone. my disappointment is immeasurable
 

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
got my spot in line, placed my order. had an anticipated arrival date of 07/02 and i go on vacation tomorrow - perfect!

shipping delayed to 07/06, when I'm already gone. my disappointment is immeasurable

Maybe you can pay a neighborhood kid $20 to sit on your porch that day and wait for it to arrive.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Decided to give Hatsune Mike Project DIVA Mega Mix a try


Plays great on the Steam Deck, but I had to go into the controller config and swap the A -> B buttons and also X -> Y so that the button prompts lined up with what I was expecting on the Steam Deck. Only the occasional "skip" where the game freezes up for like half a second, which is murder since this is a rhythm game that's heavily focused on combos. Wish it didn't have the dreaded Denuvo, I'm sure that's not helping with the Steam Deck specifically.

Otherwise, fun game.
 

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
Great device, sold mine, I think I'll wait till they have more games running optimized and hopefully eventually a lower price. Really enjoyed it but in the end kept saying to myself, do I really need this portable? I can play superior versions on my computer or consoles of all of it, and I don't travel much.
Still highly recommended for anyone playing portable.
 

CrustyBritches

Gold Member
I've been wanting to add more storage than the 512GB SDD+256GB microSD setup I have, but 1TB 2230 drives run about $165 and 1TB microSD drives run about $130. So using all stuff I had on hand, plus $3 command picture hanging strips I ghetto-rigged an external 1TB SSD to the back of the Deck to use with Game Pass on Windows 10. Surprisingly, it works pretty good.:messenger_grinning_sweat:

CEgk5KR.jpg

s0fvX9m.jpg

T8HVXUO.jpg


They sell little USB-C to USB-C both right-angle cables for $10-15 that would be less prominent than having a hoop sticking up like this. Might pick one up in the future.

31nJ8KmHxhS.jpg
 
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CrustyBritches

Gold Member
You can use the DLSS to FSR 2 mod on Steam Deck. What that basically means is that eventually the majority of DLSS games will be able to run with FSR 2 substituted instead. I tested it in Guardians of the Galaxy on Windows 10. There are a few caveats. Since this is a pretty graphically heavy game for the Deck there's some areas you can't hit 30fps no matter what. Also, FSR 2 'Ultra Performance' can't be used due to glitches from masking info. That said, it works fine as a proof-of-concept for DLSS to FSR 2 on Deck. Good thing is that it works for pretty much any GPU, not just the Deck.

Example:
skeXeII.jpg

In order to hit the same frame rate as FSR 2 'Balanced', you need to drop to 65% resolution scale. 'Balanced' looks much better, in some ways such as antialiasing it looks better than Native, while offering a 24% increase in frame rate in this area.

Original Screenshots:

Cool shit. Funny that DLSS got ganked by FSR 2 like that.

*edit* After looking at these screens again, it almost looks like RT reflections were enabled in the FSR 2 screen. At very least there's definitely higher quality reflections happening. All screens have Lowest settings, so it's weird it happened like that. You can especially notice it to the left of Star Lord beneath the security camera, and also on the ceiling.
 
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j0hnnix

Member
FedEx bamboozled me.. it was showing today and at 4pm est it changed to Thurs. The only thing I got is my sexy Aaron Greenberg avatar today. What a let down.

Amazon did come through with my power bank and 512 sd card though.
 
Anyone been getting crashes on Cyberpunk recently? I get a few minutes in and the game freezes every single time. I’ve tried changing the proton layer used but no change 🤬
 
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j0hnnix

Member
Anyone else with a 512 GB model, the silent fan, playing Metal Gear Solid V on default settings - does your Deck run really hot? I haven't seen anyone else with this complaint on Reddit. Wondering if I should get ahead of it and order a new fan now.



Dope, but I am going to play that one on PS5.
I haven't played MGSV specifically but have noticed it gets hot charging and playing which I did once in bed, but outside that it's warm to the touch. Playing Arkham Knight, V Rising, New World, Dying Light 1.
 

Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
Anyone else with a 512 GB model, the silent fan, playing Metal Gear Solid V on default settings - does your Deck run really hot? I haven't seen anyone else with this complaint on Reddit. Wondering if I should get ahead of it and order a new fan now.
I have a loud fan and my Deck gets fairly warm when playing intensive games. I can't really tell if I have one of the super high pitched ones. It sounds a bit high pitched to me, but nowhere near as bad as I've seen on jshackles' vid he shared earlier.
 

OmegaSupreme

advanced basic bitch
I've hardly ever heard my fan. Here and there but not nearly enough to be bothersome. I only here it when I've got the game volume real low
 

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
I have a loud fan and my Deck gets fairly warm when playing intensive games. I can't really tell if I have one of the super high pitched ones. It sounds a bit high pitched to me, but nowhere near as bad as I've seen on jshackles' vid he shared earlier.

I didn't want to have to sacrifice visuals but I reduced the refresh rate to 40Hz and enabled FSR, and after a few moments it looks just as good, still looks smooth, runs cool as a cucumber, and the estimated battery life went from 2h30m to 3h20m. So crisis averted.

Sometimes in my haste I forget how customizable this thing is out of the box.
 

Pejo

Member
So I just got my Deck, absolutely awesome. Love it so far.

Quick question - is there a way to play a game local multiplayer on my own account, where one person is on PC and the other on the Deck? I've tried remote play, remote play together, etc. But no luck so far.

Essentially, I want to play Sonic All Stars Racing transformed with my gf, where she uses the Deck and I use my PC. All from my own account.

Is this possible?
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Essentially, I want to play Sonic All Stars Racing transformed with my gf, where she uses the Deck and I use my PC. All from my own account.

Is this possible?
Not that I'm aware of, sadly.
 
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Pejo

Member
Fuck i just got my email for the 512GB, monies a bit tight this month. Do i really need this? Hmmmmmmmmmm.
After having it in my hands, I absolutely love it. Can't recommend it enough. It's taken everything I've thrown at it with zero issues. i got the 512 as well.

There was a bit of fuckery loading AC: Black Flag, but that was entirely because of Ubisoft nosing in with their forced UPlay login bullshit.

I love this hardware so much already. MH Rise and Elden Ring play like a dream right out of the box with default settings, and look great on the small screen.

I don't think I'm even going to install Windows, which was a given up until receiving it today.
Not that I'm aware of, sadly.
Yea I found a few articles and topics that said you just can't do it. Shame, that would have been amazing for local Multiplayer. It's easy to see how it could be abused though. If they would add a LAN mode, that would have been enough, but it's probably a nightmare to try to implement for every game with multiplayer.
 

clarky

Gold Member
Just doing my due diligence here, any problems running MCC on this baby? Could be a deal breaker, I see a user above has it running in one of his photo's but that checkmydeck thingy says its a no-no?

Edit: I see you need to dual boot.

Although to be honest who am I kidding here I have zero self control when it come to shit like this.

Looks like a decent chuck of my library runs:

52% PLAYABLE+
VERIFIED: 58 games (26.01%)
PLAYABLE: 57 games (25.56%)
UNSUPPORTED: 49 games (21.97%)
UNKNOWN: 59 games (26.46%)
 
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Ozriel

M$FT
I've been wanting to add more storage than the 512GB SDD+256GB microSD setup I have, but 1TB 2230 drives run about $165 and 1TB microSD drives run about $130. So using all stuff I had on hand, plus $3 command picture hanging strips I ghetto-rigged an external 1TB SSD to the back of the Deck to use with Game Pass on Windows 10. Surprisingly, it works pretty good.:messenger_grinning_sweat:

CEgk5KR.jpg

s0fvX9m.jpg

T8HVXUO.jpg


They sell little USB-C to USB-C both right-angle cables for $10-15 that would be less prominent than having a hoop sticking up like this. Might pick one up in the future.

31nJ8KmHxhS.jpg

What dual boot guide did you use?
 

Pejo

Member
So I installed and played a smattering of different games so far. Rock solid performance, no crashes, no issues outside of Uplay. I did manage to get everything working on that end though, and Black Flag is very much the best AC game as it's always been. It's funny, playing on a smaller screen makes it feel very much like a different experience. Still, the IQ is clean, and it looks surprisingly good for a 9 year old game.

Elden ring plays well, looks clean. Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed is great. Bioshock (the OG) also looks and plays great. I've put in a few hours now, and my hands feel very comfortable holding the device, no fatigue. The sticks originally felt a little high on the device for my personal tastes, but you get used to it pretty quickly. I'm still not used to reaching for the dpad to the left instead of down/right of the left sick though. That's going to take some time to get used to.

Is there any game that makes use of the two touchpads? Kind of a headscratcher to use up so much real estate for things that will never be used.

That and the process to get the on-screen keyboard to pop up are my only two complaints. I wish it was a bit more like Android OS in that the keyboard automatically pops up when you click on a type-friendly text field.

Still, this is my favorite purchase since my OLED TV. I can see myself putting a lot of time in with this thing, particularly on older games for a replay and for smaller games that I never even installed on my main gaming rig.

*edit*

Battery life seems to be not so great too. But, knowing what I'm playing on such a tiny device, I can hardly fault that too much. Still, it's going to limit its usability while "portable" and not plugged in. Also, as expected, it charges really slowly on most USB-C chargers that aren't the OEM one. I've tried 3 different chargers now just to see the difference.
 
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BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
So I installed and played a smattering of different games so far. Rock solid performance, no crashes, no issues outside of Uplay. I did manage to get everything working on that end though, and Black Flag is very much the best AC game as it's always been. It's funny, playing on a smaller screen makes it feel very much like a different experience. Still, the IQ is clean, and it looks surprisingly good for a 9 year old game.

Elden ring plays well, looks clean. Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed is great. Bioshock (the OG) also looks and plays great. I've put in a few hours now, and my hands feel very comfortable holding the device, no fatigue. The sticks originally felt a little high on the device for my personal tastes, but you get used to it pretty quickly. I'm still not used to reaching for the dpad to the left instead of down/right of the left sick though. That's going to take some time to get used to.

Is there any game that makes use of the two touchpads? Kind of a headscratcher to use up so much real estate for things that will never be used.

That and the process to get the on-screen keyboard to pop up are my only two complaints. I wish it was a bit more like Android OS in that the keyboard automatically pops up when you click on a type-friendly text field.

Still, this is my favorite purchase since my OLED TV. I can see myself putting a lot of time in with this thing, particularly on older games for a replay and for smaller games that I never even installed on my main gaming rig.

*edit*

Battery life seems to be not so great too. But, knowing what I'm playing on such a tiny device, I can hardly fault that too much. Still, it's going to limit its usability while "portable" and not plugged in. Also, as expected, it charges really slowly on most USB-C chargers that aren't the OEM one. I've tried 3 different chargers now just to see the difference.

Since you can customize the controls completely per game, and adjust the sensitivity of each component, I know some people who prefer to play FPS games using the trackpad to aim. I use both trackpads at times when playing Civ 6.

As for battery life: try using 40Hz refresh rate with framerate also capped at 40, and if the game isn't demanding try manually adjusting the GPU clock down and enabling FSR to help make up the difference. These things can add a good 30 - 60 min of battery life depending upon the game. All of these options are found in the performance menu (hamburger / three dots button, then browse to the battery icon). Edit: Oh, and you can try variable rate shading too, or even downclocking the CPU but I wouldn't recommend that. The CPU is plenty powerful but every time I tried reducing the CPU it had terrible stuttering effects on games - might be a bug with the firmware or Steam OS
 
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rofif

Banned
So anyone had further comparison of 256 to 512gb screen?
I ordered 256gb few months ago because I loathe matte screens. Harder to clean and diffuse light into bigger blobs
 

Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
So anyone had further comparison of 256 to 512gb screen?
I ordered 256gb few months ago because I loathe matte screens. Harder to clean and diffuse light into bigger blobs
I saw a few reviews that say the difference is small but I honestly can't remember which. Maybe Linus Tech Tips or one of their sister channels?
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
So today I had to reformat my Steam Deck, not sure what happened. I could boot into Windows just fine, but when I tried to load SteamOS it just got stuck in this weird loop where it said it needed a critical update to start, but then the update would fail, and I'd get stuck in a loop.

I barely ever use Windows on this (it was a fun curiosity) so I just reformatted it completely and re-installed SteamOS. Whole process took about an hour or so.

Back to pure SteamOS for now...
 

Pejo

Member
Man it feels like they're leaving a huge feature out with the Deck. Now that the majority of Deck owners will also have a gaming PC in addition to their deck in the same house, it'd be so convenient to be able to do local/LAN multiplayer with Steamworks or something. As it is now, you can't even do remote play together between your Deck and your gaming PC because as soon as you launch a game on one device, it locks the other one out from even running a game. Streaming works, but there' no way to do multiplayer because the streaming device 'takes over' the other one. They could even do a combination of streaming + remote play together and it'd work, most likely.

It just feels like something that should just work, yet it's completely absent.

I do appreciate that now I can play a game on my PC until my gf wants to watch her shows, then I can just pick up the Deck and continue thanks to cloud sync for game saves.
 

CrustyBritches

Gold Member
iFixit just sent out a notification that the replacement fans are in stock.

Email said
You asked to be notified when we received more stock of Steam Deck Fan.

We currently have 274 in stock.

Get your Steam Deck Fan now.

Thank you for choosing iFixit. If you have further questions, just reply to this message and we'll get back to you!

We sent this notification to 629 other customers.
 

Thaedolus

Member
I’ve been playing Aperture Desk job at my…desk job, absolutely love Valve’s goofy writing and now I just want to play Portal 2 again. God I wish their software output was more frequent/consistent. I played Half-Life 2 for a bit last night as well as Dead Space and Elden Ring, I can’t believe how much power this thing has. I haven’t had time to try any of my docks to output to a TV yet but it feels super comfortable to play on its own screen. The width of your hands being so far apart took a minute to get used to but then I was comfortable as hell.

No signs of buyer’s remorse from me yet. I got a big window with tons of natural light in my office and the anti glare screen seems to be a good choice. Way easier to see vs say my iPhone
 

Filben

Member
So I just got my Deck, absolutely awesome. Love it so far.

Quick question - is there a way to play a game local multiplayer on my own account, where one person is on PC and the other on the Deck? I've tried remote play, remote play together, etc. But no luck so far.

Essentially, I want to play Sonic All Stars Racing transformed with my gf, where she uses the Deck and I use my PC. All from my own account.

Is this possible?
If the game allows remote play together she only needs an account, doesn't need to own the game, if I understood the feature correctly (never used it). So device 1 is your account, starts the game, invites her with her account on device 2.
 
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jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
If the game allows remote play together she only needs an account, doesn't need to own the game, if I understood the feature correctly (never used it). So device 1 is your account, starts the game, invites her with her account on device 2.
The problem with this scenario is that the game will then run in split screen mode on both devices. It sounded like Pejo Pejo wanted the game to be full screen on both the TV and the Steam Deck, similar to online multiplayer. Not an entirely unreasonable expectation I would think.
 

Pejo

Member
If the game allows remote play together she only needs an account, doesn't need to own the game, if I understood the feature correctly (never used it). So device 1 is your account, starts the game, invites her with her account on device 2.
Yea this would work in theory but then I'd have to make her a new account and sign her in/out of either my PC or the Deck. Not sure how the Deck handles multiple profiles. I guess I could give this a try, but...

The problem with this scenario is that the game will then run in split screen mode on both devices.
This is the problem. On my TV, it's no big deal since it's got plenty of real estate, but I dunno about running a streamed split screen game on Deck's screen.

The more I think about it, the more it's likely to be a pain to implement. Since not every game uses P2P servers and matchmaking is usually handled remotely, devs would have to purposefully design a LAN mode, which is hardly worth the money to them I'd wager.

Then again, regular people built RPCN (PSN substitute for RPCS3 emulator), so it's not entirely off the table if people were motivated enough to do it.

Even just being able to be signed in and run games from multiple devices from the same IP would be enough. Then we could both run the game from my own account locally on each device. Wonder if pubs would him and haw about those 1000 lost sales from people living in dorms etc.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Anyone know how often they are sending out orders? I'm on the July through September list patiently waiting every day for my turn.
 
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