I haven't watched this one yet, but my problem with his last comparison between the steam deck and the Z1X was the wattage selection. It's not really a contest at low wattage pixel graphics stuff, the SDs weaker APU is more than enough for these games and allow it to run at much lower wattage and thus have greater battery life. But at 15W, the SD is also going to compete very well against the Z1X in demanding AAA games because that's simply not enough wattage for the Z1X to really reach it's potential. This is partly the fault of ASUS/Lenovo for their default profiles but GN is also tech savvy enough that they should understand this. Any sort of modern open world game needs about 18W to push both the CPU and GPU hard enough to show the real performance potential of the Z1X
You’re talking about experts in the field of hardware testing. Its like you the plumber criticizing a aeronautical engineer on the finer points of computational fluid dynamics.
GN knows that, they mention that the Ally gives a lot better performance plugged to the wall (read: at 30W turbo mode), but they’re testing handheld mode and I agree with the assumption that 30W isn’t really handheld mode considering the low battery life.
30W no, but 18W is still giving me about 75 minutes of playtime. It's not actually much shorter than 15W like it would seem because the total power draw at 15W TDP is already somewhere in the 25W-27W range so adding 3W to TDP is not as dramatic an increase as it would seem.
That’s hardly out-of-box experience though and it’s unlikely a normal customer would go that far. Most people will just use the 3 default modes and out of these, 15W is a good middle ground.
A normal customer for these things isn't your ipad using grandma though.
It's perfectly fair and reasonable to test things out of the box of course, but considering "enthusiasts" also tend to tweak and under/overclock these things, it'd be helpful to test that too. Especially considering how sensitive APUs are to allocation of power between cpu and GPU.
I was just randomly looking at mini PCs and this comparison between N100 and N200 is pretty interesting. The N200 has a higher CPU frequency and more EUs but runs into thermal/power limits in this specific device. It still performs better *at lower power* by maxing out the GPU and probably not boosting the CPU as high.
[https://i.imgur.com/DYL0jOk.png](https://i.imgur.com/DYL0jOk.png)
We’re speaking about handheld PCs. It’s aimed at enthusiasts alright, but not necessarily hardware enthusiasts. If you take a look at the Steam Deck or ROG Ally subreddit, you’ll see that most people got a handheld to be able to play on the go (either because they have kids, or travelling...), not to mess around with it with custom TDPs and fan profile.
And even hardware enthusiasts might not want to mess around with it. Handhelds aren’t a PC you built yourself, they’re supposed to be a worry free product closer to a console than to a PC.
They don't do monitor/display reviews. Other than click-to-photon latency tests, they wouldn't be adding anything beyond some anecdotal opinions and have probably even as much when asked if they'd ever consider doing monitor reviews.
This is great, seems like GN is gearing up for upcoming handheld reviews as well.
Really love where the market is headed. Far easier to justify spending $1,000 on an x86 gaming handheld than just a single component (GPU).
Hopefully we'll start seeing less "gamery" aesthetics down the line and they focus on productivity as well.
Yeah I'm not sure how I feel about the low end of PC gaming essentially being replaced with dockable handhelds due to GPU pricing insanity, but it is what it is I guess.
As someone who loves handheld gaming it's not too terrible of a future, but yeah.
I really wonder if valve will eventually revisit their steam machine stuff making PSVita TV esque set top boxes that are nothing but steam decks without a screen and HDMI/DP out. Steamdeck costs low end like $350, right? You take out the screen and all the controll stuff I could easily see them getting the price down low enough they could really get some people on the low end seriously interested. You get something around $200/$250 or so that's basically an esports machine that can play some big games on low settings and I think Valve has a serious winner for the low end gamer.
But the Steam Deck competes against the Switch. A "set top box" is a console. It'd be competing with the Xbox Series S and PS5 digital.
The other thing is that Steam Deck is sold at almost no profit, because they make it back in Steam sales. That makes sense for the Deck because those sales would otherwise be Switch sales. But it doesn't make sense to make one for people who are already on PC because they're already spending that money whether or not this Steam Console exists. So you have to be good enough to take users away from Xbox/PS for it to make sense.
The steam deck doesn't really compete with the switch at all.
The steam deck is a portable PC. The switch is a Nintendo handheld gaming device. They are not serving the same markets at all other than both playing video games.
Similarly, a low end ~$200 set top box running SteamOS /w optional Windows compatibility would in effect be a bottom of the barrel cheap entry point into /PC gaming/, not a console. The markets are completely different and serve different people, and it's why both Sony and Microsoft both release games on PC despite making consoles.
Frankly, the PC gaming world has been hurting for something like this anyways. With insane GPU prices, the entry level PC gaming scene has effectively evaporated. Giving people the option for a ~$200 entry point system that can play the esport titles and maybe some big games depending on performance helps bring PC gaming back to the people on a budget in a way that hasn't really existed since the crypto boom and then the pandemic broke pricing.
> Edit: also not really sure what your point is with the 4K TV thing, either. Per Steam HW survey so something like 80% of PC gamers are still on 1080p monitors, not high end 4k tv sets.
Set top boxes are for TVs. PC gamers are on monitors, not TVs, so they're not the same.
If you're basing products off steam hardware survey, 80% of them have a more powerful GPU than the Steam Deck, and won't buy a similarly priced Steam console.
576p upscaled to 1080p is still terrible.
>The steam deck is a portable PC. The switch is a Nintendo handheld gaming device. They are not serving the same markets at all other than both **playing video games.**
The majority of people buying Switches and Steam Decks are for playing video games, that's how they're competing products. Do you think Netflix didn't compete with Blockbusters because Netflix streams videos and Blockbusters rents DVDs?
>With insane GPU prices, the entry level PC gaming scene has effectively evaporated. Giving people the option for a ~$200 entry point system that can play the esport titles and maybe some big games depending on performance helps bring PC gaming back to the people on a budget
Like it or not, "people on a budget" are very rarely a target audience. They'll play F2P games and not spend money on Steam, so Valve can't do the usual console plan of selling the hardware cheap and making money on Steam.
So they'll have to make money off the hardware sale like everyone else. They'll have a hard time competing with every other hardware manufacturer who have had years of experience, more resources and supply chain: how a steam console going to be different than every other Dell/HP/Lenovo?
And low-end esports titles already run on older PCs fine, so people interested in those probably already have a PC that runs them fine. Or a laptop for school or work that can already play them. They've already got a PC that does the bare minimum for those games.
But I'm sorry, I don't understand very well. What you're asking for is not a handheld, but a gaming-oriented super lowend chip for regular desktops? I'd love to have the Steam Deck's chip in one of these mini-pcs or a cheap laptop (much more useful than a Deck and probably a laptop wouldn't be much more expensive), but it's not a handheld what you're asking for.
Plus, lowend gaming laptops are much more powerful than any of these and it's not more expensive than a Rog Ally...
>You take out the screen and all the controll stuff I could easily see them getting the price down low enough they could really get some people on the low end seriously interested. You get something around $200/$250 or so that's basically an esports machine that can play some big games on low settings and I think Valve has a serious winner for the low end gamer.
You know this already exists, right. There are like hundreds of mini PCs in the $200-300 range that will do this.
None of them have Valve's logo on it and an established super brand like Steam backing it.
Hundreds of little doo dad PC handhelds existed before the Steam Deck too. The Steam Deck is still the steam deck.
```i would never do that on a handheld.```
Never say never, especially when it comes to tech.
Same way people weren't expecting to do most of their banking on cellphones in 1995.
Portability is king imo.
Well, sure. Maybe ill be forced to adopt at some date. Though its more likely that ill just stop gaming instead actually.
People still arent expected to do most of thier banking on cellphones.
```i would never do that on a handheld.```
Never say never, especially when it comes to tech.
Same way people weren't expecting to do most of their banking on cellphones in 1995.
Portability is king imo.
> Far easier to justify spending $1,000 on an x86 gaming handheld than just a single component (GPU).
Is it? I feel like they're much more distinct markets. Personally I'm not really a handheld user (outside of niche scenarios) so I'm a lot more inclined to drop $800 on a GPU then even the $550 an OLED Deck runs. Really I could see some people skipping a gaming laptop to get a handheld instead but that's about it
Yeah, a handheld is great for someone without a decent PC to jump into PC gaming, but for PC gamers with decent base systems, it still makes more sense to get a$500 GPU. Many of the new games aren’t even playable on a handheld without huge compromises. Even for a gaming newbie, it probably makes more sense to get a PS5/Xbox for playing new games.
A handheld pc is more of a peripheral to the main gaming PC. It's a great way to play a backlog of indie games bought during steam sales, which wouldn't exist if the user wasn't already deeply invested in pc gaming.
I really like the concept of these devices but they’re still being held back by either GPU performance or battery life to be a viable alternative to a gaming laptop.
I know they’re not really set out to be a gaming laptop alternative, they’re more of a game streaming device or a device that plays Indie games, but I’d legit buy one if it had a little more GPU performance.
I’d hoped the MSI Intel competitor would be another step forward but initial leaked benchmarks look a bit ordinary so far.
The ARM space imo is more interesting than the x86 devices like the one in this video. Apples M1 equiped iPads had serious performance with good battery life, and the snapdragon gen 3 handhelds are insanely impressive for their price (AYN Odin 2).
Of course the issue with ARM is it won’t natively run Steam games. The console emulation side is coming along very quickly at least.
> to be a viable alternative to a gaming laptop.
Dude, if you want a gaming laptop these are not the devices for you. I have an RTX 3060 laptop and I never game on it because I have to be at a desk or a table to use it and if that's the case something already under my TV or my desktop PC is going to be better than this laptop.
With the Ally and the Deck I can sit *anywhere* and play. I ~~can't~~ won't use the 16" laptop in bed, but sitting in bed with a gaming handheld? Been doing that for years.
> Dude, if you want a gaming laptop these are not the devices for you
Yeah I know, it's why in the next sentence I said that's not really the purpose of these, but a bit more GPU performance would be good.
It's possible to get there and Nvidia did this nearly a decade ago with their Tegra chipset in their Nvidia Shield tablets. Unfortunately they never really developed it further but of course their strategy of focusing on dedicated GPUs and AI paid off massively.
I know it powers the Switch, but they never took that technology further and evolved it like other ARM manufacturers do. The chipset powering the Switch is mostly the same as it was when it launched with only a few tweaks here and there. It's long been outclassed, as evidenced by the Snapdragon Gen 3 emulating the switch with an upscaled resolution.
A laptop and a handheld device have different use-cases, but I see where you are getting at. Which one would you buy if you don't have much budget?
It is way more comfortable to reach out to your handheld device on a airport, train, toilet, bed, sofa, etc - but yes you suffer a bit with the battery and the GPU is not that good, but trust me you would be surprised.
X86 vs ARM means nothing, look at what Valve and AMD did for this chip, it's a super efficient x86 device that can emulate the Switch and beat it when it comes to battery usage. I can play PS1 games or something like Dead Cells for 6h.
The next step for handheld gaming is a discrete GPUs. It's absolutely doable, the razer tablet back in the day had a gt 640m. Having dedicated VRAM and pushing about 50w is where we are headed.
The battery life won't be great, but that's how you get a leap in performance to make these viable.
Absolutely not.
All AMD needs is a high enough volume, but to get that volume the device has to be practical in every sense.
They are already capable of making a monster.
Just look at what 8700G can do with a much higher TDP, then understand that the reason Z1 Extreme doesn't do the same thing is because it'd be dumb. It's a fucking handheld.
Absolutely no way.
15w TDP is about the limit for me in terms of battery life. The OLED strikes a nice balance but I'd absolutely love more battery to the point where I limit settings/the games I play and the TDP so I can game longer.
Sure when I play a bit in bed wired I could crank to 30w TDP if I could.
But I'd just boot my PC for anything beyond that.
Oh, so you just want a newer switch?
Yeah, that's not what I want lol. I just want a monster and I'll keep it plugged in. It's not like I'm ever gaming farther than 5 feet from an outlet, I'm not riding the school bus in elementary school anymore.
The main issue I have with them is just my preference for fidelity/graphical quality. I can't enjoy the majority of modern games on a tiny 720p display when stuff like HDR, DLDSR and the likes exist.
If all I did were play Metroidvanias, I'd be all over it.
You're both making valid points. The current handhelds have a lot of fantastic uses today, but I also agree that even just one sizable performance bump would *vastly* improve them. Even more so if we could make the switch to ARM and get M1-esc efficiency, but that's a ways off.
Battery life only really got to acceptable levels with the deck oled at higher performance modes, and it's still just getting 2 hours in some cases like you said. And for FPS, 30-40 in modern games like cyberpunk (which came out a few years ago now) at 720p low with upscaling isn't what I'd call "golden".
I hope with handhelds kinda taking off in popularity more that these small/efficient APU's get more of a focus and we can see some large performance gains in the next few years.
Only looking at extreme low is silly. the Deck OLED can also reach 10 hours in games. It's stupid to say "it has bad battery life because the most demanding games only get 2 hours".
I feel like you misunderstood what I said, so let me rephrase it:
At higher performance modes, battery life in handhelds only got to acceptable levels once the deck oled came out, and even then it's still not great.
I'm not saying it has bad battery life *in general*. I understand that if you run 2d indie titles, any portable computer on earth can get good battery life.
It's also just not super relevent to the complaint of these handhelds not having good enough performance/battery life in more demanding cases lol. If I wanted to play 2D indie titles for a long time there's a lot of ways to do that, from any x86 device, to android handhelds via emulation, which comes with A LOT Of great advantages over a deck.
But the Deck standard also had great battery life even with 3d titles. It's just about the latest titles - which have never performed well at low wattages no matter the type of processor.
I think you might have a misunderstanding about how battery life, or more likely power consumption, works?
And besides, we can see in the video that no, the deck standard doesn't have great battery life in any intensive scenarios. It couldn't even last 3 hours doing 4k video playback, and the OLED model barely did over 4.
And as I linked you in another comment, the M1 macbook can in fact last 10+ hours doing gaming with FPS caps.
I don't even like macs and would never use one but I've seen the benchmarks, it's good hardware lol.
Also I don't know if you realise but those battery estimates are pathetic as they give the Mac barely twice the battery life as the Deck OLED despite having either a 50% or a >100% battery size advantage.
> M1 really doesn't perform so much better that it's worth pointing to from what I've seen.
The M1 is a closed eco system so it's not like vendors can pick them up off the shelf like they can do with AMD, Intel, Qualcomm etc, but they are incredible performers when you take into account their size, performance and battery life.
I'd love to see what a 3rd party could do with those chipsets in a handheld gaming format, but it's never going to happen.
We've seen games like RE8 and Death Stranding get native M1 ports and iirc these don't perform much better than on Steam Deck (or at least, don't produce a significantly better image).
Where the heck are you seeing the macbook last only 1-2 hours in anything? I cannot for the life of me find anything even approaching that low of a result.
Lowest results I can find are [here] where they get a little under 3 hours at max brightness, and a little over 3 hours at half brightness, playing WoW at max settings with no frame rate cap. Once they added a 30fps cap they jumped up to over 12 hours lol, MUCH better then anything either the LCD or OLED decks can put out even just browsing the web.
The things I want in a device like this will take multiple generations. 1080p 120hz oled display with vrr, at least 2x the performance of a 780m at 30w while only using 15w, and a bigger battery.
I don't think that Apple is the best example for mobile graphic performance, their best GPU (The one with 72 CU) has the performance of a 4060. I doubt iPads have better graphical performance compared to Z1 Extreme APUs?
I do agree in handhelds lacking GPU power. AMD should put more CUs in their APUs, 12 is not enough.
> I don't think that Apple is the best example for mobile graphic performance
The M1/M2 performance they crammed into their iPad lineup has serious GPU performance for the battery life and form factor it has. It's an ARM based SOC so it's hard to compare it to the AMD SOCs.
FYI - Snapdragon uses Qualcomm architecture, it's got nothing to do with AMD.
> SnapDragon chips have ~~AMD RDNA~~Qualcomm
Adreno architecture in their GPU
ftfy. The one that has AMD RDNA architecture is Exynos 2200 with Xclipse 920 RDNA 2 and Exynos 2400 with Xclipse 940 RDNA 3. [Specifications copied from Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exynos#Exynos_2000_series)
>battery life to be a viable alternative to a gaming laptop.
If you want more battery and don't mind more weight+size, just get a powerbank with enough output.
Gaming isn't up to par, but you can play new AAA games, that's simply amazing for such a small package.
I have been using a sd oled and honestly this is the bare minimum in battery life I can endure. Literally don't see the point of a higher wattage device
> [2:20](https://youtu.be/egdV0NLoL-c?t=140) - None of these companies are ready to launch their 2nd generation handheld...
Imo, I've said it before and I'll say it again - the Deck OLED is the 2nd game in everything but name. It hsa upgraded every component, except the plastic body. The difference between the original deck & OLED is massive; way more than its name of being a "screen swap" implies. It might as well be compared to the rtx 4080 16gb vs rtx 4080 12gb.
There is really no point in comparing it to consoles. Consoles used to have long life cycle generations because architectures & OSs changed massively between each. Nowadays they dont.
These are gonna get 12-18 month releases just like every other laptop, smartphone and even desktops. Just call them the switch 2022, 2023 and so on.
> These are gonna get 12 month releases just like every other laptop, smartphone and even desktop. Just call them the Deck 2022, Deck 2023 and so on.
That's not what Valve wants to do though.
Na 8GB ram solidly defines it as first gen
If they had even given it another 4GBs I would agree, but na. It's still solidly locked to running the lack of memory locks it to running games the OG can, but a little bit better. It's solidly a Steam Deck Plus, not a Steam Deck 2.
There's nothing wrong with that or anything, but let's call a spade a spade.
Nobody makes a panel like this with VRR. At least not at affordable costs. And co-funding their own OLED production line would have cost Valve a lot more than the Deck itself.
The devices are great but I'm still waiting for performance and (ideally) size to improve before I get one.
The Ally is the closest thing right now, it's not commically large like the steam deck, and at least I can plug it in to get a big performance jump. But battery life isn't there and it has other issues.
In 5 years these handhelds are gonna be so insane.
These things need a good selection of controller friendly, short game session friendly, online play games. With an included headphone/mic set, even a cheap cell phone earbud style set.
And games like Elden ring need a built in 30/45 fps mode, or even a mobile mode, where some screens drop to very low frame rates, for better battery life. And then where the motion is critical, increase the frame rate.
107 Comments
mauri9998@reddit
PERSONA916@reddit
SlideFire@reddit
Quintus_Cicero@reddit
PERSONA916@reddit
Quintus_Cicero@reddit
carpcrucible@reddit
Quintus_Cicero@reddit
conquer69@reddit
Shadow647@reddit
capn_hector@reddit
carpcrucible@reddit
BatteryPoweredFriend@reddit
HandheldAddict@reddit
Massive_Parsley_5000@reddit
ThatOnePerson@reddit
Massive_Parsley_5000@reddit
ThatOnePerson@reddit
Strazdas1@reddit
ThatOnePerson@reddit
Strazdas1@reddit
jorgesgk@reddit
carpcrucible@reddit
HavocInferno@reddit
Massive_Parsley_5000@reddit
Strazdas1@reddit
HandheldAddict@reddit
Strazdas1@reddit
HandheldAddict@reddit
GaleTheThird@reddit
RogueIsCrap@reddit
soggybiscuit93@reddit
Strazdas1@reddit
carpcrucible@reddit
Hailgod@reddit
Sarin10@reddit
conquer69@reddit
AK-Brian@reddit
CapsicumIsWoeful@reddit
NoAirBanding@reddit
Strazdas1@reddit
jorgesgk@reddit
CapsicumIsWoeful@reddit
NoAirBanding@reddit
CapsicumIsWoeful@reddit
Malygos_Spellweaver@reddit
redditracing84@reddit
regenobids@reddit
Large-Fruit-2121@reddit
redditracing84@reddit
Large-Fruit-2121@reddit
MisinformationALWAYS@reddit
regenobids@reddit
BighatNucase@reddit
Framed-Photo@reddit
BighatNucase@reddit
Framed-Photo@reddit
BighatNucase@reddit
Framed-Photo@reddit
BighatNucase@reddit
Framed-Photo@reddit
CapsicumIsWoeful@reddit
BighatNucase@reddit
Framed-Photo@reddit
BighatNucase@reddit
Framed-Photo@reddit
BighatNucase@reddit
Framed-Photo@reddit
conquer69@reddit
UntoTheBreach95@reddit
CapsicumIsWoeful@reddit
jnf005@reddit
venfare64@reddit
Kyrond@reddit
anor_wondo@reddit
mrheosuper@reddit
PhoBoChai@reddit
mrheosuper@reddit
PhoBoChai@reddit
mrheosuper@reddit
HavocInferno@reddit
qwertyqwerty4567@reddit
Kermez@reddit
ThatOnePerson@reddit
Sarin10@reddit
ThatOnePerson@reddit
BighatNucase@reddit
qwertyqwerty4567@reddit
conquer69@reddit
Weyland_Jewtani@reddit
Large-Fruit-2121@reddit
MumrikDK@reddit
Massive_Parsley_5000@reddit
EETrainee@reddit
jenesuispasbavard@reddit
AreYouOKAni@reddit
AbhishMuk@reddit
arandomguy111@reddit
AbhishMuk@reddit
arandomguy111@reddit
Cyberpunk39@reddit
100_Gribble_Bill@reddit
iDontSeedMyTorrents@reddit
Hakairoku@reddit
Framed-Photo@reddit
kwirky88@reddit
throwaway9gk0k4k569@reddit