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The Steam Deck is Awesome at 128bit 88GB/s bandwidth

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
I doubt you have any meaningful real-world data points to support your use case estimate.

Regardless, it's pretty irrelevant. On the Switch user have the option not to expand storage and they will be able to play pretty much every game.

On the Steam Deck 64GB version, expanding the storage is a necessity.



The website technical info seems to suggest so but it's not end-user replaceable:



Source:

Again, not true, even back in the middle of 2020 Nintendo was reporting over half thier sales from digital, and increasing every year.
Even if you allow your arguement, the idea that the 64 gb steam deck is useless is massively false. You could play many smaller games, xbox cloud, play thousands of emulated games, the list goes on and on.

Keeping in mind of course that I'd the buyer isn't interested in physical media, your arguement is completely moot.
 

Fredrik

Member
Valve updated the information on Steam Deck website.

It's 88GB/s

01156264798453479477.png
I don’t understand what I’m looking at there. Deck > XSS > XSX > PS5?
 

kyliethicc

Member
So at 88 GB/s its got
- more bandwidth than the Xbox One's DDR3 (68) which is usually ~ 900-720p
- over 3x the bandwidth of the Switch's LPDDR4 (25) which is usually 720-480p
- but half the bandwidth of the PS4's GDDR5 (176) which is usually ~ 1080-900p

Should be good enough for ~ 720p gaming but hurts the max frame rate potential. More bw = more fps.
 
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ToTTenTranz

Banned
I don’t understand what I’m looking at there. Deck > XSS > XSX > PS5?
In memory bandwidth per compute throughput, yes.

Though I don't think Locuza Locuza is making a very fair comparison because the proportion of memory bandwidth consumed by the CPU is much larger on the Deck.
If we assume around 20GB/s per 4-core CCX, the PS5's CPU will take 40GB/s, leaving 408GB/s for 10.23 TFLOPs on the GPU. That leaves ~40 GB/s per GPU TFLOP on the PS5.
A similar calculation puts the Series S with 46 GB/s per GPU TFLOP and the Series X with 42.8 GB/s.

In the case of Steam Deck's Van Gogh, if the single 4-core CCX takes 20GB/s out of 88GB/s then that leaves 68 GB/s for 1.6 TFLOPs of GPU, so the result is a similar 42.5GB/s per TFLOPs.



In the end, it seems the RDNA2's sweetspot for bandwidth-per-TFLOP stands at 40-45 GB/s and we can see it on all consoles and the Steam Deck alike.
PC RDNA2 GPUs are a different story because they have Infinity Cache thrown in the mix.
 

ethomaz

Banned
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spons

Gold Member
No. Valve only included a low quality SD port in this thing, that doesn't go any faster than 100MB/s. It is literally going to run at HDD speeds off the SD card.
So old games and emulators on the SD, rest internal. Access times will be better than HDD tho.
 

KAL2006

Banned
Damn... I didn't know that... so it has to be the 256 or 512gb if you want to install windows and PC games...

Not really. All PC games should be able to run on a SD card just as all PC games run on a HDD. There are exceptions like Star Citizen and potential of next gen only PS5 and Series X games that require SSD. But those games probably wouldn't have run properly anyways on a Steam Deck as I doubt the lack of SSD will be the main limitation.
 

ToTTenTranz

Banned
Should be good enough for ~ 720p gaming but hurts the max frame rate potential. More bw = more fps
There's a dedicated block for Machine Learning inference in Van Gogh (and Rembrandt).
It could support Microsoft's ML upscaling in the hardware. The SoC was developed for Microsoft after all..
 
It wouldn't surprise me if some developers releasing games on Steam would start to explicitly advertise how their games perform in "Steamdeck mode" or something of that sort, frankly.
I mean, why wouldn't they? It's going to be a very popular spec configuration, and Valve will likely encourage it. Seems like a no brainer.
 
No way this isn't 88 GB/s.
You win the prize, it's 88 GB/s xD

Apparently they just clarified it. Take away maybe 20 GB/s for the CPU and that's about 42.5 GB/s per TF for the GPU.

For reference, for PS5 it'd be about 41.65 GB/s per TF (assuming the CPU is 20 GB/s; it's likely more considering it's higher-clocked and has more cores & threads), and for Series X it's about 46 GB/s per TF, possibly closer to 44.55 GB/s per TF with similar 20 GB/s for CPU usage factored out (though like PS5, the CPU will probably consume more than 20 GB/s since it is clocked higher and has more cores & threads).

That's very good overall for the SteamDeck, even if actual bandwidth might dip closer to (spitballing here) 36 GB/s per TF (if the CPU is going to need more than 20 GB/s, tho in SteamDecks' case I can't see that happening as it's only 4-core/8-thread and likely lower-clocked than PS5's CPU by a decent amount).

EDIT: Since the CPU is rated at 448 GFLOPs at max clock (3.5 GHz, higher than I was expecting), it should only pull around 24 GB/s - 25 GB/s under max load.

Valve updated the information on Steam Deck website.

It's 88GB/s

01156264798453479477.png

I'm guessing he's doing the Steam Deck #s given its range of 1 TF - 1.6 TF but looks like CPU usage isn't factored into this, so they're theoretical bandwidth peaks. Goes for all the systems listed there.

Well, technically they are very near real bandwidth usage cases but only when CPU is idle, for gaming the CPU is usually doing at least some type of transfer on the bus any portion of a given second, but the numbers are still right. I just took lower ends which thinking for a second might be too low because they assume CPU's maximum bandwidth which would mean GPU isn't accessing system memory, which is also not likely to be the case :p

Although Steamdeck is unmatched as a portable. There will be limitations folks and keep in mind this is just the first iteration. Since they are not mandating developers code for the specs of the first Steam Deck, Valve is free to release updated hardware at any time.

I fully expect a Series S caliber portable in a couple years (from Valve or MS). That's when I will likely join the party.


The whole point of DirectStorage is that it doesn't need coprocessors. The GPUs themselves do the decompression. I see no reason why SteamDeck shouldn't be able to take advantage if it's the SSD version.

TBF, the GPU in Steam Deck isn't necessarily a beast; it's 8 CUs and if they have to use, say, 4 CUs for decompression, that can bring a hit to graphical performance. DirectStorage does not need dedicated decompression hardware, but it would only help.

Also TBF, has it been confirmed there is no decompression block in this APU? We know it's custom between Valve and AMD, I'd like to think some type of decompressor has been built into it knowing what a hit the GPU would take it if it needed to do that.
 
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Silver Wattle

Gold Member
88GB/s is plenty for this SoC, RDNA2 has much better bandwidth compression/efficiency than Vega or Maxwell GPU's.
I just hope the docked mode allows this to run at a higher TDP.
 
Also TBF, has it been confirmed there is no decompression block in this APU? We know it's custom between Valve and AMD, I'd like to think some type of decompressor has been built into it knowing what a hit the GPU would take it if it needed to do that.

It's not even designed to run Windows. It's designed by Valve to run linux-based SteamOS. To my knowledge, there's no DirectStorage equivalent API for linux.

I don't see Valve going out of their way to architect a hardware solution for a windows mass storage API on a device not specifically designed for Windows; especially given the fact that on PC, the API itself would need updates by MS rendering Valve dependent on a 3rd party to make any use of the hardware Valve would spend their valuable engineering time and energy developing. Makes no sense.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
It uses GPU for supported compression algorithms, obviously there isn't one dedicated on the PC like there is on PS5. Essentially what XSX is doing. And that is always going to use CPU as support. Until there is going to be custom ASIC for decompression, you cannot use anything other than CPU/GPU.

88GB/s is plenty for this SoC, RDNA2 has much better bandwidth compression/efficiency than Vega or Maxwell GPU's.
I just hope the docked mode allows this to run at a higher TDP.
Only if there is cache (dubbed infinity cache), which in this situation I highly doubt it.
 
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GuinGuin

Banned
Yeah... of course... as if the 64GB Steamdeck version has any value. Get real.

That's nowhere near enough storage. It might as well not exist. Practically nobody is gonna buy it. It's the 20GB PS3 all over again.

Switch only has 32 GB of storage. Double the storage for $100 more and much better performance. It should also be easy to swap in a bigger M2 drive despite what the nay sayers say. I think the 64 is the best buy by far.
 

ToTTenTranz

Banned
It should also be easy to swap in a bigger M2 drive despite what the nay sayers say.
Well the nay sayers are Valve..

Sure they have a vested interest in convincing people to not attempt opening the Deck to put a M.2 drive inside, not only because they're making a larger profit out of the NVMe SKUs but also because they'd want to avoid sending in replacements to people who inadvertently destroy their consoles.
However, until ThePhawx or iFixit or someone else publishes a teardown, Valve's word is all we have for now.




You look great in that clip! That basket really brings out your eyes ;)
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
how much L3 cache would you need for a 8cu rdna2 ? not that much, no ?
Probably not much, however it would still be something like 16-32MB, which I guess would be somewhere written.

The Steam Deck has the same bandwidth-per-GPU-TFLOP as the PS5, Series S and Series X.
~40GB/s per RDNA2 TFLOP seems to be the best balance for the architecture, and the Steam Deck delivers on that front.
Well we see, but pardon me if I have some doubts.
 

ToTTenTranz

Banned
Probably not much, however it would still be something like 16-32MB, which I guess would be somewhere written.

The Infinity Cache size is projected according to the target resolution:



QfSB3bU.jpg




That "HD" refers to 1080p. For the Deck's 1280*800 resolution, a 16MB cache would probably get around 50% hit rates and help bandwidth a lot.


However, it's nearly certain that Van Gogh has no Infinity Cache. The chip is about the same size as Renoir (also Zen2). It has one less 4-core CCX but the RDNA2 CUs are ~60% larger, and Van Gogh also has an embedded (reportedly large-ish) dedicated co-processor called "Computer Vision Machine Learning", or CVML.



i was looking into it and i see https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-rx-6300-xt.c3813 is 16mb and deck is half that.
even if it's not linear around 10mb/s seems not that much
"Placeholder based off speculation".
There's no Navi 24 with that configuration, at least not yet.
 
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martino

Member
That looks like super gimped card, not the mention just 64bit interface, so i am guessing that there would cache not do that much.

It seems that deck and this card is still not available for test, so lets wait : )
yes not sure you need cache that much. i was more challenging the area cost. not sure it's that big (if needed).
 
Switch only has 32 GB of storage. Double the storage for $100 more and much better performance.

The Switch doesn't require you to install games at all. Games on the Switch are also specifically designed with the space limitations in mind. No game is specifically designed for the Steam Deck.

It should also be easy to swap in a bigger M2 drive despite what the nay sayers say. I think the 64 is the best buy by far.

According to Valve, you're wrong. The internal drive is not user-replaceable. Educate yourself.
 

ToTTenTranz

Banned
According to Valve, you're wrong. The internal drive is not user-replaceable. Educate yourself.
Gabe Newel's e-mails suggest it's user-replaceable, but the official page says "not intended for user replacement".


oFJXGlu.jpg






My take is that it's definitely user-replaceable, but how hard it is to do so is still a mystery to us.




i've seems worst source to speculate on in this same thread...what were your sources again ?
For Navi 24 being a placeholder, my top-secret super-exclusive source was the TPU page you linked here but spectacularly failed to read.

Here, let me help you at reading comprehension:


U7dmmHb.png




It's ok friend, you tried.
I still love you all the same.
:messenger_heart:
 

martino

Member
Gabe Newel's e-mails suggest it's user-replaceable, but the official page says "not intended for user replacement".


oFJXGlu.jpg






My take is that it's definitely user-replaceable, but how hard it is to do so is still a mystery to us.





For Navi 24 being a placeholder, my top-secret super-exclusive source was the TPU page you linked here but spectacularly failed to read.

Here, let me help you at reading comprehension:


U7dmmHb.png




It's ok friend, you tried.
I still love you all the same.
:messenger_heart:
Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg

It seems obvious i was referencing the FUD source-less unedited OP
 
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Dlacy13g

Member
The main thing this device and importantly Valve needs to do more than any other single feature is.......is mandate devs optimize on screen text for the small screen.
 

JumpMan1981

Banned
This is going to be the true question that Valve is going to need to answer.
They will need to get the marketing right to make it a success and it's always going to be a problem with handhelds that they cost more for less power. I can't even imagine if a handheld PS5 equivalent was even possible how much it would end up costing.

It's quite interesting that after Stadia, which promised gaming on any screen via streaming, that the newest things to come out have been the major home consoles and now a PC handheld. I would have expected that something like Steam Deck would be a streaming device instead of what it is shaping up to be.
 
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