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Steam Deck 64GB is actually good value for money

KAL2006

Banned
Alot of people wrote off the 64 GB model. But now thinking about it more it's actually a bargain. Majority of PC games are designed to run on hardrives, and the speed of an SD card and the internal flash memory is faster than a hardrive. Getting a NVME Steam Deck all it would do is just shave a few seconds off with loading games. So basically a 64GB with a cheap 200GB SD card can pretty much play every PC game.

Now let's look at the price
A Switch in the UK is £260
A Steam Deck is £350

That's a £90 difference. The Deck can play 1000s of games, and many future games will continue to release on it. The only reason I see people who would need the Steam Deck with NVME is if they wanted to Dual Boot Windows and need extra internal space for that. But a 64GB would easily be able to work with a Deck. Looking at Black friday sales I seen 512gb SD card going for £46, 256GB going for £20, 400GB going for £33.
 

KAL2006

Banned
I'm sure with SteamOS the 64gb version will be fine, but you are essentially killing any chances of side loading Windows onto it, and even if you did, it would be horrendously slow with this specific version's memory.
Yes obviously the 256GB is the best option if you want Windows. But from a casual perspective who are just interested in Steam OS the 64GB model is perfect.
 

Hezekiah

Banned
Alot of people wrote off the 64 GB model. But now thinking about it more it's actually a bargain. Majority of PC games are designed to run on hardrives, and the speed of an SD card and the internal flash memory is faster than a hardrive. Getting a NVME Steam Deck all it would do is just shave a few seconds off with loading games. So basically a 64GB with a cheap 200GB SD card can pretty much play every PC game.

Now let's look at the price
A Switch in the UK is £260
A Steam Deck is £350

That's a £90 difference. The Deck can play 1000s of games, and many future games will continue to release on it. The only reason I see people who would need the Steam Deck with NVME is if they wanted to Dual Boot Windows and need extra internal space for that. But a 64GB would easily be able to work with a Deck. Looking at Black friday sales I seen 512gb SD card going for £46, 256GB going for £20, 400GB going for £33.
No point comparing the Steam Deck to the Switch to demontrate value. The Switch is shite hardware that was outdated from launch in 2017. The fact that it's still sold for close to £280 is laughable - corporate vultures cashing in on customers happy to pay over the odds.

In terms of the Steam Deck - you might aswell pay the extra £100 for four times the storage which is also faster.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
I'm sure with SteamOS the 64gb version will be fine, but you are essentially killing any chances of side loading Windows onto it, and even if you did, it would be horrendously slow with this specific version's memory.
You can install windows on the SD card and dual boot with Steam OS on internal memory.
 

CheeseCake

Member
Alot of people wrote off the 64 GB model. But now thinking about it more it's actually a bargain. Majority of PC games are designed to run on hardrives, and the speed of an SD card and the internal flash memory is faster than a hardrive. Getting a NVME Steam Deck all it would do is just shave a few seconds off with loading games. So basically a 64GB with a cheap 200GB SD card can pretty much play every PC game.
davonne-bb.gif
 
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Ozriel

M$FT
It’s not just about running games off an SD. EMMCs are…not great.
The 64GB version is great value for different reasons. Should be relatively straightforward to crack it open and swap with a 1TB (for example) NVMe SSD for the same incremental amount they’re charging for 256gb version
 

ACESHIGH

Banned
If only we could order products from Steam in South America... that aside the Deck is killer value. Just one of those chinese retro handhelds will set you at least 100 USD for something decent. A Switch lite another 200 USD. Its a no brainer really. I'm just concerned about the ergonomics.
 

j0hnnix

Member
I don't see slower speed and lesser space a benefit for a mobile device. The end would be to sideload windows but hey..
Do You Yes GIF by Rachael Ray Show
 

Ozriel

M$FT
There is more to a game being properly compatible with the hardware than the code technically running on Windows.

at the moment I want to dual boot Windows on mine. Like I said, personal preference for a more familiar OS + Gamepass.
You can do what you want with yours.
 
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Spaceman292

Banned
I'm sure with SteamOS the 64gb version will be fine, but you are essentially killing any chances of side loading Windows onto it, and even if you did, it would be horrendously slow with this specific version's memory.
Is that really a concern? People probably want to play games on it, not microsoft excel.
 

Wildebeest

Member
at the moment I want to dual boot Windows on mine. Like I said, personal preference for a more familiar OS + Gamepass.
You can do what you want with yours.
My question was what is so great about WIndows not what is so familiar about Windows.
 
????? What about every game not on steam? Unless it has a Linux port you NEED Windows to play them. Like the newest CODs.
You can play most games not on Steam, by installing them from outside Steam, and adding them to Steam. Except for some of the outliers that don't play well with WINE and Proton, you don't need Windows to play. The newest CODs are some of the exceptions, because of their custom anti-cheat solution that they'll probably never bother to port to anything (even though it doesn't seem to actually work anyway).

My question was what is so great about WIndows not what is so familiar about Windows.
Well, for one I'd say it's the user-oriented design. And I mean user, not power-user. Windows as an OS is an elaborate system of restrictions on what you are free to see and do, counterbalanced by making sure that all or most of the things a common user may want to see or do, can be done with a minimum of obstructions and complications. Linux, in comparison, is a power user-oriented OS. Even at its best and simplest, it occasionally has the jagged edges of the underlying complexity showing up to interfere with something simple you might want to do.

I'm currently figuring out the installation of Q4OS onto an old laptop of mine, and I'm pretty sure that outside of maybe some driver problems, I would've been better off installing WinXP on here (it used to have Vista, which has since gone bork; I'm mostly going with Q4OS for speed and relative UI friendliness). It's not that it's more familiar, it's that it goes about things in a more consistent, user-friendly way. In all my time of working with various versions of Windows, I've had to break out the command line to fix a problem maybe once. And in Linux, that's all over the place. I'm fine with using it since I am partial to coding (a bit), but I also understand that most users aren't. And it doesn't help that you might run into a problem and look up advice online, and see someone saying "you need to edit this file by executing 'sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list' ", and then, if you're a user, you might just beat your head into that problem despite 'gedit' being a Notepad equivalent that your distro replaced with something else, and even if you do find that file you will find that there's nothing in it because your distro uses a bunch of other files for the same thing.

Windows vs Linux, is basically console vs PC. Windows is more closed but more streamlined. Linux is more open but more frustrating for the common user.

At least, that's how it looks from my perspective.
 
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Wildebeest

Member
At least, that's how it looks from my perspective.
It can be frustrating, but we can't on one hand praise windows for having "elaborate" systems for protecting users from seeing too much or messing things up then condemn linux for having to get admin permissions to edit system files. Yeah, if Valve ship something that has people typing in shell commands to get their games working, or their drivers working, then that sucks hard. Shame on them. But Steam and Proton on Linux are not really designed to be so hands on or configurable. There are other tools that are if you want to try to get your game pass games or epic games store games running.
 
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