Support NeoGAF

[CrustyBritches]

Man, DOOM Eternal really fucking flies on Deck and looks fantastic. I started using the back buttons instead of the face buttons. Played from full charge down to almost empty, like 1h45min or so, and I did get a little cramping in my right hand. I haven't had that happen until I started using the back buttons and obviously in Eternal you're jumping and dashing A LOT on that side, and when you combine that with holding the system for almost 2hrs it adds up. Left hand was fine since it's chainsaw and flame belch, so not as much action there. I'm thinking maybe a little piece of foam padding to extend the buttons on the back right(R4+R5?) would alleviate the fatigue.

That aside, just an amazing experience to be able to play DOOM(2016) and Eternal like that on a handheld.

 

[Maiden Voyage]

My fan isn't silent but the high pitch noise I've heard on YT vids is insane. I hope not too many units were impacted.

 

[chaseroni]

Yooo are you guys testing this new refresh rate changing beta?
Dark Souls 3 locks in at 45hz and is BUTTER smooth!
This device blows me away every update, and the fan is SOOO much quieter in this beta as well

 

[CrustyBritches]

Yooo are you guys testing this new refresh rate changing beta?
Dark Souls 3 locks in at 45hz and is BUTTER smooth!
This device blows me away every update, and the fan is SOOO much quieter in this beta as well

Hell yeah!! Just tried this in DOOM Eternal and you can update the screen refresh rate and frame rate limit on the fly in-game. Amazing stuff. This helps out in a number of ways: Useful for conserving battery life, smoother gameplay on sub-60fps titles, better frame pacing, lower input latency than going with 30fps cap, better graphics settings, etc.

 

[CrustyBritches]

Just added touchpad protectors(TouchProtect?) to my son’s unit. Got the full armor now: tempered glass, silicone case, and touchpad protectors. Now I don’t have to worry so much.

 

[Filben]

Can someone explain to me where I find the fan curve setting? Installed the latest beta update and I can't find it anywhere. Every Steam Deck news page I've googled is waxing about this feature but doesn't explain where to find it.

 

[BadBurger]

Can someone explain to me where I find the fan curve setting? Installed the latest beta update and I can't find it anywhere. Every Steam Deck news page I've googled is waxing about this feature but doesn't explain where to find it.

I do not think it's adjustable. They merely changed the curve with the patch so that it needs to get hotter before the fan ramps up. So higher GPU temps, but hopefully less noise for some.

If I am wrong, maybe it's only OS level and can be found someplace in desktop mode rather than through the Steam interface.

 

[RobRSG]

Just found out that most of the fighting games I play, only works with proper framepacing when outside of Steam OS Game mode. Examples:

Tekken 7 (duplicates frames often)
Ultra Street Fighter 4 (skips and duplicates frames for no apparent reason) - Using 6.21GE-2 to enable the FMVs.
Soul Calibur 6 (duplicates frames often)

When playing from KDE Plasma, everything works flawless.

 

[Filben]

I do not think it's adjustable. They merely changed the curve with the patch so that it needs to get hotter before the fan ramps up. So higher GPU temps, but hopefully less noise for some.

If I am wrong, maybe it's only OS level and can be found someplace in desktop mode rather than through the Steam interface.

I see, thanks! That was what I was starting to think, too.

 

[Spukc]

Played dirt5 on it
Just holy fing shit those gfx breh

 

[Kagero]

Just payed for my steam deck. Watching YouTube videos and it sounds like pretty much every review hates the thing but loves it at the same time

 

[RobRSG]

I rolled back from beta to the stable update. This feature of auto-enabling the keyboard is really fucked up.

 

[rofif]

anyone here got 256/64 and 512? Share some close up glossy vs matte screen comparisons
I've changed my order 3rd time lol. 512 to 64 to now 256

 

[Spukc]

anyone here got 256/64 and 512? Share some close up glossy vs matte screen comparisons
I've changed my order 3rd time lol. 512 to 64 to now 256

Go big

 

[OverHeat]

anyone here got 256/64 and 512? Share some close up glossy vs matte screen comparisons
I've changed my order 3rd time lol. 512 to 64 to now 256

Got the 256 because I wanted the glossy screen love it.

 

[CrustyBritches]

Just payed for my steam deck. Watching YouTube videos and it sounds like pretty much every review hates the thing but loves it at the same time

Steam Deck is the best handheld I've ever used. There are some shortcomings, like Valve is purposefully slow-walking the dual-boot bios and Windows sound drivers so people won't ditch the Deck OS. Aside from that it's an amazing piece of kit. Love it.

 

[Kagero]

Steam Deck is the best handheld I've ever used. There are some shortcomings, like Valve is purposefully slow-walking the dual-boot bios and Windows sound drivers so people won't ditch the Deck OS. Aside from that it's an amazing piece of kit. Love it.

I think it would be right up my alley. I hardly play my switch because the types of games I enjoy don’t run well on it. Can’t wait to play triple A games on the go.

 

[IFireflyl]

Playing Chrono Cross on my Steam Deck with a dBrand skin.

 

[CrustyBritches]

My 2 favorite handhelds. Deck is better suited for around the house or in the hotel play, while 3DS is something you can throw into your cargo pocket and bring to not-very-exciting events like baseball games, church, or weddings.

 

[Kagero]

Playing Chrono Cross on my Steam Deck with a dBrand skin.

Just ordered me some Dickbrand skins because of your post. You should get royalties

 

[OverHeat]

Playing house of the dead remake at a solid 30fps on that thing!

 

[.hacked]

My brother got his today, he such a nice guy let me have it while I wait for my preorder to come up. I like it, installing a bunch of stuff only game that hasn’t booted for me yet was the Forsaken remaster. Man if Bungie would just make Destiny 2 run I’d be in heaven.

 

[CrustyBritches]

Did some battery life testing with The Witcher 3. The amount of options the Deck gives you to use on the fly is pretty crazy. 600p FSR5 with 40Hz refresh and 40fps cap gives you the best bang-for-buck. Still looks good and plays smoother than 30fps.

---
TW3, lowest settings, AA enabled, 600p FSR5, VRS enabled, 30fps cap, TDP+GPU limits, ~50% screen brightness, Wi-Fi off, rumble off, haptics off, ~10W, 4h20m battery. Not that you would, but you could. Still probably higher settings than Switch.

 

[jshackles]

I installed Windows 11 on an SD card to test it out. Ran like shit. Gonna stick with SteamOS for the time being.

 

[CrustyBritches]

Playing Wii Sports on Steam Deck with a real Wiimote via Dolphin

 

[Burger]

Does Arkham Knight work? I've heard mixed things.

 

[Calverz]

Playing Wii Sports on Steam Deck with a real Wiimote via Dolphin

How does it work without sensor bar?

 

[CrustyBritches]

How does it work without sensor bar?

Dolphin will boot straight into the game, bypassing the menu, and the original Wii Sports doesn't need a sensor bar. For other games I have the battery-powered premium sensor bar. It's how I play games like RE4 on PC.

 

[Fess]

The fan sound is a bummer but I have Retroarch on it now, installed right from Steam, games on sdcard, zero jank, it just works.
Best handheld ever?

 

[RobRSG]

Does Arkham Knight work? I've heard mixed things.

It worked fine here. I am running it via Heroic (EGS).

 

[CrustyBritches]

Does Arkham Knight work? I've heard mixed things.

Works well. Asylum and City didn't launch for me when I tried them a couple weeks ago, so I had assumed Knight would be the same. Gave it a try and it's a good game to use the new screen refresh rate and frame rate cap options with. It also works with FSR. A good settings mix is 800p native, normal Shadows and Level of Detail, and high Textures. This will almost always give a locked 40fps to use with the 40Hz screen refresh rate. The worst case scenario from my brief testing was speeding through a really foggy area in the batmobile it drops briefly into the the high 30s. Seemed to do it across a variety of settings, could be CPU related.

Here's some screens showing fullscreen 800p native with the aforementioned settings, and also windowed 540p FSR5 with all low settings except x4 AF...

 

[Burger]

Works well. Asylum and City didn't launch for me when I tried them a couple weeks ago, so I had assumed Knight would be the same. Gave it a try and it's a good game to use the new screen refresh rate and frame rate cap options with. It also works with FSR. A good settings mix is 800p native, normal Shadows and Level of Detail, and high Textures. This will almost always give a locked 40fps to use with the 40Hz screen refresh rate. The worst case scenario from my brief testing was speeding through a really foggy area in the batmobile it drops briefly into the the high 30s. Seemed to do it across a variety of settings, could be CPU related.

Here's some screens showing fullscreen 800p native with the aforementioned settings, and also windowed 540p FSR5 with all low settings except x4 AF...

I'll give it a go.

It worked fine here. I am running it via Heroic (EGS).

Didn't know about Heroic - that's my next job!

 

[Mr Branding]

Brehs, playing something like Oblivion for almost 3 hrs and then jumping into Soul Calibur, while in bed is something unreal to me. Also started Fallen Order and a little bit of og half-life, guys I’m in love with this thing. So happy to be an ‘early’ adopter for this magnificent handheld

Also, I have no steam friends so if it’s ok, I_am_mrbranding is my profile

 

[Burger]

It worked fine here. I am running it via Heroic (EGS).

Do you know how to get the EGS saves to sync from the windows client to the deck using Heroic?

 

[Fess]

And all of a sudden I can’t connect to my PC to transfer files.
It worked last night, but now, nope, impossible. Been uninstalling and installing Warpinator and checked guides for an hour. On the PC it just say that no computers can be found on the network, on the Deck I see the PC but can’t connect.
What should I do?
Edit: Got around it using a NAS. No idea why the PC and Deck suddenly stopped cooperating.

 

[Raphael]

Man i hope that valve and ms somehow manage to get game pass on this without installing windows. I will buy the next iteration of the device if they manage that somehow. I want my portable xbox.

 

[Tunned]

I'm loving all the updates Valve is bringing out for the Deck, especially the screen refresh slider. And even though I really want my Deck now, I'm glad I'm Q4 for delivery, so much stuff is going to get added untill then.

 

[Maiden Voyage]

So the ending of Chrono Trigger crashes on Deck. Replaying now on windows so I can start up New Game+.

 

[jshackles]

Man i hope that valve and ms somehow manage to get game pass on this without installing windows. I will buy the next iteration of the device if they manage that somehow. I want my portable xbox.

Streaming is working, for what it's worth.

 

[RobRSG]

Do you know how to get the EGS saves to sync from the windows client to the deck using Heroic?

If you check the individual game settings, there‘s a sub-menu called Save-Sync. All you got to do is to check the box “Autosync saves”.

 

[Raphael]

Streaming is working, for what it's worth.

Tried streaming to my phone. Doesnt work that well over here unfortunetly.

 

[Burger]

If you check the individual game settings, there‘s a sub-menu called Save-Sync. All you got to do is to check the box “Autosync saves”.

Cool thanks. Guess I don't have any saves for Arkham as it doesn't show up...

 

[jshackles]

OK Windows attempt 2. Going to run GParted and resize my /home partition down on the internal NVMe drive. Gonna give it about 50GB of space to start with, then install Windows 11 onto that. Should be significantly smoother running the OS from the NVMe drive.

 

[Fess]

Oh yes I can finally play with Aurora in bed!

Unity hobby game, I just made a Linux build and it runs beautifully on Steam Deck, no fiddling with input changes, it just works

 

[jshackles]

 

[CrustyBritches]

Oh yes I can finally play with Aurora in bed!

Unity hobby game, I just made a Linux build and it runs beautifully on Steam Deck, no fiddling with input changes, it just works

Made by thicc_girls_are_teh_best ?

 

[PhaseJump]

I'm in Beta branch for the better fan curve. I opened it back up to remove the tape mod. The fan is nearly silent and accepetable all the time now even without it.

There's a big sale on right now, I've spent more time playing Steam "Deck" games than the emulators or Switch games I put on it. I'm feeling seriously done with Nintendo, and I wish Valve would step up verifying more Deck games. The green check mark makes a difference.

This is half price right now, and it is every bit as addictive as it was on Sega Genesis:

 

[Calverz]

Can I just ask how comfortable it is to play? Like do you need to stretch to reach the thumbsticks? How is the dpad? What is the closest comparison for the dpad?

 

[jshackles]

This feels like blasphemy

But I was able to resize my home partition using GParted, then installed Windows on the empty space. Then booted directly back into SteamOS using the "boot from file option", switched to desktop mode, then ran efibootmgr to add the boot option for SteamOS back to the menu (and made it the default).

The end result is now my Steam deck will boot to SteamOS, unless I tell it to boot to Windows by holding + while powering on and selecting Boot -> Windows Boot Manager.

Windows ran like ass on the SD card. It runs pretty smooth on the NVMe drive. In fact, it only takes about 4 seconds to boot. Downloading a few games to try out the performance on that.

 

[PhaseJump]

Can I just ask how comfortable it is to play? Like do you need to stretch to reach the thumbsticks? How is the dpad? What is the closest comparison for the dpad?

It's comfortable and not as heavy feeling as would be expected. It feels like a wide, textured PS4 controller in your palms, the index finger works the L1/L2 triggers, they're soft and not hard feeling, Thumb sticks feel like Xbox One sticks, D pad is more mush than click, like an SNES Dpad only it's a smooth cross. It doesn't feel flat and shallow like the more modern Dpads that came around on Wii peripherals. Reaching them all is no issue. Buttons underneath it are harder to press, like clicky square chiclet buttons on your middle fingers.

The wide stance of it makes it seem lighter, or more comfortable. The haptic thumb pads are great when they're on, feel exceptionally gross like a big flat button with horrible feedback if you switch off the haptics. The Steam & menu buttons beneath them are the worst thing about it. Flat and flush with the face, they're unresponsive rubber membranes.

Not a big deal, but I've went looking for it while holding the controller in the dark and kept having to brush up against the square pad, or ended up with my thumb putting pressure near the speaker while trying to pull up the menu.


Room for improvement, but still the greatest handheld.