GPD Claims Steam Deck is Worse than Win 3 and is Closed Platform. Users Call GPD’s Statement Shameful.

[GhostRoadieBL]

43 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

that makes Sony and Microsoft monopolies for selling consoles at a loss

They are, as much as Nintendo is. Exclusive titles, hardware and a whole ecosystem only able to play on their hardware, that's a monopoly but they allow other companies to make games and hardware so it's on the grey side of anti-competitive.
Steam has entered that "ecosystem war" with other monopolistic companies too large and self integrated to compete with. Case in point: buy a steamdeck and use someone else's game store. Or find a competitor with a competing library of games.

 

"A monopoly is a dominant position of an industry or a sector by one company, to the point of excluding all other viable competitors.

Monopolies are often discouraged in free-market nations. They are seen as leading to price-gouging and deteriorating quality due to the lack of alternative choices for consumers. They also can concentrate wealth, power, and influence in the hands of one or a few individuals"

 

It's not a difficult definition, the only grey area is how large you section off the markets they compete in.

[Needfuldoer]

The tech industry has consolidated to a few effective duopolies though:

 

Microsoft (Windows) and Apple (Mac OS)

Apple (iOS) and Google (Android)

Sony (Playstation) and Microsoft (Xbox)*

AMD and Intel (CPUs)

Nvidia and AMD (GPUs)

Western Digital and Seagate (hard drives)

 

* Nintendo isn't competitive on the tech side, nor do they try to be. They're a toy company that carved out a niche in the video game industry. It's working though! No judgement.

 

Even if it's possible to break into those markets, the incoming party needs extensive resources to get their foot in the door. (Just look at Intel trying to break into the GPU space.) But hey, you can't get accused of being a monopoly if you have a viable competitor! /s

[RejZoR]

Most other handheld consoles run Windows anyway. Just install Steam on it since most people use that for gaming anyway. Main goal here for Valve is to bring gaming capable device to as many people as possible, even if they make zero profits from consoles. Their bulk of income is Steam itself and if many people can play games for 420€. For this money it's hard to build a gaming system and you have to assume you already have few components like input devices and monitor, preferably something else too.

 

Reason why Valve went with own OS design based on Linux is to avoid licensing fees from Microsoft if they used Windows which means they'd probably be losing a lot more on each device. Or make it more expensive which would have undesired effect. So it makes sense and indirectly this will help Linux as whole because if there is lots of gaming happening on Linux all of a sudden, others might pick up more interest, even if it's only through better drivers. That would be a huge deal already.

[ryao]

It is probably rather late for this, but I made an improved translation:

 

Quote

Today we are talking about the recently hyped Steam deck! Many players are rushing to this product, but more rational players, of course, also have different views on it. I will analyze this product from the perspective of the configuration and the existing sources of Gabe Newell.

 

First of all, let's take a look at the detailed comparison table of WIN 3, WIN Max 2021 and Steam deck, which is avaliable for pre-order.

 

As you can see above, the Steam deck is a custom APU, and the CPU part is still ZEN2 architecture. There is nothing outstanding.

 

What is the level of CPU of Steam deck?

 

If we have to compare it with AMD products, it is an AMD 3rd generation Ryzen 5300U.

 

5300U is a ZEN2 architecture, 4C/8T design, and the base frequency/turbo frequencies are 2.6GHz/3.8GHz respectively. The Steam Deck is also ZEN2 architecture, 4C/8T design, and the base frequency/turbo frequencies are 2.4GHz/3.5GHz respectively. The 5300U is obviously slightly higher than the latter. This does not take into account the all-core frequency, but we can roughly estimate between 3.0~3.2GHz.

 

What is the level of 5300U? It is only a little bit stronger than the Ryzen 2nd generation 4500U, so the Steam deck custom APU with worse performance than the 5300U is obviously not much better. The single-core turbo frequency is only 3.5GHz, which is lower than the 4.7GHz of the 1165G7 and even lower than the 5.0GHz of the 1195G7.

 

Since most games rely on single-core performance, there is nothing remarkable about the Steam deck custom APU's parameters.

 

How much of a boost is the GPU portion of the Steam deck?

 

Both the 1165G7 and 1195G7 are Iris Xe cores with 96EU/768 stream processors and 1.6TFlops of single-precision floating-point computing power. The number of stream processors is the same as that of the previous generation Vega 8 core, and Steam's officially announced single-precision floating-point computing capability for the core is 1.6TFlops.

 

Okay, now here's the problem. The RDNA 2 is a new architecture, but the floating point capability has not improved much. With Vega 8, the single precision floating point operation is about 1.2~1.4TFlops, which RDNA 2 is only improved to 1.6TFlops to tie with the Iris Xe 96 EU.

Where does the Steam deck custom APU rank in terms of single-core, multi-core, and core performance?

 

Needless to say, the rank of the CPU part has been mentioned earlier. Considering that the RDNA 2 has far fewer stream processors than the Xe 96EU, the improvement is partly based on the speed increase from the shared DDR5 memory for graphics and partly based on the architecture update.

 

But overall, I still believe that the RDNA 2 core is weaker than the Xe 96EU core. After all, for 512 stream processors to beat 768 stream processors, AMD needs to have magic skills that defy the laws of physics, but that's often just a rumor.

 

Besides, the results of the Xe 96EU benchmarks are no secret. 1.6TFlops is a conservative figure, while 1.6TFlops RDNA 2 is really just a statement from Gabe Newell.

 

Steam deck may disappoint Gabe Newell fans!

 

From its low efficiency in translating games and its announced 15W TDP power consumption limit, I can clearly say that the overall performance of Steam deck may not be as good as WIN 3's 15W. However, if Steam deck supports Windows 10, with 15W power consumption, it may beat WIN 3 with 15W, after all, supporting LPDDR5 and quad-channel is an advantage.

 

So we have basically come to the conclusion that the Steam deck custom APU is the equivalent of AMD's 3rd generation Ryzen 3 5300U + Iris Xe 96 EU core. Considering that the CPU part is far weaker than the 1165G7 and 1195G7, the overall performance of Steam deck is still not as good as WIN 3 and WIN Max 2021.

 

What can Steam OS do?  

Many people see that Steam deck is integrated with Steam OS and say they can stop tossing and turning. So what can Steam OS actually do?

 

Steam OS is a stripped-down version of Debian 8, a Linux distribution. If you know Steam OS well, you should know that Steam deck is a download interface for Steam platform after booting. The whole interface is for game downloads, and that's it. It's also a PC, you say, but sorry, you can't do anything other than play games. For example, if you want to install a LibreOffice for office work, you should be able to install it in theory. After all it is based on Linux 4.2 kernel, but no one knows how it works without a desktop, and whether it can switch to other applications.

 

To list some of the weaknesses of the Steam deck that people have identified:

1. The length of 30 cm and the large volume are far from the definition of handheld. The Steam deck with a 7-inch screen is a full 1/3 larger than the WIN Max 2021 with an 8-inch screen.

2. The battery capacity is small, only 40Wh, while the battery capacity of WIN 3 is 46Wh and the battery capacity of WIN Max 2021 is 57Wh.

3. Thunderbolt 4 is not supported, the application scenario is single, and only games can be played.

4. There are many uncertainties, such as whether there is corresponding driver support after installing Windows 10. For example, whether the 2230 SSD can be replaced (Steam officially said it is not suitable for replacement), and what is the compatibility?

Don't think too much! The purpose of Gabe Newell in making this product is to create a closed loop ecosystem, not to allow you to install Windows to play pirated games!

 

Steam deck is supported by a platform with 1 billion registered users. Gabe Newell's purpose is to create a closed loop ecosystem, just like Nintendo's Switch. The ultimate goal is to attract game companies to develop exclusive games for its handheld. As long as the hardware user base is large enough, there is no worry about exclusive games, and with exclusive games, you can compete with the Switch. It also avoids the disadvantage of competing with Epic and other single download platforms.

 

So, although Gabe Newell verbally stated support for Windows (seems to have not found the source), leading some people think Gabe Newell's goal is ambitious, ambition in all directions. But I think you are naive, the picture is broken, do not understand the logic of capitalism. Think about it, they do not make money or even lose money selling a Windows 10 hardware to a player playing pirated games. What does he want? Does he just want to make you happy? No capitalist will lose money to make money.

 

In the end, whether it's the Steam deck or the Steam deck XX, it's a closed system (capitalism will reveal its hideous face when a certain number of handheld users are accumulated) and the hardware will prevent you from installing any third-party software. You can only buy games from the Steam platform.

 

Will Epic also build its own handhelds?

 

Epic will definitely launch its own handheld sooner or later to create its own ecosystem-loop. Therefore, the future pattern is that online game stores still support Windows users, but exclusives will be released first on their own platforms, reaping a wave of profits, and then the Windows version will be released.

 

And if you want to play pirated games, you still have to go back to Windows.

I have studied Chinese in the past, but I was never very good at it. I ended up relying on DeepL's translation tools, Google translate, the original translation and a bit of common sense to work out a better translation. That was painful.

 

Note that the original translation omitted some sentences that are present in my version.

 

Also, the improved translation makes it clear why a number of replies seemed to be by people convinced by the post. When it does not have terrible translation errors in every other sentence, the argument at least sounds convincing to the ignorant.

[Mark Kaine]

On 4/1/2022 at 12:35 AM, ryao said:

Also, the improved translation makes it clear why a number of replies seemed to be by people convinced by the post

i mean there will always be people like that, plus of course there will be people preferring the domestic product versus the overseas one.

 

your translation however doesnt make it any less embarrassing or cringeworthy, or different… they just sound really scared and desperate (just like in the original translation) lol.

 

Not to critique your translation, just saying it really doesnt change much.

 

To me it simply translates to "Please please please dont buy a GPD ever!"

 

And im not even interested in steam deck…

[ryao]

On 4/2/2022 at 12:45 AM, Mark Kaine said:

i mean there will always be people like that, plus of course there will be people preferring the domestic product versus the overseas one.

 

your translation however doesnt make it any less embarrassing or cringeworthy, or different… they just sound really scared and desperate (just like in the original translation) lol.

 

Not to critique your translation, just saying it really doesnt change much.

 

To me it simply translates to "Please please please dont buy a GPD ever!"

 

And im not even interested in steam deck…

A better translation can at least avoid misunderstandings. It would be one thing to criticize GPD for something that a mistranslation said. It is another thing to criticize GPD for something that they actually said.