A problem with the Steam Deck review

[Helpful Tech Witch]

I think you’re missing something.

the non Emmc models load nearly as fast on microsd as off of the internal ssd

[cmndr]

On 3/4/2022 at 5:11 AM, Imbadatnames said:

Optane isn’t just a brand for an SSD dude. It’s a “system accelerator”. It’s literally to speed up HDDs. 
 

You’ve linked an article using games that load quickly anyway. 

Optane refers to THREE things.
It's a brand for SSDs which use 3DXP instead of NAND + a brand for caching software + a brand for persistent memory used in place of or in conjunction to DRAM. The branding is NOT as consumer friendly as it could be.
In theory Micron was going to release their own SSDs under the QUANTX brand.

There's nothing stopping an individual from using an Optane branded SSD without Intel's caching software. Use cases include: 1 boot drive (for sufficiently large disks), page file (usually better than swapping to a NAND based SSD), L2 ARC in a different caching system (ZFS, primocache) - here's an example of LTT using an optane drive without Intel's caching software - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWXBo0bb_dU

 

I have never used Intel's "accelerator" caching technology and I'm currently using a 1.5TB optane drive as a boot device. It isn't caching data other than incidentally (think caching network traffic).
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/129970/intel-optane-ssd-dc-d4800x-series-1-5tb-2-5in-pcie-2x2-3d-xpoint/specifications.html
 

 

With that said I've done some research - it appears that Valve did NOT do anything to specifically cache data. It's just whatever lands in RAM through ordinary use.

[Imbadatnames]

On 3/4/2022 at 2:32 PM, Blademaster91 said:

There are M.2 2230 form factor SSD's on amazon, $20-30 for a 128GB, although the Steam Deck seems to be well optimized, from the reviews i've seen games load just fine from an SD card.

 

Funny thing is there aren’t. There’s a £64 one with a photoshopped logo and 2 reviews or a photoshopped “Dell” one for £162 on Amazon and that’s pretty much it. 
 

Which games though. 

[Imbadatnames]

22 hours ago, Helpful Tech Wiard said:

I think you’re missing something.

the non Emmc models load nearly as fast on microsd as off of the internal ssd

Aside from they don’t, small games sure but anything with a long load time it’s noticeable. Funnily enough people haven’t been using large games.

 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

25 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

Aside from they don’t, small games sure but anything with a long load time it’s noticeable. Funnily enough people haven’t been using large games.

 

Really? What was the game ltt used to test, because that wasn’t a basic one iirc

[M2704]

On 2/28/2022 at 1:42 PM, Imbadatnames said:

Watching the steam deck review I have an issue regarding the storage and the lack of coverage on it. 
 

The base model comes with 64GB of eMMC storage which according to Samsung the latest generation has about 250MB/s of transfer speed, roughly half of what the base 870 evo is capable of. The second point is that because if the paltry storage any large to medium size game will have to go into a SD card where the load times will be abysmal as the best microSD cards you can buy top out at 170MB/s max theoretical in reality you’re lucky to get 100 which is worse than a standard 7200RPM HDD. I wouldn’t call that useable and considering with the new consoles having SSDs most newer titles are built off of that. 

By all accounts, gaming from the SD card doesn’t affect gameplay and barely affects loading times. 
 

You also somehow see fit to discard 41 percent of speed of an SD card, but are somehow convinced that any SSD (or HDD for that matter) will always reach it theoretical maximum speed; which makes it an inherently unfair comparison. 

[Imbadatnames]

18 hours ago, Helpful Tech Wiard said:

Really? What was the game ltt used to test, because that wasn’t a basic one iirc

The only “large” game they used was control which doesn’t have long load times. They didn’t test anything like RDR2, GTAV, Doom (2016) etc which have notoriously long load times. 

[Imbadatnames]

18 hours ago, M2704 said:

By all accounts, gaming from the SD card doesn’t affect gameplay and barely affects loading times. 
 

You also somehow see fit to discard 41 percent of speed of an SD card, but are somehow convinced that any SSD (or HDD for that matter) will always reach it theoretical maximum speed; which makes it an inherently unfair comparison. 

SSDs generally do hit the advertised speeds the 860 Evo for example claims 550w and 520r. In crystaldiskmark it hits 560 and 530 respectively. 
 

Valve shipped out the NVME versions and I haven’t seen anyone load a large game off an SD card

[YoungBlade]

22 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

Valve shipped out the NVME versions and I haven’t seen anyone load a large game off an SD card

If you haven't seen it, then how do you know that it's significantly lower?

 

Again, the SOC is only a Zen 2 quad-core with a low power limit. It is very possible that this will be the limiting factor for game loading, and not the speed of the SD card, meaning even a top-of-the-line NVMe won't make any difference.

[SimplyChunk]

54 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

SSDs generally do hit the advertised speeds the 860 Evo for example claims 550w and 520r. In crystaldiskmark it hits 560 and 530 respectively.

yeah but that's just one synthetic benchmark.  that's like saying you can judge all graphics cards by just using 3DMark or just using Heaven.  Which you can't. You need a good mix of both synthetic and real world tests to guage a hardware components true speed.  Just because the Evo hit's it's advertised numbers in ONE PORTION of crystal diskmark doesn't mean you will consistently reach them in loading and running games

Edited March 6, 2022 by SimplyChunk
typo

[Tavinus]

Think about a post that aged badly LOL
 
No only the emmc version performs well, it performs slightly better than the 512GB SSD in many cases. Also, a good micro SD (with 100mbps or more) will also get almost the same loading times as the other options. 

 

Instead of the 64GB being a model that should not exist, it is the only model anyone should buy (specially when the SD card performs great and it is easy and cheap to upgrade the internal SSD).

 

Here a link with many tests

CS:GO for example loaded in 20s on the eMMC and 25s in the 512GB SSD