Windows isn’t always better……

[Emily Young]

Valve’s Steam Deck famously runs the Linux-based SteamOS, but now that Windows drivers are out, it’s not the only game in town anymore. Is Microsoft’s OS the better pick, or should you stick to SteamOS?

 

 

Valve's instructions and drivers: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6121-ECCD-D643-BAA8

[Quackers101]

But could you steam deck, steam running steam to launch windows, to run steam in steam?

steamy.

[Classy Car]

To be honest, i would stick to whatever is the most optimized OS for the steamdeck. 
Would be awesome if you could dual boot windows 11 and steamOS.
If the games somehow magically ran the same on the steamdeck and windows 11, i would pick windows 11. Linux has corrupted on me so many times now when i've tried to use it as a dualboot.  

[MultiGamerClub]

Windows on a mobile small tablet electronic... I have my doubts its good before i watch the video.

[Lightwreather]

9 minutes ago, Classy Car said:

Linux has corrupted on me so many times now when i've tried to use it as a dualboot.  

Ah, Yes. usually one would blame windows that usually overwrites GRUB whenever it needs to update. I'm not saying that's what happened, it could very well alos be different.

Also inb4 another 10-20-pager thread (There's also a chance it won't tho, but I highly doubt that).

[Classy Car]

Just now, J-from-Nucleon said:

Ah, Yes. usually one would blame windows that usually overwrites GRUB whenever it needs to update. I'm not saying that's what happened, it could very well alos be different.

:p. I didn't update windows when i had it. At one point I even had linux as my primary OS. (before i installed windows just to jailbreak my phone)

[Ultraforce]

I will say I don't know why one would expect Windows to be optimized or have some of the quality of life features that Valve set up for the Steam OS Steam Deck. It's a bit like ReVive.

[DeS_2002]

I don't get it when they're saying the windows 'version' of Elden ring runs badly. The version of Elden ring running on Steam deck IS the Windows version. It's running through a compatibility layer. It's not like FromSoftware released a version FOR the steam deck.

Elden ring runs wayy better than this with no stuttering like that on Windows on the Aya neo pro and next, which have less powerful Vega iGPUs than the RDNA2 one in the Steam deck.

The fact that Elden ring runs so bad on the Steam deck is not a Windows problem. It's a Valve and AMD problem; the drivers are the problem.

Also, I kinda hate it that people are calling the Steam deck a 'console'. It's not a console. It's a handheld pc.

[GodAtum]

What about all the left-handed people in the world?

[poochyena]

So this is the video they mentioned earlier about showing nintendo emulation on steam deck as a way to bait nintendo into try to removing the video.

[Arika]

Given the current state of windows on the deck, why even release the driver and make everything available? Some of this is pre-alpha territory with the kind of problems it has. I know Valve wants people to go out and buy the steam deck so they have years worth of back orders, but if it works fine stock, let people use that until windows version is....actually usable.

[rushboarduk]

To be perfectly honest, I'd feel more comfortable with SteamOS further developed into a full interface, versus a Windows port.

 

Microsoft may develop and sell their own consoles and tablets, but I doubt they understand how to implement it on handhelds like Steam Deck that are, essentially, a hybrid of those two concepts. I also don't see them wanting to make one.

[Ultraforce]

1 hour ago, poochyena said:

So this is the video they mentioned earlier about showing nintendo emulation on steam deck as a way to bait nintendo into try to removing the video.

Is it? Since I don't think it would be since they've done plenty of videos using nintendo emulation/stolen games on other hardware. I had assumed that they would be doing some sort of video focused on stealing it as a bait.

[GoodBytes]

2 hours ago, Arika S said:

Given the current state of windows on the deck, why even release the driver and make everything available? Some of this is pre-alpha territory with the kind of problems it has. I know Valve wants people to go out and buy the steam deck so they have years worth of back orders, but if it works fine stock, let people use that until windows version is....actually usable.

I think it is part of their strategy. if Win11 could run perfectly, and as good as its custom OS, people would just wipe the device and install Windows, especially, If it runs better.

 

Providing a crippled experience under Windows, creates a flood of YouTube videos, with high click bait, and so have higher viewership, showing how Windows isn't a good choice for the device, even suggest desktop PC, all to promote its platform in the hope to lock in more consumers to Steam. No need to worry about Epic Store, GOG, Windows Store, XBox services, and any other platform.

[poochyena]

1 hour ago, Ultraforce said:

Is it? Since I don't think it would be since they've done plenty of videos using nintendo emulation/stolen games on other hardware. I had assumed that they would be doing some sort of video focused on stealing it as a bait.

Yes. They mentioned specifically that nintendo was taking down videos of people using the steam deck playing emulated game, so they were going to make a video doing that to bait nintendo. This is that video.

[kumicota]

14 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

I think it is part of their strategy. if Win11 could run perfectly

I don't know, I think it's a bit of problem with valve and a bit of windows itself, The drivers looks like they are in a early-stage and because the steamdeck was made for steamOs, it's where they would focus more during the development of it.

 

Windows 11 also has a lot of problems with AMD and SteamDeck from it's architecture, there's no consumer device with unifiied memory and for that to work is something that has to be tuned at kernel level, which microsoft wouldn't let valve do, there's the problem too where microsoft tuned W11 for it to work better with the new big.little architecture of Intel while it crippled AMD processors.

 

While the drivers itself are bad, even if they were good because the steamdeck uses a non-standard processor that uses unified memory, without microsoft letting or doing patches on kernel for that, it wouldn't have a good performance even if valve and amd did the best drivers that they could on windows

[Ultraforce]

33 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

I think it is part of their strategy. if Win11 could run perfectly, and as good as its custom OS, people would just wipe the device and install Windows, especially, If it runs better.

 

Providing a crippled experience under Windows, creates a flood of YouTube videos, with high click bait, and so have higher viewership, showing how Windows isn't a good choice for the device, even suggest desktop PC, all to promote its platform in the hope to lock in more consumers to Steam. No need to worry about Epic Store, GOG, Windows Store, XBox services, and any other platform.

I don't think that's accurate as while GOG Galaxy doesn't work GOG itself has games on Linux same thing with Epic Store games. Valve's talked before that the whole promoting Linux gaming is and was about the fact that it's foolish to trust Microsoft to always have the best interest of video game players. Personally I think it's much more likely the reason that Windows 10/Windows 11 don't run well is partially just there's not really anyone super interested in making sure the Windows experience is great because that's not really something to prioritize. Apple doesn't prioritize how well a Mac can run Windows and Microsoft doesn't prioritize how well a Surface Pro runs Linux, so why would you expect the reverse. Valve decided to be nice and release drivers so if people want to run Windows they can but what happens next is up to the players.

[GoodBytes]

14 minutes ago, kumicota said:

I don't know, I think it's a bit of problem with valve and a bit of windows itself, The drivers looks like they are in a early-stage and because the steamdeck was made for steamOs, it's where they would focus more during the development of it.

 

Windows 11 also has a lot of problems with AMD and SteamDeck from it's architecture, there's no consumer device with unifiied memory and for that to work is something that has to be tuned at kernel level, which microsoft wouldn't let valve do, there's the problem too where microsoft tuned W11 for it to work better with the new big.little architecture of Intel while it crippled AMD processors.

 

While the drivers itself are bad, even if they were good because the steamdeck uses a non-standard processor that uses unified memory, without microsoft letting or doing patches on kernel for that, it wouldn't have a good performance even if valve and amd did the best drivers that they could on windows

Well that is something that no one knows. All depends on the implementation. Does it rely on the OS to manage this? Was it done for a black box design so that the drivers can handle this? Or is fully automated by the hardware itself. 

 

Windows 11 isn't supported due to the lack of fTPM support. You can probably get it installed by using the workaround tricks of Win11. I mean I run Windows 11 on my ~13 year old system, which doesn't have UEFI, no Secure Boot nor TPM of any kind. Has an SSD on SATA-2, that is all it has for it.

 

In my opinion, it clearly lacks a lot of drivers and the current drivers aren't complete. I saw another video which showed that the APU is for reason locked to TDP of 15W. As if it was stuck in a some power efficiency mode. Now on Steam Deck own OS you have that menu where you can tun the performance of the hardware on the fly. It is probably stuck in some power mode, as it doesn't offer this. No power plan, no power slider either of Windows.

[kumicota]

19 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Well that is something that no one knows. All depends on the implementation. Does it rely on the OS to manage this?

It is managed by the OS at kernel level and the exactly problem is that we know and can modify the way that it works on Linux but not on Windows and because windows doesn't support it, valve can't just download the kernel source and add it there

[Imbadatnames]

I don’t get the people raving about the steam deck. Since when has 30FPS with dips far below that at min settings at sub 1080p been acceptable? Or is it just because this is valve and not a traditional console so therefore they can do no wrong. 

[Ultraforce]

4 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

I don’t get the people raving about the steam deck. Since when has 30FPS with dips far below that at min settings at sub 1080p been acceptable? Or is it just because this is valve and not a traditional console so therefore they can do no wrong. 

For nintendo switch and 3ds they definitely had dips below 30fps

[Imbadatnames]

37 minutes ago, Ultraforce said:

For nintendo switch and 3ds they definitely had dips below 30fps

Wasn’t my point? 

[Ultraforce]

4 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

Wasn’t my point? 

For handheld devices playing AAA style games it's generally acceptable to have 30fps with dips and be below 1080p

[Imbadatnames]

1 hour ago, Ultraforce said:

For handheld devices playing AAA style games it's generally acceptable to have 30fps with dips and be below 1080p

No it’s not. Quote from the website:

 

”Powerful -
Steam Deck runs the latest AAA games-
and runs them really well.”

 

Does it run the latest AAA games really well? Does it bollocks. It runs them, barely and the more demanding titles aren’t even playable. 

 

Valve are lying and for some reason it’s fine for them to. 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

3 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

and runs them really well.”

*Considering its not a 2000 dollar desktop thats drawing 1000ws*

I guess they thought people could use there brains and put it into contrast for the hardware.