Valve's Steam Deck Can Run Windows and be Turned Into a Handheld Xbox - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 October 2021 / 3,169 Views
Valve today announced its portable gaming device the Steam Deck with a starting price at $399.
The Steam Deck runs on SteamOS, a custom Linux operating system, however, Valve has confirmed you can install different operating systems and third-party software to the device. The Verge has pointed out you can install Windows to the handheld and turn it into a portable Xbox.
"Steam Deck is a PC so you can install third-party software and operating systems," said Valve.
The handheld has a custom AMD GPU with eight RDNA 2 CUs and up to 1.6 teraflops of performance. This is more than the 1.4 teraflops of the Xbox One S and below the 1.8 teraflops of the PlayStation 4. It also runs on modern RDNA 2 architecture.
Microsoft now releases all of its first-party games on PC on the Microsoft Store with many of them coming to Steam. With Xbox Game Pass you have access to over 100 games on PC alone and if you are an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate member you can use Xbox Cloud Gaming to stream games if you have fast enough internet.
The SteamOS on Steam Deck can run 7,586 games out of 54,280 on Steam. However, if you install Windows you will have access to all but 13 games on Steam.
What isn't known is how well Windows will run on a handheld device it hasn't been optimized. We also don't know yet how well games running on Windows will perform on the Steam Deck.
Steam Deck will launch this December starting $399 for the model with 64GB eMMC internal storage. The $529 model comes with 256GB NVMe SSD internal storage, while the $649 model comes with 512GB NVMe SSD internal storage.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I'm sold.
The battery life takes only 2-8 to deplete, im sure it will take only 2 in most cases with regular brightness. This was a killer for me.
That's great news, that makes this device more appealing, Steam and Windows is a 1 2 Hit combo. Hope it doesn't eat into too much of that storage though.
But that will probably take all the 64GB of space.
Which is why you don't buy the 64GB version.
And while I've seen complaints on the external storage speed, that could be ideal for something like altOS or store or screenshots/etc. Or just any "lower spec" games that don't need high speed loading. Which the low end model is probably fine for alone, for people who are only looking to play those sort of games.
Why would you get the 64GB in the first place lol
they should add a 5g SIM slot, in that case
Gyro controls? This could make or break it for me.
It would be cool if they got Xcloud running on it.
xCloud can run in browser, so it should work straight out the box
Also coming to Xbox app on Windows, so it will also run natively. :) (as you can get rid of this Steamcrap and install Windows on it :))
Wow, that took like... 5 minutes.
What did?
Misleading topic since there are Xbox games that don't run on PC and PC games that don't run on Xbox.
This is a portable PC, not a Xbox handheld.
Halo Infinite on launch day, everyone knows you don't get EVERY game but you get a lot of them. You get EVERY MICROSOFT FIRST PARTY game, so don't be silly. EVERY MICROSOFT FIRST PARTY PLUS EVERY STEAM GAME and you are nit picking.
What a switch killer!
Now there's no reason to own an Xbox coz u can freaking buy this instead hahaha
Lol playing next gen games on 1.4 teraflops graphic card. Games will look worse than xbox one games lol or at most xbox one quality lol
Thanks for the info, I forgot about power constraints
slightly more power then the ps4 on a non bespoke hardware means that in practice, its going to be slightly lower, especially when running windows instead of Steam OS, so actually probably on the same ballpark as the switch realistically when running stuff on windows.
plus the base model is trash when literally the windows install is going to take up like half the 64GB it comes out with.
still a very much better option then say, the GPD win 2 or something
This is a custom chip, it is bespoke. The CPU and RAM is more than 4x, it will run much better than a PS4, the main issue is most PC players want double the PS4 for true 60fps gameplay.
I said slightly lower.
at 720p, its gonna run around ps4 level, maybe higher, but its not going to auto 60fps at 720p the 1080p 30fps ps4 games.
the CHIP is custom but the games arn't built specifically FOR the chip which is what makes consoles run better in the first place. also the OS isn't exactly custom for the device.
I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about.
It's more powerful than a Playstation 4.
There is more to performance than Teraflops, don't get to invested in advertising buzzwords.
Fact is... Ryzen >>> Jaguar by several multiples.
RDNA > GCN on a per flop basis is no contest.
16GB GDDR5 > 8GB GDDR5.
I mean. As powerful as a PS4? Common. It's clearly a step up on all fronts.
Exactly the modern architecture takes care of that extra .2 flops by a large margin and more importantly Ryzen RDNA 2 and the extra ram even though its GDDR5 means being built on similar architecture to PS5 series X/S really opens up the Steam Deck to next gen ports while serving as a conduit for porting PC games to consoles.
