The fact that we have handhelds that can play as graphically complex games as this, is still insane to me. Don't think I'll ever get over that feeling.
wait until we hit that point where streaming a games graphics or just the game is just so seamless due to the advancements in wireless tech, will be insane
What strikes me is how...chunky/fizzly everything looks when you crank TSR/FSR to extremes. Like you get these "next gen" engines running 30fps, but looking worse than older engines that also hit 30 (or 60!) simply because the detail is being blown away by an upscale.
Yeah, to me none of these titles are playable on the Deck because of that awful blur on the screen. You have to be legally blind not to notice it. I have a Steam Deck and I would rather play slightly older AAA games because you can atleast play them at acceptable framerates without turning the visuals to mush.
@@Luke357I mean, to each their own. I don't care what games look like at all. I lower the settings as much as possible and use the smallest render rez I can even on my 3080 just to consume less power to play the game. IDGAF!
You’re testing Talos Principle 2 on the first level, before the world expands and trees bring the frame rate to its knees. A low-medium mix with high Lumen is playable, but mostly in the low to mid 20 fps range.
Talos 2 becones MUCH HEAVIER AFTER THE TUTORIAL. The maps become open and much bigger and the framerate is reduced. Please check out the open maps AFTER THE OPENING
@@mrpositronia After exiting the first area, you need to go to medium settings AT MOST if you dont want to be below 30. I did mostly medium with Draw on near and reflections and shadows on low and it hovers between 30 and 40 in tsr blanced. Since the oled deck lets me cap at 40fps 80 hz without making drops feel terrible like they did on 40/40 on the lcd, i left the 40 cap, accept minimal stutters on traversal though the open world and i get solid 40 during puzzle chambers
@@Ayoul It probably isn't as big of a deal on the 7" or 7.4" display, but the shimmering might get annoying in some games. Trees in ARK immediately comes to mind.
Love your coverage, but you need to show the other areas outside of the tutorial when you talk about The Talos Principle 2. The tutorial area is very small and the frame-rate takes a big hit when you get to some of the bigger areas where you spend most of the playtime.
Same for RoboCop, same for Immortals. They are literally unplayable in later levels. Those "tests" are a joke. Deck is a potato in 2024 and DF is trying to push the sales.
@@lechistanskiswit320 its generalized problem of ue5 that the cost of running is way too dependant on a levels specifics and not very normalized. But i gotta say i played a lot of robocop and beyond the drops when slow mo explosions happen all over the place its fine and even then i found it playable. I played some of the talos later levels and they are playable but you have to potato all the settings but textures and use tsr performance or balanced
I thought about that at first but then thought, would VRR be that good on portable devices? Apart from with lighter games that can do much higher frame rates. I came to the conclusion that you are probably better off having a fixed frame rate to conserve on battery life, after all, VRR would likely mean gamers ramping up the visuals where the hardware is more or less maxing out all the time on triple A games, which you could get better visuals overall but battery life wouldn't be that great. Personally, I prefer the idea of locking the frame rate down for better battery life and assuming you can maintain the lock, it will still be great.
@@paul1979uk2000 I think so. I often want to lock the framerate to 40 but the game will dip under stress to 30-40 range. Right now those drops are stuttery which could be cleaned up with VRR.
Oh and to address the batter consumption aspect I missed at first glance, I often know exactly how long I'll be between charging. If I'm on the couch at home, at a friends place, at the library, on a bus or train for a short commute, in a waiting room, and so on... I don't care about burning through battery as much as if I were goin on a long flight or road trip. In the cases where I know I can easily charge I want to push the hardware to it's max whether thats framerate or fidelity depending on the game
Yeah the Steam Deck is an absolute marvel. I've played mine a lot and it's staggering just how good games play and look on the small screen, which is usually the case anyway. Also the fact it plays these CURRENT GEN ONLY TITLES AT ALL is simply STUNNING. The Steam Deck is probably the best (coolest) gaming device I've bought and ever seen. Kudos Valve!!
Yeah, that's how I feel about the Legion Go. But yeah, the Steam Deck is great and I can only imagine how much more incredible the Steam Deck 2 will be.
@@Arnell_TheEsoteric_Long I almost bought the legion go due to the 8in screen and windows. But the deck having a OLED screen was enough to sway me. Now the first company to offer a 8in, OLED, windows machine...... I'll buy that day one.
It pains me to see UE take center stage. For PC gaming this engine has brought only pain, forced TAA and traversal / asset streaming stutters (which has been there since at least UE3). I wish devs would move to other engines.
The whole picture is just freaking MUD! I h@te this generation of games. How can you appreciate any of these "advanced rendering techniques" when picture quality is so bad? I don't get it. I'd take any past-gen game with a clear, crisp picture over this artifacting low-res mess anyday.
What is worth noting is that "bad graphics" typically look a "lot better" on 7" screen. This, IMHO, changes the rules a little and makes comparing to a traditional console less "accurate".
yeah, when watching this I made the player smaller to get a better experience as to what it would look like on the deck. I think it looks pretty fucking great.
The 7 inch screen is much closer to our eyes, so its size in our FoV could actually be larger than a TV at reasonable distance. (Objects that are further away appear smaller.)
I have a Legion GO as a bedroom machine, connected when docked to my old 28 inch 1200p PC monitor from many years ago. On the GO, "low graphics" look "high" and sharp texture wise, directly comparing to the PC monitor behind it, they look like watching 480p textures.
I'm sorry but seeing FSR/other upscaling tecnologies trying to upscale such low resolutions to begin with to me looks very glithchy and full of artifacts. Given that without using those technologies these games wouldn't even run, I'd say the Steam Deck is not powerful enough for them. It doesnt look similar to console, a small screen helps but it isn't a miracle worker, and upscaling the image from 120p isn't a viable choice.
I love that the Steam Deck is getting some more attention from DF. I really think it deserves it and I'd love to see reviews that also show Steam Deck performance and optimized settings. I know it's more work, but I think there is enough demand to see this.
The release of FSR 3 in more games is going to be a game changer for the steam deck. Modders have managed to get FSR 3 running on every game on the deck this week with limitations and bugs, but it’s an incredible start!
True! Plus RTX 20 series and 30 series card owners can now use frame generation with DLSS thanks to AMD 😂 crazy how greedy Nvidia is as a company now that money means more to them now more than ever because if they cared they could have just released it rather than having us by 40 series just to experience this feature 😮
@@808chadda DLSS3 requires hardware specific to the 40 series GPUs. FSR is software based and as neat as it is, it's inferior to DLSS. If you don't care about having the best image reconstruction and frame gen, go with AMD.
Regardless of performance level, I genuinely don't get why anyone would want to play games on a small screen if a large portion of their enjoyment comes from visuals. There are so many last-gen or indie games that run incredibly well on my Deck (or an Ally/etc), there's zero desire to play the latest AAA bla bla, and the battery lasts 5+ hours. I expect my opinion will change when PS5/XSX-exclusive games become more common, but for now I have hundreds of games to choose from that run incredibly well.
You only tested the first tutorial section of Talos Principle 2 which is not representative of the game graphics. Medium graphics settings work well even later in the game.
You sound very positive, but needing to play these game with upscaling from 360p to achieve 720p40 is not that great. "These games are playable at SNES resolutions and 30FPS" Like, I love my SteamDeck, but this being your takeaway is just weird.
I can't be the only one who kind of loves the look of Robocop on Steam Deck, right? The lower resolution and noisy artifacts kind of make it looks like an old school low-fi filter that is wonderfully appropriate for a Robocop game!
Yeah none of the temporal scaling techniques look very good when the output resolution and framerate is so low. I sort of prefer just setting the resolution lower and using the built-in FSR1 feature in many cases.
Technically steam deck performance is not the best maybe is one of the worst among last years handhelds, but the whole experience is great( battery, screen, OS, fan noise and heat dissipation etc)
Talos principle Steam Deck - 360p upsacled to 720p using TSR + ustable fps (drops to 4x fps) Series S (performance mode) runs 900p upscaled to 1440p + stable 60fps (drops below 60fps is extremely rare) You running better lighting setting on steam deck, but you ignored the big difference in resolution and also fps stability
I’ve been using my OLED Steam Deck mostly to play older and emulated games. Despite how good the underlying tech of UE5 may be, the Lumen noise, upscaling artifacts and general blurriness make the overall image quality so much worse than the super crisp older titles running at native display resolution or higher. To give one example, I’ve replayed Alien Isolation on my Deck, and was blown away by how incredible it looked and played.
Alien Isolation looks incredible on the Deck especially with the Alias Isolation mod. Lots of 2010-ish era games look and run amazing on the Deck. Being able to run lots of current AAA games decently is a bonus.
Good video series. I think of any modern game that runs on Steam Deck as a nice bonus, like a free Switch port, rather than a requirement for my purchasing decisions. I mostly play my Steam backlog on there (Arkham Origins per the recent DF video about that!)
an linux powered device, with: more than 13.000 games that valve did an QA to make sure they work. more than 20.000 games if you include the native ones. and probably 60~75% of the steam library should work fine (since 2/3 of what valve tested worked fine, the other ones they still have to test) there are more games on the steam deck than on all sega consoles combined, xbox series (wich include games from xbox, xbox360 and xbox one) and most playstation consoles. that counting only the games that you can purchase and play direct from the store, not to mention games from other stores that also work thanks to heroic game launcher, lutris or other clients. not to mention emulators. not to mention other things you might do on the device beside play games, how valve is consumer friendly with things like making the device easy to repair (they even have an partnership with ifix to help fix their devices along side devices from every vendor) , not making exclusive games to try to force people to purchase it, allowing /supporting mods, allowing fangames with their ips , you wont be charged to play online, the store wont shutdown preventing you from purchasing new games, you can transfer the library to any pc you own instead paying again for the same games, they made cad files avaliable to make it easier to develop acessories, hell some people even managed to make accesories that make the deck compatible with physical catridges of other consoles! not to mention steam input has tons of features, and steam in general. valve isnt perfect, far from it, but by fair they are the most consumer friendly nowadays and steam deck is an amazing product! and now digital foundry is showing how powerfull this device is, imagine if/when developers start to actually targeting it by using vulkan and/or doing some optimizations specifically for handhelds... actually i think talos principle already use vulkan. i cant stress enough how excited i am!
8:38 High in The Talos Principle 2? Ah, DF did not test the main part of game, just tutorial that mimics graphics of 2014 TTP1. The main game is 40 fps, with drops do 25 in some areas, on LOW.
I feel like further commentary on battery life would be useful. This headroom above 30 usually becomes important battery life savings, and knowing how much we should expect on typical play is very useful
Not really, if you’re pushing UE5 features the Deck is running pretty much flat out so you’ll get the widely available minimum battery life as a result.
@@PixelisedPaul Battery consumption has nothing to do with features, it has to do with headroom. If there is headroom, the deck is not running flat out.
With my lcd deck the battery was anywhere to 1.5 hours all the way close to 6…depending on engine and how you run it of course…that being said I haven’t even checked my OLEDs battery level…because overall the jump in life is better.
this video really highlights how much ghosting and flickering newer graphics tech has. the ghosting halos around the character in Jusant are made super apparent on the lower rez screen, the spell effects in Aveum come across as a blurry mess, and all of the graphical effects in Robocop are butchered and make the game look like it's an even lower resolution than Xenoblade 2. pretty sure all of these could be solved by turning off the ray tracing, at which point they're no longer using the newest graphics tech. I wish there was more focus on getting rid of the artifacts of ray tracing cause it's so annoying to want to play the newest games with the newest tech only to see smears, dithering and ghosting everywhere.
what I find interesting, I know FSR is AMD's tech but you would think so many developers from so many companies are more then willing to help develop it to be better as they are dependent on it.
Some devs make their own upscalers, same with engine developers. Surprised more Unreal games don't use TSR (Unreal's upscaler), as I think it's better than FSR2 in games with fast motion. And obviously since nVidia has the largest market share, devs support DLSS. I think devs are hoping Microsoft comes up with a universal solution for Direct X like Apple does with MetalFX for apple devices.
FSR isn't open to merge requests on GitHub (which is honestly understandable), so the only way to convince AMD to improve it would be forking the project and then hoping that enough people will support your version that it will force AMD to consider your changes. Also, reportedly, Samsung and Qualcomm are also working on FSR along with AMD. Whether they intend to improve the tech or simply tweak it to run on phones is unknown, though.
I wonder if they do accept help from other devs. It's open source but not sure what license and what kind of arrangement. That's the essence of open sourc3, let's build it together so we'll all benefit from it 😄
@@AninoNiKugi Under the MIT license. There is only one committer to the official external repository, who publishes squashed commits of the whole release changeset once per release. AMD does not run a contributor driven or open developer process, but there's nothing preventing a community fork from existing.
Apples upscaling is actually Amd's fsr 1 and 2 with perhaps some minor tweaks. I wonder that if Apple is able to take Amd's technology and make improvements of it, if they would actually give back to the community and share their work.
I was going to bite the bullet on a steam deck then UEVR was just released. Now im putting the money towards a 3060ti to go with my quest 2. All the latest games in full VR is going to be insane im glad i waited. I would go with a 4090 but i have a hp z4 g4 sitting doing nothing
I have a SD and lets be honest here, aaa games running on the SD especially newer games look horrendous, theyre upscaled from ridiculously low resolutions and it dosent look good. The SD is great for older titles and indies but it simply hasnt got the power to run new games at acceptable image quality.
Indie scene is where the fun stuff can be found anyway imo. I got my SD specifically because I wanted a console like system that could play Steam indie games and tbh I've basically stopped playing AAA games since then.
For me the problem isn't related to lightning calculation, lumen availability, or something like that. The issue lies in picture reconstruction. Games in FSR and any other tool other than DLSS look like muddy garbage, with some dot noise and a lot of blur.
If this is what Steam Deck can do it’s going to be insane what Nintendo and Nvidia get out of a closed console platform handheld like Switch 2 when also able to leverage DLSS.
Right, for the last time, get *beyond* the introductory section of Talos Principle 2 when you use it for fidelity and performance. The main game is *significantly* heavier on the GPU and there are several sections of the game where performance is easily halved through much, much higher geometric and foliage detail. Saying that Talos 2 is 'the best performing here so far' is a joke once you get outside of the 'calibration' section (egyptian themed, lasts about 20 mins) For gods sake, please, *please* get a save game from someone who's completed it and look at how it performs in *other areas*. Literally anyone who's played TTP2 for more than an hour knows this isn't remotely representative of how the game performs and it's a joke to see it being used here as an example.
Reconstruction is really bad for lower resolutions, well , for any. I'd rather use some discrete resolution like 720p and let it that way. Pick your poison but I still preffer aliasing in place of dither/blurred image
Steam Deck AAA modern games are perfect at 30FPS, beautiful, smooth and detailed, control response also feels perfect. If you are so egoic you don't like 30FPS, drop a few settings, lock to 40 and your flying. Playing GTA IV on proton experimental currently with the recent enhanced fusion and console graphics mods and wow! Most settings dialled up but placed a 40fps frame cap as I preferred the stability over unlocked - looks and plays incredible. Stop expecting 60+ ultra high in Sandbox games on a handheld and you will not be disappointed. The complaints are ridiculous considering most PC gamers play low settings at 1080p.
His use of the word "code" as a sort of synonym for "version" bothers me though. "Taking a look at the Series S code". I'm like no, that's not what you're doing.
"Too big for the Steam Deck" for me is if a new game can't be played at low settings at a playable framerate anymore. You always have me slightly worried with these videos for them to only end up blowing my mind all over again, by how powerful the Deck is and how well it's holding up with the newest titles for a freaking portable machine.
I think the tradeoffs here are just too great. Although it runs quite well, the ouput is just soooo pixelated. It's reminiscent of a PS1 game but with GI... I would personally rather not have lumen but have a near native res image.
Probably not all that much better... A lot of the benchmarks of the Deck vs Alley give them similar performance results. Unless you have the Alley plugged directly into a wall out and running on turbo mode. Windows is such a performance hog for handhelds.
@@oo--7714 That "big difference" is only if you have the ROG again, plugged into a wall and running in turbo. Using a reasonable wattage for a handheld like 15w there barely a difference of like 5FPS between the Steam Deck and Ally at 1080P. The ROG ally isn't performant enough to run at 1080P and get actually decent on the go performance.
@@tyrcipher8811nah even at 18 watts 😂 You don’t need to go into turbo mode. The legion go has better battery life though playing games at 1200p at 20 watts. It is comparable to the lcd steam deck at full power.
In my opinion, I'd say that this video shows that UE5 titles don't really scale well to the Deck. UE5 games will only get more demanding, and we're already having to go to 360p and lower resolutions (with scaling, yes, but at this low of a resolution it looks awful anyway).
feels like someone threw sand in my eyes. it seems UE5 (and lumen in particular) is too much for steam deck when it comes to image quality. perhaps Valve can work with Epic to find a better illumination option.
The Steam Deck is going on two years old & it's still capable of holding its own. It falls short with a handful of game but it isn't that much of a big deal. With that said, I will be waiting for the next Steam Deck. Willing to assume that it will be Zen 6/RDNA 4 based which should give it a substantial jump in performance & efficiency.
It probably would be zen4/rdna4 since they need to save as much money as possible so most probably would be the oldest cpu architecture available at the time. Zen4 seems like it.
@@modernlogix Possible, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's Zen5 and RDNA4, maybe 5 but I suspect 3. We should also remember that because of the success of the original Deck, Valve will likely put more resources into the Deck 2, they also might work with AMD on a custom job, which if they do, they could end up using hardware that isn't on the market at the time but is planned to be released soon after, the Steam Deck is being built very much like how consoles are, if the sales numbers keep rising, both Valve and AMD will likely be willing to do more custom work on the hardware.
Talos Principle 2's graphics really leap ahead after the 'calibration' area, which mimics the original game's graphics. So, it's probably better to fix the graphic settings once you get into the game proper.
A “dream” Steam Deck for me, would be a unit that has a VRR capable display, with the ability to tap into DLSS rather than FSR or TSR. I am aware this would require Nvidia to make an x86 SoC, rather than ARM… but I can dream, right?
This is why I'm holding out to buy a steam deck 2. Right now there's way too many asterisks attached to the steam deck experience, but give it a full team red's architecture generational bump and it will be a 1080p portable beast with little to no compromises, all that at a very low price point. Don't get me wrong. The current hardware IS already incredible given the power budget, and the performance per watt is already impressive, but in many modern popular titles this is still a 720p30 experience (or a 720p with VFR** that needs lots of graphical compromises). Unreal Engine 5 wasn't even on the plans when this hardware was designed, and this speaks volumes on how well implemented UE5 is at targeting low spec hardware rather than speaking of how powerful the Zen/RDNA architecture is. (This still blows the switch out of the water tho. Switch 2 might be dead on arrival for third party developers if Nintendo doesn't offer backwards compatibility and doesn't at least aim to get equal to a hypothetical Steam Deck 2 in compute prowess.)
"Hypothetical", the thing you want still won't be possible even in 5 years looking at how much power you need for 1080p no fsr on ue5 games. You need a 3070 laptop variant gpu to run immortals of aveum at 1080p 50-60fps on low. The switch isn't going to be milked for another 5 years they cannot reach the 1080p height that you want in 2 years. Ain't happening. These handhelds are barely xbox one/ps4 level, to expect them to jump to 3070 tier in 5 years is wishfull thinking (the steam deck 2 will not be that fast) and by then ue6 would have come out.
@@oo--7714 I mean, yes, you are not wrong, but you are only considering no fsr when (infuriatingly for some) a lot of studios are making their multiplatform games exactly with fsr/dlss in mind. And yeah, some are calling all this stuff "fake pixels" or "fake frames" but honestly if the artifacts are only detectable in freeze frames (like it has been analyzed on multiple DF videos) and if the added lag isn't terrible, I'd call my expectations fulfilled.
@@rodylermglezlook at the steam deck, fsr just doesn't look even playable. Looks worse than switch ports at that point, running at 360p. It is noticable from a low resolution that the steam deck outputs at I have one. It is even noticable on the rog ally in motion in games like ghostwire tokyo
@@oo--7714 hence why I'm waiting for the steam deck 2. I started the thread saying that this current generation, though impressive, isn't still quite there yet. Moot point to argue that next Gen steam decks and similar devices will be bad because the current steam deck / ROG Ally / Ayaneo / Legion Go aren't powerful enough. That's kinda like arguing/predicting the XBOne/PS4 were going to be bad because the XB360/PS3 were uneven 30 fps consoles. And if the steam deck 2 doesn't coalesce (even though this is a still very much untapped market and someone is bound to make more powerful handheld gaming pcs), no problem. I'll buy another affordable Ryzen laptop to game on 🙂
@@rodylermglezI guess but you won't get better graphics on intergrated graphics laptops from intel or amd. You will get better performance on laptops with a gpu though.
When showing B-roll of games on more powerful systems in a video about Steam deck running games, it feels prudent to label the hardware each clip is running on
@melxb That's what I think. Instead of running these games at the lowest upscaling preset like what's required with the Deck, the windows handhelds could probably run them at a balanced or quality settings to greatly reduce the artifacting and breakup. Image quality, I think, would be a huge improvement.
I have a PS5 and a $2500 PC. The Steam Deck is the device I play the most. Sure the PC and PS5 play games at higher resolutions and frame rates but I can’t take them anywhere.
Any game newer than the PS4 gen has horrendous image quality so I’d personally say no. At a certain point there needs to be acknowledgment that the steam deck is an accessory to a gaming pc, not a replacement. There’s a reason that there are literally more users with 4090s then steam decks according to the steam hardware survey. It’s a niche item for older games and indies
Honestly I don't get the glazing that digital foundry does, fsp performance at 720p is like 240p, with awful pixekation, and they are calling that playable, they mocked the switch for going so low in terms of internal resolution but this really isn't any better. Looks too bad
It is not competing with series s It runs at much lower resolution and worse fps that series S.... You know that 720p FSR performance mode upscales 360p to 720p
@killermoon635 Both machines are based around the same AMD technologies - Zen 2 CPUs paired with RDNA 2 GPUs. Both use the same upscale techniques one aims for 720p the other 1080. One is a portable system the other is not. They can be bought for as low as 350-400. They are playing the same video game above. They are made by different tech companies. They are competitors. It's not hard
In my own testing in development, while TSR is generally much better looking than FSR 2, it also comes with a HEFTY performance cost, so that Jusant comparison isn't exactly surprising, and I'd bet you'd get a more consistent and slightly higher framerate in Robocop if you used FSR2 instead of TSR. My dev machine is a 5700xt with a Ryzen 3900x (outdated? Yes. Gives me a strong incentive to optimize? Also yes) and at a 50% render target TSR actually causes a bigger hit to framerate than Lumen does, while FSR 2 is basically free (albeit with a lot more artifacting).
0:18 What are you saying? UE5 is a development tool and game engine. Devs can absolutely create games for lower spec hardware using UE5. You don't need to use all the new, resource intensive features in order to use UE5. You can still make games like before and make them more efficient. I feel like there is this mindset that when UE5 is used, all the resource intensive features must also be used. That's like saying all games will now have to use raytracing just because the option is available.
I don't think he is saying "UE5 poses a challenge to low power platforms". He's saying "A large UE5 appeal is it's sophisticated features" and "using the sophisticated features pose a challenge to lower power platforms". Of course you can make an UE5 game without using such features, they're just not the point of this video.
@@Zer01neBDTDevto be fair the switch will never run Unreal 5 at any settings so the steam deck doing it at high or low settings is pretty crazy since it’s about 55 percent of the power of the series s
Watching this video on a Deck, aside from The Talos Principle 2, I think most of these make too deep of sacrifices to make good experiences. They're playable, but some of the image quality issues and lumen resolve problems really feel like a bridge too far. These feel like some of the more overly ambitious switch ports out there. If you have no other way to play them and you can bear with the issues, then sure, go for it, but otherwise it's really not a palatable or advisable experience.
I know its for coverage of ue5 features but in RoboCop i would tweak some pf the medium settings to low so you van get 480 or 540p tsr upscaling to 720p.
looks like hot garbage on the steamdeck to be honest, just trying to keep it together at 30fps. I rather run something less taxing or stream to the deck from a real pc. The GPD Win Mini is what I need a touch beyond that.
The Talos Principle 2's first area is completely unrepresentative of the rest 99% of the game in terms of performance. I can only imagine how hard Steam Deck's gonna be hit once you get to the island (the rest of the game basically). lol You'd need to lower everything to the minimum or it won't be playable probably.
I am honestly fine with using my Steam Deck for the less demanding titles in my library and playing the "big" games on my desktop machine. That being said, it's impressive to see what can be achieved with some compromises.
Steam deck this 2024 really lacks performance, im sorry but 30fps is unacceptable anymore. People can play this AAA games with ease with the more powerful Legion Go /Ally at 900p or 1050p 20w with 50fps-100fps up. Graphics on the Go with 900p is way clearer and smoother than the SD's. Once you inject that fsr3 mod Go's can reach up to 150fps on the Go's 144hz screen imagine the smoothness of that. You guys really need to change your handhelds .
Enjoy 40 minutes of battery 😂nah I'll keep using my steam deck it plays everything I want with a better UI and battery life. Hopefully in late 2025 valve drops a steam deck 2 with I think strix halo apu will be available in a 15-20 watt package by then.
If 30FPS is unacceptable for someone, then he should stop playing games🙂 30 FPS does not going anywhere. Maybe in a next generation 🙂 Ally and GO are different kind of beast than Steam Deck. Where SD is more hardware and software like a game console, Ally and GO are nothing more, really nothing more than a nice PC in portable form.
I didn't understand why The Talos Principle 2 used real time GI. They could've achieved a similar effect with baked lighting since the time of day doesn't change dynamically.
The tutorial area for Talos Principle 2 is not representative of the rest of the game. I played the game on Deck and the performance got significantly worse in the larger areas of the main worlds
The fact that we have handhelds that can play as graphically complex games as this, is still insane to me. Don't think I'll ever get over that feeling.
I had to upgrade my PC to play Cyberpunk. I'm now playing it in the palm of my hands. At higher settings and FPS. Can't get over that either. :D
It's optimisation. I'm hoping more games want to be on the deck and companies try to make it work by optimising their games properly.
wait until we hit that point where streaming a games graphics or just the game is just so seamless due to the advancements in wireless tech, will be insane
@@NonsensicalSpudz geforce now is already great. Not for multiplayer but Singleplayer games run really really good.
My little mind was blown when I first learned about the Sega Nomad - this feels a lot like that!
What strikes me is how...chunky/fizzly everything looks when you crank TSR/FSR to extremes.
Like you get these "next gen" engines running 30fps, but looking worse than older engines that also hit 30 (or 60!) simply because the detail is being blown away by an upscale.
Yeah, to me none of these titles are playable on the Deck because of that awful blur on the screen. You have to be legally blind not to notice it. I have a Steam Deck and I would rather play slightly older AAA games because you can atleast play them at acceptable framerates without turning the visuals to mush.
FSR works much better with a 1080p screen resolution. 540p--> 1080p is bae
@@Luke357I mean, to each their own. I don't care what games look like at all. I lower the settings as much as possible and use the smallest render rez I can even on my 3080 just to consume less power to play the game. IDGAF!
You’re testing Talos Principle 2 on the first level, before the world expands and trees bring the frame rate to its knees. A low-medium mix with high Lumen is playable, but mostly in the low to mid 20 fps range.
Yes, this is not representative of the vast majority of the game. In many zones you are lucky to hit 30.
Yeah, that first level is very small compared to the mini open world-sized areas where you spend the bulk of the playtime.
Yep. The opening area is mimicking the original game's graphics. They improve greatly in the proper game. So these settings probably won't cut it.
With FSR 3 coming to AMD hardware it’s going to be super playable… look it up!
Talos 2 becones MUCH HEAVIER AFTER THE TUTORIAL. The maps become open and much bigger and the framerate is reduced. Please check out the open maps AFTER THE OPENING
Yes. This is definitely a video made by someone who hasn't actually play the game properly.
@@mrpositronia After exiting the first area, you need to go to medium settings AT MOST if you dont want to be below 30. I did mostly medium with Draw on near and reflections and shadows on low and it hovers between 30 and 40 in tsr blanced. Since the oled deck lets me cap at 40fps 80 hz without making drops feel terrible like they did on 40/40 on the lcd, i left the 40 cap, accept minimal stutters on traversal though the open world and i get solid 40 during puzzle chambers
STEAM DECK CONTENT!!! I'm here for it.
We all are!
Kind of doing Series S dirty by not mentioning it's double the frame rate. But at least he pointed out the Series S forces better optimization.
Higher resolution too
Series S is impressive for the size and price.
Yeah Immortals looks absolutely atrocious on steam deck. Can't see any of the details.
@@Ayoul It probably isn't as big of a deal on the 7" or 7.4" display, but the shimmering might get annoying in some games. Trees in ARK immediately comes to mind.
@@kayiskoibro 240p internal res looks bad, it looks bad on a phone let alone a steam deck which is larger
Love your coverage, but you need to show the other areas outside of the tutorial when you talk about The Talos Principle 2. The tutorial area is very small and the frame-rate takes a big hit when you get to some of the bigger areas where you spend most of the playtime.
Precisely. I'm surprised they haven't reviewed this game properly. The graphics really are excellent.
@@mrpositronia has anyone tweeted at them?
@@mrpositronia Exactly the game deserves an in depth graphics video.
Same for RoboCop, same for Immortals.
They are literally unplayable in later levels. Those "tests" are a joke.
Deck is a potato in 2024 and DF is trying to push the sales.
@@lechistanskiswit320 its generalized problem of ue5 that the cost of running is way too dependant on a levels specifics and not very normalized. But i gotta say i played a lot of robocop and beyond the drops when slow mo explosions happen all over the place its fine and even then i found it playable. I played some of the talos later levels and they are playable but you have to potato all the settings but textures and use tsr performance or balanced
A Steam Deck with a variable refresh rate display would make the device a couple of magnitudes better.
Because you could play games with sub-30 FPS?
@@cube2fox you could run them above with variable refresh rate and have slightly better input lag
I thought about that at first but then thought, would VRR be that good on portable devices? Apart from with lighter games that can do much higher frame rates.
I came to the conclusion that you are probably better off having a fixed frame rate to conserve on battery life, after all, VRR would likely mean gamers ramping up the visuals where the hardware is more or less maxing out all the time on triple A games, which you could get better visuals overall but battery life wouldn't be that great.
Personally, I prefer the idea of locking the frame rate down for better battery life and assuming you can maintain the lock, it will still be great.
@@paul1979uk2000 I think so. I often want to lock the framerate to 40 but the game will dip under stress to 30-40 range. Right now those drops are stuttery which could be cleaned up with VRR.
Oh and to address the batter consumption aspect I missed at first glance, I often know exactly how long I'll be between charging. If I'm on the couch at home, at a friends place, at the library, on a bus or train for a short commute, in a waiting room, and so on... I don't care about burning through battery as much as if I were goin on a long flight or road trip. In the cases where I know I can easily charge I want to push the hardware to it's max whether thats framerate or fidelity depending on the game
More Steam Deck videos please! I enjoy them a lot
+1 aalso gaming on GNU/Linux videos would be swesome
Yeah the Steam Deck is an absolute marvel. I've played mine a lot and it's staggering just how good games play and look on the small screen, which is usually the case anyway. Also the fact it plays these CURRENT GEN ONLY TITLES AT ALL is simply STUNNING. The Steam Deck is probably the best (coolest) gaming device I've bought and ever seen. Kudos Valve!!
Can't wait to see what the next model deck looks like, if they can improve the performance by like 30% then that's solid.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
I had a few gripes with the steam deck ...... But after picking up the OLED. NO MORE!!!!
Yeah, that's how I feel about the Legion Go.
But yeah, the Steam Deck is great and I can only imagine how much more incredible the Steam Deck 2 will be.
@@Arnell_TheEsoteric_Long I almost bought the legion go due to the 8in screen and windows. But the deck having a OLED screen was enough to sway me. Now the first company to offer a 8in, OLED, windows machine...... I'll buy that day one.
It pains me to see UE take center stage. For PC gaming this engine has brought only pain, forced TAA and traversal / asset streaming stutters (which has been there since at least UE3). I wish devs would move to other engines.
The whole picture is just freaking MUD! I h@te this generation of games. How can you appreciate any of these "advanced rendering techniques" when picture quality is so bad? I don't get it. I'd take any past-gen game with a clear, crisp picture over this artifacting low-res mess anyday.
Would LOVE a video experimenting with the FSR 3 mods on steam deck
Barely worth the effort, as FSR 3 (FG) needs at least 45 FPS as a baseline to not feel horrible.
@@deckversedepending on the game you can actually get away with less
@@deckverse I never said I wanted specifically UE5 games tho
@@deckversearen't the 45 frames minimum just for the Frame Gen?
@@Dass_Jenniri think so too! Not dure if and how much Better fsr 3 looks ehen scaling from lower resolution
What is worth noting is that "bad graphics" typically look a "lot better" on 7" screen. This, IMHO, changes the rules a little and makes comparing to a traditional console less "accurate".
yeah, when watching this I made the player smaller to get a better experience as to what it would look like on the deck. I think it looks pretty fucking great.
I have an Ally and bad graphics still look pretty bad on a 7" screen
The 7 inch screen is much closer to our eyes, so its size in our FoV could actually be larger than a TV at reasonable distance. (Objects that are further away appear smaller.)
I have a Legion GO as a bedroom machine, connected when docked to my old 28 inch 1200p PC monitor from many years ago. On the GO, "low graphics" look "high" and sharp texture wise, directly comparing to the PC monitor behind it, they look like watching 480p textures.
@@kylerclarke2689yea I don't get the cope
I'm sorry but seeing FSR/other upscaling tecnologies trying to upscale such low resolutions to begin with to me looks very glithchy and full of artifacts. Given that without using those technologies these games wouldn't even run, I'd say the Steam Deck is not powerful enough for them. It doesnt look similar to console, a small screen helps but it isn't a miracle worker, and upscaling the image from 120p isn't a viable choice.
I love that the Steam Deck is getting some more attention from DF. I really think it deserves it and I'd love to see reviews that also show Steam Deck performance and optimized settings. I know it's more work, but I think there is enough demand to see this.
The release of FSR 3 in more games is going to be a game changer for the steam deck. Modders have managed to get FSR 3 running on every game on the deck this week with limitations and bugs, but it’s an incredible start!
True! Plus RTX 20 series and 30 series card owners can now use frame generation with DLSS thanks to AMD 😂 crazy how greedy Nvidia is as a company now that money means more to them now more than ever because if they cared they could have just released it rather than having us by 40 series just to experience this feature 😮
@@808chadda DLSS3 requires hardware specific to the 40 series GPUs. FSR is software based and as neat as it is, it's inferior to DLSS. If you don't care about having the best image reconstruction and frame gen, go with AMD.
@@phrozac seeing as we are talking about steam decks and FSR, we don’t have a choice and are stuck with AMD.
Regardless of performance level, I genuinely don't get why anyone would want to play games on a small screen if a large portion of their enjoyment comes from visuals. There are so many last-gen or indie games that run incredibly well on my Deck (or an Ally/etc), there's zero desire to play the latest AAA bla bla, and the battery lasts 5+ hours. I expect my opinion will change when PS5/XSX-exclusive games become more common, but for now I have hundreds of games to choose from that run incredibly well.
You only tested the first tutorial section of Talos Principle 2 which is not representative of the game graphics. Medium graphics settings work well even later in the game.
You sound very positive, but needing to play these game with upscaling from 360p to achieve 720p40 is not that great.
"These games are playable at SNES resolutions and 30FPS"
Like, I love my SteamDeck, but this being your takeaway is just weird.
I can't be the only one who kind of loves the look of Robocop on Steam Deck, right? The lower resolution and noisy artifacts kind of make it looks like an old school low-fi filter that is wonderfully appropriate for a Robocop game!
native 480p looks a lot better than 720p FSR2 performance lmao
Yeah none of the temporal scaling techniques look very good when the output resolution and framerate is so low.
I sort of prefer just setting the resolution lower and using the built-in FSR1 feature in many cases.
Still looks like crap, honestly fsr is terruble
Native 480p is 70% more pixels than 720p FSR2 performance. 720p FSR2 balanced would be roughly equivalent to 480p.
720p Performance/Ultra Performance... Nintendo Switch Territory here.
Thought I had the video set to 480p but no, it's just FSR
Technically steam deck performance is not the best maybe is one of the worst among last years handhelds, but the whole experience is great( battery, screen, OS, fan noise and heat dissipation etc)
Talos principle
Steam Deck - 360p upsacled to 720p using TSR + ustable fps (drops to 4x fps)
Series S (performance mode) runs 900p upscaled to 1440p + stable 60fps (drops below 60fps is extremely rare)
You running better lighting setting on steam deck, but you ignored the big difference in resolution and also fps stability
I’ve been using my OLED Steam Deck mostly to play older and emulated games. Despite how good the underlying tech of UE5 may be, the Lumen noise, upscaling artifacts and general blurriness make the overall image quality so much worse than the super crisp older titles running at native display resolution or higher.
To give one example, I’ve replayed Alien Isolation on my Deck, and was blown away by how incredible it looked and played.
Alien Isolation looks incredible on the Deck especially with the Alias Isolation mod. Lots of 2010-ish era games look and run amazing on the Deck. Being able to run lots of current AAA games decently is a bonus.
Good video series. I think of any modern game that runs on Steam Deck as a nice bonus, like a free Switch port, rather than a requirement for my purchasing decisions. I mostly play my Steam backlog on there (Arkham Origins per the recent DF video about that!)
an linux powered device, with:
more than 13.000 games that valve did an QA to make sure they work.
more than 20.000 games if you include the native ones.
and probably 60~75% of the steam library should work fine (since 2/3 of what valve tested worked fine, the other ones they still have to test)
there are more games on the steam deck than on all sega consoles combined, xbox series (wich include games from xbox, xbox360 and xbox one) and most playstation consoles.
that counting only the games that you can purchase and play direct from the store, not to mention games from other stores that also work thanks to heroic game launcher, lutris or other clients.
not to mention emulators.
not to mention other things you might do on the device beside play games, how valve is consumer friendly with things like making the device easy to repair (they even have an partnership with ifix to help fix their devices along side devices from every vendor) , not making exclusive games to try to force people to purchase it, allowing /supporting mods, allowing fangames with their ips , you wont be charged to play online, the store wont shutdown preventing you from purchasing new games, you can transfer the library to any pc you own instead paying again for the same games, they made cad files avaliable to make it easier to develop acessories, hell some people even managed to make accesories that make the deck compatible with physical catridges of other consoles!
not to mention steam input has tons of features, and steam in general.
valve isnt perfect, far from it, but by fair they are the most consumer friendly nowadays and steam deck is an amazing product!
and now digital foundry is showing how powerfull this device is, imagine if/when developers start to actually targeting it by using vulkan and/or doing some optimizations specifically for handhelds...
actually i think talos principle already use vulkan.
i cant stress enough how excited i am!
8:38 High in The Talos Principle 2? Ah, DF did not test the main part of game, just tutorial that mimics graphics of 2014 TTP1. The main game is 40 fps, with drops do 25 in some areas, on LOW.
Nice
Bros triggered they didn’t test a game in his ideal spot
This gives me some sort of hope that Nintendo can do something really nice for Switch 2...(fingers crossed)
Well Switch 2 optimisations will help the Deck
with DLSS it probably will look alot better
@@AngryApple true. I'm surprised we haven't seen an Nvidia deck. Would be ideal New Shield
I feel like further commentary on battery life would be useful. This headroom above 30 usually becomes important battery life savings, and knowing how much we should expect on typical play is very useful
Not really, if you’re pushing UE5 features the Deck is running pretty much flat out so you’ll get the widely available minimum battery life as a result.
@@PixelisedPaul Battery consumption has nothing to do with features, it has to do with headroom. If there is headroom, the deck is not running flat out.
@@user-s8jb3qb6y why would that be the case? They both behave the same when capping the framerate when it comes to power consumption.
@@user-s8jb3qb6y even if you cap the framerate, the CPU still produces those frames that isn't pushed to the screen.
With my lcd deck the battery was anywhere to 1.5 hours all the way close to 6…depending on engine and how you run it of course…that being said I haven’t even checked my OLEDs battery level…because overall the jump in life is better.
What is the point of playing games on the deck with the resolution scale literally at 50% man, it looks like shit
this video really highlights how much ghosting and flickering newer graphics tech has.
the ghosting halos around the character in Jusant are made super apparent on the lower rez screen, the spell effects in Aveum come across as a blurry mess, and all of the graphical effects in Robocop are butchered and make the game look like it's an even lower resolution than Xenoblade 2.
pretty sure all of these could be solved by turning off the ray tracing, at which point they're no longer using the newest graphics tech.
I wish there was more focus on getting rid of the artifacts of ray tracing cause it's so annoying to want to play the newest games with the newest tech only to see smears, dithering and ghosting everywhere.
what I find interesting, I know FSR is AMD's tech but you would think so many developers from so many companies are more then willing to help develop it to be better as they are dependent on it.
Some devs make their own upscalers, same with engine developers. Surprised more Unreal games don't use TSR (Unreal's upscaler), as I think it's better than FSR2 in games with fast motion. And obviously since nVidia has the largest market share, devs support DLSS. I think devs are hoping Microsoft comes up with a universal solution for Direct X like Apple does with MetalFX for apple devices.
FSR isn't open to merge requests on GitHub (which is honestly understandable), so the only way to convince AMD to improve it would be forking the project and then hoping that enough people will support your version that it will force AMD to consider your changes.
Also, reportedly, Samsung and Qualcomm are also working on FSR along with AMD. Whether they intend to improve the tech or simply tweak it to run on phones is unknown, though.
I wonder if they do accept help from other devs. It's open source but not sure what license and what kind of arrangement. That's the essence of open sourc3, let's build it together so we'll all benefit from it 😄
@@AninoNiKugi Under the MIT license. There is only one committer to the official external repository, who publishes squashed commits of the whole release changeset once per release. AMD does not run a contributor driven or open developer process, but there's nothing preventing a community fork from existing.
Apples upscaling is actually Amd's fsr 1 and 2 with perhaps some minor tweaks. I wonder that if Apple is able to take Amd's technology and make improvements of it, if they would actually give back to the community and share their work.
I was going to bite the bullet on a steam deck then UEVR was just released. Now im putting the money towards a 3060ti to go with my quest 2. All the latest games in full VR is going to be insane im glad i waited. I would go with a 4090 but i have a hp z4 g4 sitting doing nothing
Would've been nice if you got to the city in Talos 2, that's the first place where the framerate tanks
Well, Gabe, you are an odd fellow, but I must say - you Steam a good Deck
I have a SD and lets be honest here, aaa games running on the SD especially newer games look horrendous, theyre upscaled from ridiculously low resolutions and it dosent look good.
The SD is great for older titles and indies but it simply hasnt got the power to run new games at acceptable image quality.
Emulation.
Indie scene is where the fun stuff can be found anyway imo. I got my SD specifically because I wanted a console like system that could play Steam indie games and tbh I've basically stopped playing AAA games since then.
For me the problem isn't related to lightning calculation, lumen availability, or something like that. The issue lies in picture reconstruction. Games in FSR and any other tool other than DLSS look like muddy garbage, with some dot noise and a lot of blur.
More Steam Deck Digital Foundry love! What a way to start the new year.
If this is what Steam Deck can do it’s going to be insane what Nintendo and Nvidia get out of a closed console platform handheld like Switch 2 when also able to leverage DLSS.
why I'm excited for the next switch. hoping that gets revealed this year.
Right, for the last time, get *beyond* the introductory section of Talos Principle 2 when you use it for fidelity and performance. The main game is *significantly* heavier on the GPU and there are several sections of the game where performance is easily halved through much, much higher geometric and foliage detail.
Saying that Talos 2 is 'the best performing here so far' is a joke once you get outside of the 'calibration' section (egyptian themed, lasts about 20 mins)
For gods sake, please, *please* get a save game from someone who's completed it and look at how it performs in *other areas*. Literally anyone who's played TTP2 for more than an hour knows this isn't remotely representative of how the game performs and it's a joke to see it being used here as an example.
Nice to see that Talos Principle 2 was examined. Fantastic game with beautiful visuals. Played through it on my Steam Deck too!
The first area is not representative of the rest of the game though, as it copies the graphics style of the original game.
Reconstruction is really bad for lower resolutions, well , for any. I'd rather use some discrete resolution like 720p and let it that way. Pick your poison but I still preffer aliasing in place of dither/blurred image
Steam Deck AAA modern games are perfect at 30FPS, beautiful, smooth and detailed, control response also feels perfect. If you are so egoic you don't like 30FPS, drop a few settings, lock to 40 and your flying. Playing GTA IV on proton experimental currently with the recent enhanced fusion and console graphics mods and wow! Most settings dialled up but placed a 40fps frame cap as I preferred the stability over unlocked - looks and plays incredible. Stop expecting 60+ ultra high in Sandbox games on a handheld and you will not be disappointed.
The complaints are ridiculous considering most PC gamers play low settings at 1080p.
I love how Oliver calls it "software" instead of "games." Sounds much more sophisticated.
His use of the word "code" as a sort of synonym for "version" bothers me though. "Taking a look at the Series S code". I'm like no, that's not what you're doing.
@@koerel Yeah, pretty pretentious
Well videogames are software after all so that makes sense
@Crissaegrim-xv9cu Thank you for that 🤣
Technically very impressive and great analysis as always, but I feel like I've died and gone to frame generation hell
"Too big for the Steam Deck" for me is if a new game can't be played at low settings at a playable framerate anymore. You always have me slightly worried with these videos for them to only end up blowing my mind all over again, by how powerful the Deck is and how well it's holding up with the newest titles for a freaking portable machine.
DLSS to fsr3 Frame generation mod for the win
Honestly… this isn’t a fair test
Unreal Engine 5 is wildly unoptimizable… especially when time aligned with Unreal Engine 4
Thank you for including the LCD Deck.
This is why the PS Portal is the world's most powerful handheld.
Robocop on these settings looks like an Arcade game from the early 2000s
the train nerd in me was going nuts at those train tracks at the start of the video.
Just got an OLED SD this Christmas so thank you for this video!
The games looking the same as before are running a lot slower now. Nice job, UE5!
My bad. They actually look worse.
I think the tradeoffs here are just too great. Although it runs quite well, the ouput is just soooo pixelated. It's reminiscent of a PS1 game but with GI... I would personally rather not have lumen but have a near native res image.
These games look SO grainy in motion, holy shit
They are running it at 240p upscalled and somehow calling them playable
I'd be curious how these work on slightly more powerful handhelds like the Ally. Very interesting.
Probably not all that much better... A lot of the benchmarks of the Deck vs Alley give them similar performance results. Unless you have the Alley plugged directly into a wall out and running on turbo mode. Windows is such a performance hog for handhelds.
@@tyrcipher8811eh at 1080p there is a big difference between rog ally and the steam deck.
@@oo--7714 That "big difference" is only if you have the ROG again, plugged into a wall and running in turbo. Using a reasonable wattage for a handheld like 15w there barely a difference of like 5FPS between the Steam Deck and Ally at 1080P. The ROG ally isn't performant enough to run at 1080P and get actually decent on the go performance.
@@tyrcipher8811nah even at 18 watts 😂 You don’t need to go into turbo mode. The legion go has better battery life though playing games at 1200p at 20 watts. It is comparable to the lcd steam deck at full power.
Damn some games are simply not worth it on steamdeck. The pixelated textures and effects look worse than a ps2 game
In my opinion, I'd say that this video shows that UE5 titles don't really scale well to the Deck. UE5 games will only get more demanding, and we're already having to go to 360p and lower resolutions (with scaling, yes, but at this low of a resolution it looks awful anyway).
Now, if only the testing was done ALSO with LukeFz's FSR3 FramgeGen mod, it would've done wonders on the Deck.
feels like someone threw sand in my eyes. it seems UE5 (and lumen in particular) is too much for steam deck when it comes to image quality. perhaps Valve can work with Epic to find a better illumination option.
The man from the Gamecube delivers another solid video
The Steam Deck is going on two years old & it's still capable of holding its own. It falls short with a handful of game but it isn't that much of a big deal. With that said, I will be waiting for the next Steam Deck. Willing to assume that it will be Zen 6/RDNA 4 based which should give it a substantial jump in performance & efficiency.
It probably would be zen4/rdna4 since they need to save as much money as possible so most probably would be the oldest cpu architecture available at the time. Zen4 seems like it.
@@modernlogix Possible, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's Zen5 and RDNA4, maybe 5 but I suspect 3.
We should also remember that because of the success of the original Deck, Valve will likely put more resources into the Deck 2, they also might work with AMD on a custom job, which if they do, they could end up using hardware that isn't on the market at the time but is planned to be released soon after, the Steam Deck is being built very much like how consoles are, if the sales numbers keep rising, both Valve and AMD will likely be willing to do more custom work on the hardware.
Imagine when these handhelds become more sophisticated as years go by. 😮
Talos Principle 2's graphics really leap ahead after the 'calibration' area, which mimics the original game's graphics. So, it's probably better to fix the graphic settings once you get into the game proper.
The Lumen GI artifacting is really distracting in these games, even on PS5 and Xbox Series S. I wonder if it'll get better as UE5 matures.
i'm just here to tell people that talos 2 is really good
A “dream” Steam Deck for me, would be a unit that has a VRR capable display, with the ability to tap into DLSS rather than FSR or TSR. I am aware this would require Nvidia to make an x86 SoC, rather than ARM… but I can dream, right?
Steam deck 2
Best voice of DF 😎💪
This is why I'm holding out to buy a steam deck 2. Right now there's way too many asterisks attached to the steam deck experience, but give it a full team red's architecture generational bump and it will be a 1080p portable beast with little to no compromises, all that at a very low price point.
Don't get me wrong. The current hardware IS already incredible given the power budget, and the performance per watt is already impressive, but in many modern popular titles this is still a 720p30 experience (or a 720p with VFR** that needs lots of graphical compromises). Unreal Engine 5 wasn't even on the plans when this hardware was designed, and this speaks volumes on how well implemented UE5 is at targeting low spec hardware rather than speaking of how powerful the Zen/RDNA architecture is.
(This still blows the switch out of the water tho. Switch 2 might be dead on arrival for third party developers if Nintendo doesn't offer backwards compatibility and doesn't at least aim to get equal to a hypothetical Steam Deck 2 in compute prowess.)
"Hypothetical", the thing you want still won't be possible even in 5 years looking at how much power you need for 1080p no fsr on ue5 games. You need a 3070 laptop variant gpu to run immortals of aveum at 1080p 50-60fps on low. The switch isn't going to be milked for another 5 years they cannot reach the 1080p height that you want in 2 years. Ain't happening.
These handhelds are barely xbox one/ps4 level, to expect them to jump to 3070 tier in 5 years is wishfull thinking (the steam deck 2 will not be that fast) and by then ue6 would have come out.
@@oo--7714 I mean, yes, you are not wrong, but you are only considering no fsr when (infuriatingly for some) a lot of studios are making their multiplatform games exactly with fsr/dlss in mind. And yeah, some are calling all this stuff "fake pixels" or "fake frames" but honestly if the artifacts are only detectable in freeze frames (like it has been analyzed on multiple DF videos) and if the added lag isn't terrible, I'd call my expectations fulfilled.
@@rodylermglezlook at the steam deck, fsr just doesn't look even playable. Looks worse than switch ports at that point, running at 360p.
It is noticable from a low resolution that the steam deck outputs at I have one.
It is even noticable on the rog ally in motion in games like ghostwire tokyo
@@oo--7714 hence why I'm waiting for the steam deck 2. I started the thread saying that this current generation, though impressive, isn't still quite there yet. Moot point to argue that next Gen steam decks and similar devices will be bad because the current steam deck / ROG Ally / Ayaneo / Legion Go aren't powerful enough. That's kinda like arguing/predicting the XBOne/PS4 were going to be bad because the XB360/PS3 were uneven 30 fps consoles.
And if the steam deck 2 doesn't coalesce (even though this is a still very much untapped market and someone is bound to make more powerful handheld gaming pcs), no problem. I'll buy another affordable Ryzen laptop to game on 🙂
@@rodylermglezI guess but you won't get better graphics on intergrated graphics laptops from intel or amd. You will get better performance on laptops with a gpu though.
When showing B-roll of games on more powerful systems in a video about Steam deck running games, it feels prudent to label the hardware each clip is running on
And what about Tekken 8? You could compare the results of the demo between each plataform
T8 runs well on deck actually
@@Dragonfury3000 It HAS to run at a consistent 60 fps though
@@AnimeUniverseDEit does
Would be interesting to see how well the more powerful windows handhelds like the Rog Ally, Legion Go or aya neo devices handle the same games.
definitely even better, can turn res and settings up more
@melxb That's what I think. Instead of running these games at the lowest upscaling preset like what's required with the Deck, the windows handhelds could probably run them at a balanced or quality settings to greatly reduce the artifacting and breakup. Image quality, I think, would be a huge improvement.
As a SD Oled owner, I can say thee games look muddy on the SD. I find the system is better for less demanding AAA titles, older games and indie stuff.
I have a PS5 and a $2500 PC. The Steam Deck is the device I play the most. Sure the PC and PS5 play games at higher resolutions and frame rates but I can’t take them anywhere.
Playing games like RDR2 and CP2077 on the deck still blows my mind.
You want to talk about image quality while leaving motion blur on smh.
Any game newer than the PS4 gen has horrendous image quality so I’d personally say no. At a certain point there needs to be acknowledgment that the steam deck is an accessory to a gaming pc, not a replacement. There’s a reason that there are literally more users with 4090s then steam decks according to the steam hardware survey. It’s a niche item for older games and indies
Honestly I don't get the glazing that digital foundry does, fsp performance at 720p is like 240p, with awful pixekation, and they are calling that playable, they mocked the switch for going so low in terms of internal resolution but this really isn't any better. Looks too bad
gotta love it when you see the steam deck competeing with a console even if its the series S
It is not competing with series s
It runs at much lower resolution and worse fps that series S....
You know that 720p FSR performance mode upscales 360p to 720p
@killermoon635 Both machines are based around the same AMD technologies - Zen 2 CPUs paired with RDNA 2 GPUs. Both use the same upscale techniques one aims for 720p the other 1080. One is a portable system the other is not. They can be bought for as low as 350-400. They are playing the same video game above. They are made by different tech companies. They are competitors. It's not hard
In my own testing in development, while TSR is generally much better looking than FSR 2, it also comes with a HEFTY performance cost, so that Jusant comparison isn't exactly surprising, and I'd bet you'd get a more consistent and slightly higher framerate in Robocop if you used FSR2 instead of TSR.
My dev machine is a 5700xt with a Ryzen 3900x (outdated? Yes. Gives me a strong incentive to optimize? Also yes) and at a 50% render target TSR actually causes a bigger hit to framerate than Lumen does, while FSR 2 is basically free (albeit with a lot more artifacting).
0:18 What are you saying? UE5 is a development tool and game engine. Devs can absolutely create games for lower spec hardware using UE5. You don't need to use all the new, resource intensive features in order to use UE5. You can still make games like before and make them more efficient.
I feel like there is this mindset that when UE5 is used, all the resource intensive features must also be used. That's like saying all games will now have to use raytracing just because the option is available.
I don't think he is saying "UE5 poses a challenge to low power platforms". He's saying "A large UE5 appeal is it's sophisticated features" and "using the sophisticated features pose a challenge to lower power platforms".
Of course you can make an UE5 game without using such features, they're just not the point of this video.
I would never consider 30fps playable. I would prefer a version of this video but with a 60fps target.
My guy is unhinged, ah yes 240p, resolution, good. What world is he living in at all, I say this as a guy who has a steam deck.
His hypocrite, cause he actually shame the Switch on a Video about Games that run at these kind of Resolution.
@@Zer01neBDTDevto be fair the switch will never run Unreal 5 at any settings so the steam deck doing it at high or low settings is pretty crazy since it’s about 55 percent of the power of the series s
720p FSP performance means 360p 😐
Watching this video on a Deck, aside from The Talos Principle 2, I think most of these make too deep of sacrifices to make good experiences. They're playable, but some of the image quality issues and lumen resolve problems really feel like a bridge too far. These feel like some of the more overly ambitious switch ports out there. If you have no other way to play them and you can bear with the issues, then sure, go for it, but otherwise it's really not a palatable or advisable experience.
what is the actual resolution for 720p fsr performance ? 360p?
Yeah whats the point. Its a blur.
Robocop on the steamdeck looks so chunky, it looks like one of those many Build Engine games.
I love Oliver’s style and delivery. His videos are a pleasure to watch, and somehow relaxing while being very informative. Much love ❤
Aye; the way he presents himself is very easy to listen to. Great asset to the team.
What an enlightening video. Thanks for all the work you do.
I know its for coverage of ue5 features but in RoboCop i would tweak some pf the medium settings to low so you van get 480 or 540p tsr upscaling to 720p.
looks like hot garbage on the steamdeck to be honest, just trying to keep it together at 30fps. I rather run something less taxing or stream to the deck from a real pc. The GPD Win Mini is what I need a touch beyond that.
The Talos Principle 2's first area is completely unrepresentative of the rest 99% of the game in terms of performance. I can only imagine how hard Steam Deck's gonna be hit once you get to the island (the rest of the game basically). lol You'd need to lower everything to the minimum or it won't be playable probably.
That starting tutorial area in Talos 2 is relatively light on the GPU and not representative of how the rest of the game runs.
I am honestly fine with using my Steam Deck for the less demanding titles in my library and playing the "big" games on my desktop machine. That being said, it's impressive to see what can be achieved with some compromises.
Steam deck this 2024 really lacks performance, im sorry but 30fps is unacceptable anymore. People can play this AAA games with ease with the more powerful Legion Go /Ally at 900p or 1050p 20w with 50fps-100fps up. Graphics on the Go with 900p is way clearer and smoother than the SD's. Once you inject that fsr3 mod Go's can reach up to 150fps on the Go's 144hz screen imagine the smoothness of that. You guys really need to change your handhelds .
Enjoy 40 minutes of battery 😂nah I'll keep using my steam deck it plays everything I want with a better UI and battery life. Hopefully in late 2025 valve drops a steam deck 2 with I think strix halo apu will be available in a 15-20 watt package by then.
@@Spencerwalker21 1 hour add 20 minutes on the go, same battery life as the og steam deck.
If 30FPS is unacceptable for someone, then he should stop playing games🙂 30 FPS does not going anywhere. Maybe in a next generation 🙂
Ally and GO are different kind of beast than Steam Deck. Where SD is more hardware and software like a game console, Ally and GO are nothing more, really nothing more than a nice PC in portable form.
I didn't understand why The Talos Principle 2 used real time GI.
They could've achieved a similar effect with baked lighting since the time of day doesn't change dynamically.
The tutorial area for Talos Principle 2 is not representative of the rest of the game. I played the game on Deck and the performance got significantly worse in the larger areas of the main worlds