I think it’s well in valves wheelhouse after proton to do something similar and revolutionise x86 to ARM translation. But at the moment better chips still need to arrive for that too be good enough for a product to built around. Which is why it’s the first thing i think of when they say they need technology to advance more before they make a new steam deck.
x86 to ARM translation is a fairly different problem than what proton solves, so I don’t think it’s clearly in their wheelhouse. Proton / wine is mostly just an implementation of windows libraries on Linux, but doing efficient x86 emulation on arm is a compiler problem. I would guess that Valve could do it or at least hire people to do it, but it’s a bit of a different skill set. Doing x86 efficiently on ARM (particularly with concurrency) also likely involves some extensions to ARM like Apple does with their chips. I haven’t heard if the snapdragon elite chips have anything for x86 compatibility baked in at all. Frankly, I’m treating the snapdragon elite with a fair degree of scepticism until you can actually buy the thing, but I hope it’s good!
I don’t think they’re waiting for ARM specifically. If that ends up working out, sure, but if they can get x86 with the right power to performance ratio I doubt they would complain.
Architecture emulation for current gen games is exceptionally unlikely right now. At a fundamental level, wine/proton doesn’t change the instructions the code describes, rather it translates the input and output. It’s a reimplementation of the same instructions in Windows. For architecture crossing you’d either have to create virtual hardware, which adds tremendous overhead, or recompile the binary. Recompilation is theoretically possible, but for x86_64 to ARM64, for games no less, it’s beyond the realm of mortals. It’s like how some jokes can’t be translated between languages; the structure and vocabulary is just too different.
Microsoft and Apple have some form of x86 to Arm translation at the moment. Also I know it’s not something that’s really done now. I’m not arguing it can be done right this second cause valve are talking about that there’s something they want to do but can’t yet and need technology to get a bit better before they move on with their plan. I’m saying this feels like the most logical thing that they’re waiting for.
Steam deck hello this is gabe newel you just purchased a steam deck version more than 2 and less than 4 please email me on GabeN@valvesoftware.com to talk about your game purchases on the steam deck.
From what I've seen of the Steam Deck there's not far that it can go to improve as of the moment but in the next 10 years there's going to be needing another one as newer games like GTA 6 and stuff come around and eventually be on PC the tech is going to really show it's age.
Valve’s hardware strategy up to this point has been to push into new markets via hardware innovation. So I’m very skeptical that the hypothetical successor to the deck is a more powerful version of the deck. They’ll let other hardware manufacturers push those limits and reap the benefits via software sales. The deck was exceptionally successful in that regard, it’s literally opened an entire market segment.
Whatever the “Deck 2” comes to be, I expect it will be poised to capture a different market segment, possibly AR/VR or even modular handheld hardware (totally unfounded speculation), but I sincerely doubt they have much interest in releasing a more powerful version of the same thing every few years.
Who knows, though. Valve’s gonna valve and the only thing they do with any consistency is change things up.
Why does it matter if they have a better translation now? The steamdeck 2 is a long way away. By the time steamdeck 2 releases I imagine their translation layer will be better than apples is today but probably not better than apples will be when steamdeck 2 releases.
If it's not, then it'll never work, which is why Apple's endeavor is doomed too. There's such a massive back catalogue of games that we can't, won't, and shouldn't abandon that unless you've got x64 translation as good as Proton is for Windows translation, or better, switching to ARM will never work for the latest greatest games. I think that switch to ARM is nearly inevitable, but that translation needs to be excellent first.
Why spend all those years and all that capital/manpower on R&D for a handheld that is widely touted as a success only to never use any of those lessons ever again? I can't imagine they're just going to one-and-done the Steamdeck. Seems like a massive waste to me.
I disagree. I feel more like Steam has been focusing on being able to decouple from Windows. The hardware it has developed was paired with other initiatives to move beyond the Windows desktop. They are now at a point where they’ve basically created their own Switch that can run without Windows.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Steam finally makes consumer Linux on the desktop a thing.
Back then, we really couldn’t engage with a display manufacturer to do exactly what we were after because they didn’t really understand the product category, or who would be buying the screen, or why it would matter. Now that picture has changed and we’re able to get custom work done.
Why would literally any of those questions be of concern to the screen manufacturer? And I don’t understand, did Valve begin work on this in 1918? How could anyone not understand the product category?
Display manufacturers may understand what Valve might want in a screen, but they might not understand how many units of a screen of such a specification they would be able to sell — is it going to be a custom job for just a few thousand of valve’s experimental console (which may have different degrees of success), or is it going to be something that they can sell to more people and a wider audience.
Edit: 2.5-3.5x faster cpu and 2x faster gpu at slightly higher tdp (23W vs 19W). Even if the arm x86 emulation has 40% overhead it’d still be faster and more efficient especially at lower power limits where arm shines.
This is based on benchmarks from Qualcomm, not Internet reviews right? IDK if I’d be buying tickets for the hype train just yet.
Shifting all the software to work on ARM is going to take time. By the time Valve got everything running on ARM, AMD would have released something equal or better by then.
This is not based on benchmarks from qualcomm, it’s based on benchmarks revievers ran on demo units.
You don’t need to shift the software to work on arm. Most essential things already work and the ones that don’t can be emulated. All valve needs to do is to make it seamless. And unless they also switch to arm its a long shot for amd to achieve a 2x uplift in a single generation.
Kind of I guess. Reviewers where allowed to run specific benchmarks approved by Qualcomm on laptops specifically made for Qualcomm at the launch event, not consumer models.
What games run in ARM today? I’m not aware of any games that run nativly on ARM, meaning games would need to be emulate from Windows to Linux, then from x86 to ARM. Not ideal.
And we still don’t have a price. The APU in the Steam Deck is a budget chip, if the X Elite is really 2x the competition Qualcomm will likely be charging almost 2x the price
I hate being that guy… but nobody is emulating windows. It’s a compatibility layer. If they can emulate the x86 instructions (like apple is doing with the M chips and some open source implementations out there) then he compatibility layer could be 100% compiled for arm.
I’ve seen pc games running on phones using this tech. With valve backing, it’s definitely possible, but not before stea,m deck 3
Only 10% of games are verified for Stream OS, with 40% being listed as unsupported. I’m pretty sure Valve is more focused on stability for Steam OS, switching to ARM only complicates things at the moment. Once they have that figured out they can consider ARM. The games that work on ARM now do so because of developer support, most games aren’t supported yet.
I’m not saying it’s impossible, of course it is. It’s just not the time for the Steam Deck to switch to ARM, SD 3 sounds like a reasonable time to consider it.
Yeah, gamers Nexus was saying that the stream deck guys were telling them that they were waiting for the tech to get good enough to be able to call the device steam deck 2, but that’s probably a couple of years out.
It seems like a minor increment over the Steam Deck. Valve is targeting performance per watt, and what's available in a handheld right now isn't going to start running The Quarry at high settings and 60 FPS.
AMDs 7000 series APUS (and Z1) aren’t efficient enough, no performant enough to really warrant a real upgrade if valve is going for a console like experience.
Sure you can get 10% more performance at the same power level, but why bother? Valve had to custom design their own APU to hit their power goals, and there’s no way chasing that yearly 0-10% gains is going to pay off.
It isnt though. Check out the phawx on YouTube, he's done extensive testing.
The truth is you can underclock the 7840u but it still is less efficient at those lower wattages. I think if I remember the data right it crosses over around 12watt tdp to being as efficient then more powerful at higher clocks, but at 10w and lower the custom apu in the deck is king. The new apu for the oled deck is even more efficient at those levels too.
The point I think they're trying to make is right now nothing can beat the performance for the power at lower tdp right now, and so they want to wait for newer and better apus so they can maintain the size and battery life a best as possible, while keeping it relatively accessible cost wise.
I own a win max 2 and I can tell you that as nice as that extra 10% performance is, I spent around $1200 and my SO spent $500ish on their deck. That's why valve isn't making a deck 2.0, to hit those higher performance benchmarks the cost raises exponentially, and it isn't worth it right now for them.
So they didn’t get sued / punished by Paradox, their publisher.
There was probably a contact that said “CS2 will release by XX.” If they didn’t hit that target date, there could have been financial penalties.
Obviously it sucks for the consumer, but hitting that target of release and then working to improve the game was probably Colossal Order’s only option.
Especially when it released almost immediately after the new Harebrained Schemes game flopped. Paradox was absolutely not in a position to let a tentpole slip, re: investors.
I feel like it couldn’t have been more clear that the publisher caused this. CO has been very communicative in saying that the game wasn’t hitting their performance target, even doing what they could to delay the console release.
I’m not trying to make excuses, but CO seems like a bunch of devs that really love what they create. Paradox is a bunch of money hungry leeches that couldn’t imagine waiting another day for their dollar.
There are not just bugs. The game is also baby easy. All the fallback mechanism made it so you basically can’t fail, the game throws money at you. The whole economy is balanced around fallbacks instead of really balancing, because you can’t balance what isn’t working to begin with.
Played it yesterday for a while and I agree. It ran pretty smooth on my RTX 3060 without noticable issues, but it was very easy. I built a starter city fulfilling basic demands, and I ended up with more money than I started with. At that time I was usually into my second credit on the old game, scraping along.
I personally don’t understand the problems people have with performance. I’m used to playing Cities 1 at 15 fps with 200k-700k cities.
Cities 2 is a game with modern quality graphic settings, not a 2015 game. What do y’all expect? It’s not a twitchy FPS game. My Cities 2 city is only at 100k now though, with a 3060 btw.
What, how? Are you just leaving the settings at default and giving up? They basically have said what is broken. If you turn those settings off it works alright.
What I’m noticing is that the first game had 2015 graphics and on a medium to large city runs at cinematic framerates (20-30fps). On Cities 2 the graphics are a mishmash of 2010 and 2025 graphics that run somewhat poorly, but also stutter a lot. On my 10k city I’m getting 45fps average with low-medium settings with the recommended changes to improve performance, but large lag spikes are frequent.
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