Valve Halves Steam Deck SSD Bandwidth on Some Models
- Thread starter IbizaPocholo
- Start date
- Opinion Game Dev Hardware
BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
What happened?
Griffon
Member
Whiny high pitched jet engine. What else.
Crayon
Member
I don't know what's coming out this year that's going to show any notable difference, but we'll see.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
I'm shocked more people aren't upset with this news.
names are for friends
Member
In principle it sucks because potentially people could buy without being aware that the SSD speed won't necessarily be what they thought.
In practice, not many buyers would even know what the original spec was, and they won't care because it won't impact any performance in any game the Deck (the GPU in which is at best equivalent to roughly a GTX 1060) can run. I mean, you aren't going to be running UE5 games on the Deck when they eventually come out, for instance. It's not going to happen.
Haint
Member
~200-300k units shipped based on rough preorder queue estimates.
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Crayon
Member
I am, too. I'm pretty easy going with things like this, but I did expect people to be raging out left and right.
CrustyBritches
Gold Member
Some dude on Reddit claimed he had a Gen 3x2 drive and posted the model…
www.transcend-info.com
Transcend lists the CrystalDiskMark results as 1700MB/s read, 1000MB/s write. The Gen 3x4 Kingston drive I have is 2500MB/s read, 1200MB/s write. The read is kind of irrelevant since the Deck is probably CPU limited when it comes to game loading, as seen by there being little difference between Deck ssd and microSD card game load times. There is a difference in download and transfer from external USB-C ssd, but I don't think that will manifest between the Gen 3x2 and Gen 3x4 drives since the write speeds are extremely close.
MTE352T | PCIe M.2 SSDs - Transcend Information, Inc.
Transcend's industrial PCIe M.2 SSD MTE352T features 96-layer 3D NAND flash and an endurance rating of 3K P/E cycles for superior performance.
www.transcend-info.com
Transcend lists the CrystalDiskMark results as 1700MB/s read, 1000MB/s write. The Gen 3x4 Kingston drive I have is 2500MB/s read, 1200MB/s write. The read is kind of irrelevant since the Deck is probably CPU limited when it comes to game loading, as seen by there being little difference between Deck ssd and microSD card game load times. There is a difference in download and transfer from external USB-C ssd, but I don't think that will manifest between the Gen 3x2 and Gen 3x4 drives since the write speeds are extremely close.
Deck is probably only half as powerful as a GTX 1060, maybe less. It's pretty much spot on a stock RX 460 2GB, which is a little faster than Radeon 7850 oc.
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Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
I dunn… imagine if MS or Sony cut the clock, reduced RAM, or cut the SSD bandwidth but charged the same price…
Is it because the demand is so much higher than the available offer and anything feels worth just to get a unit sooner?
…
Magic Carpet
Gold Member
Dream-Knife
Banned
Has anyone actually benchmarked games compared to the SD slot? Saw some start time videos on YouTube, and the SD was actually faster than the m.2 by a second or two.
lukilladog
Member
Why is Valve using 1200 mb/s write ssd´s anyway?. You can get cheapo ssd´s with 2900 mb/s nowadays.
CrustyBritches
Gold Member
2230 form factor.
LazyParrot
Member
Reduced RAM or clock speeds would actually have a noticeable effect on gaming performance. Cutting SSD bandwidth in half doesn't.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
What about when games are made to use the bandwidth of the SSDs or the Direct Memory thing becomes the new "IT" thing in video games?
LazyParrot
Member
Take a long, hard look at the Steam Deck's other hardware specs and you'll probably come up with the answer on your own.
bender
What time is it?
I trust that it isn't going to be noticeable but it is still feels like a bait and switch when the first bullet point for "Choose Your Steam Deck" is "Faster" and "Fastest" storage.