The topical x86 architecture handheld game console Steam Deck has achieved quite good sales results following its release. A large number of orders have also made this machine still actively shipping. However, Steam quietly changed the standard SSD in May to 256GB. The 512 GB PCIe Gen 3 x 4 specification product is changed to a PCIe Gen 3 x 2 product, and the transmission bandwidth cut in half will inevitably make people worry regarding whether the actual game experience will be affected; however, according to Valve’s official design team, in the vast majority of There is almost no difference in the use cases.
According to Valve’s official team, although the transmission bandwidth of PCIe Gen 3 x 4 is twice that of PCIe Gen 3 x 2, excluding data transmission, the gaming experience will be limited by non-PCIe bandwidth factors and will not be able to play fully. The high bandwidth performance makes even if the bandwidth is cut in half, it has little effect on the loading speed of the game and the in-game experience. Of course, the outside world believes that the change of Steam Deck to a lower-specification SSD is also a decision made in consideration of production capacity, especially since the official has determined that it has little effect on the experience.
The author speculates that the key to Steam Deck’s inability to take advantage of the bandwidth may be limited by the processor performance, because with the current game design, the materials of the game files will be compressed, and the materials need to be decompressed by the CPU before handing over to the GPU for processing. However, the APU of Steam Deck is an energy-saving oriented product, and its performance in processing material decompression is bound to be lower than that of gaming laptops and home computers, resulting in the lack of bandwidth, which makes it difficult to perform.
Although the current game industry has tried to improve the problem of poor CPU texture decompression efficiency. For example, Microsoft will use Direct Storage technology to transfer texture decompression to GPU for direct processing, but even so, according to NVIDIA, unless the SSD used is PCIe Gen 4 x 4 specifications, otherwise the game loading speed is still quite limited compared to the CPU processing, and the processing performance also depends on the GPU level, and the APU architecture of Steam Deck, whether it is CPU or GPU, is difficult to reach home game consoles and mid-to-high-end gaming. The configuration of the PC, not to mention the SSD is PCIe Gen 3 lane only.
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