Saving this for later, you got my attention with the combo of Mac and portable. Anything I can delete a single folder to get rid of in case I don't like it, is a great plus.
Stampela
joined 1 year ago
Depends. I have a good desktop gaming computer and a 4k monitor. DLSS makes the two work together nicely... and yet, sometimes I just want to play on the Deck. A big upside is how the entire system uses up to the same power as my gpu does at idle, and I don't have to add the heat generated by the monitor: brilliant way to keep the room temperature in check.
Being able to play anywhere I want (couch? why not) is a great motivator.
Speaking of high temperature, the other day I tested my M2 Mac Mini in an unrealistic stress test: Handbrake doing software conversion plus AI image generation so I would use all the cpu cores, the gpu ones and the ML ones too. Apple is clearly a fan of silence, because it just kept the fan at minimum speed until one of the cores hit 100 degrees: that was worth half speed.
On the Deck... lately it's so hot that I feel more comfortable with enabling the old fan curve. Aside from that I don't worry :)
I liked gender swapped Bones.
Some really, really lightweight games can be done at 4k and depending on the graphical style it might be a good result. The two I know of are Rush Rally Origins (60 FPS at 4k maxed out! 14 watts! Only during the gameplay, menus are oddly more intense lmao) and Offroad Mania.
But aside from the odd game here and there you're not supposed to expect 1080p from the Deck, not with recent/AAA games. I actually managed to trick myself into disappointment when I got it! Not knowing what to expect, and also not wanting to wait for a long download I tried Offroad Mania. Worked like a charm, obviously. Then I installed Hot Wheels Unleashed... and that's what created disappointment. See, it runs maxed out at 800p same as my desktop with a 3060 runs it at 4k: "it's the same as my computer but at a lower resolution! Sweet!"
Didn't last long before reality hit me XD
#2 in Italy, 4.8 stars.
Honestly the reviews are a mix of 5 stars from 4 years ago and a 1 star from last year that seems to like the app but not the people... there's a virtually uninterrupted 1 star streak for the last year, but those 5 stars are the "most helpful" and show up at the top.
At the beginning, remember that it's a game console: play games with it! Have fun! Later on you can explore the whole "it's just a handheld computer" thing, but start with the chill gaming part :)
The cave thing was worse than you remember: he got in an argument on twitter with a guy telling him how dumb the submarine idea was, so the smart reply was to call the guy a sex tourist... and it was obviously the cave expert called in to supervise the entire rescue.
Nevermind how that was an ad hominem to begin with lol.
Not my case, fortunately. Yes, I've got the official dock. Yes, I've moved from 512 to 1tb microSD. Yes I've pushed the 64gb ssd to 256 and today 1tb, but that's it. No screen protectors, skins, case, controllers, power banks.
I'll admit that I don't like screen protectors and skins, already have a badass power bank and multiple gamepads lol... plus for a limited amount of things I've got a 3d printer, so that's another way around the issue.
Maybe long term, but other than that they're extremely similar. Same specs and while Samsung makes the flash memory I prefer, the Amazon Basics ones are made by the company that bought Lexar and makes the drive in the 64gb Deck.
Ender 3 with BL-TOUCH, that BTT drop in replacement board with silent steppers (the first model), geared extruder, Micro Swiss nozzle, Creality glass bed, unholy loud Sunon fan on the block and a few printed extras.
Then a Monoprice Mini Select v2 with an aluminum extruder. Both have their Raspberry with camera and Octoprint.
Also a super dusty Elegoo Mars 2.
So, here's my findings. Easy install, portable enough (having to specify a bunch of folders and manually creating them could be better) at first sight the interface is nice. And that's really where I stop, because it took... what, I think it was over 5 minutes to initialize the first render? All to error out (gracefully! Kudos for that) because it was out of memory. I couldn't find anything else to close, so basically on the M2 with 8gb it won't run. It was 512x512 SD 1 model. https://apps.apple.com/app/id6444050820 works on all sorts of Apple devices, is free, and kept very updated... I mention it because it's fast (14 seconds 512x512 20 steps V1 on M2), can do SDXL and refiner even with 8gb (once, I doubt many will do it a second time, but a couple of minutes for 1024x1024 20 is still "doable"). I'll stick with that on Apple stuff :)
I had hopes to try it on the Steam Deck but I saw no mention of AMD at all. Still! I'm probably going to try the tensorRT stuff on Windows, my 3060 should do it and I don't know how to do it with Automatic1111 XD