Nvidia is “getting serious” about making Steam Deck rivals
Following in the footsteps of both AMD and Intel, Nvidia is apparently working on a "premium" handheld PC device powered by a GeForce GPU.
If only NVIDIA was committed to release their software as open source and have a decent open source Linux driver.
Plus all those Steam Deck rivals are creating mediocre products even if hardware wise they are faster than the Deck.
Plus all those Steam Deck rivals are creating mediocre products
While I hugely appreciate what Valve has done for Linux Gaming with Proton and the popularity of the Steam Deck, there are excellent Steam Deck rivals out there. Could you clarify what you mean by mediocre?
The touch pads are the killer feature, imho. They are the key to making mouse centric games playable. I wouldn't want to touch eg stellaris with an 11 feet pole with joysticks or touch screen but sank so much time into the game on the deck.
I mean, there's also so much other stuff... The device running on Linux and giving unrestricted access to the desktop. The software being great. The case being screwed, not glued. Valves super relaxed stance on people modifying the hardware. It all adds up. But from a purely user centric pov, I wouldn't buy a PC based handheld without the pads after I saw how well they work.
Fuck Nvidia. I got myself a Shield so I could stream games from my pc to my livingroom and they just decided to pull that feature. Later they added ads to the home screen. These are things that can be worked around, but it’s just toxic practice in my opinion.
Never will I buy any Nvidia product again.
Just discovered Moonlight doesn't work with the new Nvidia App. Am big sad tf
Host sunshine
Steamdeck = full time developers working on improving a product.
Hardware manufacturers = subcontracted developers that are really good, but never work on the project again after completing their checklist and getting paid.
These are not equal. One has long term value; one is made to exploit you and has no long term value.
Also Nvidia doesn't exactly have a great track record of fair and consumer friendly business practices
I have a older desktop running a Nvidia GPU. It's fast and works pretty well but I'm stuck in X11. I just don't have the energy to drive into the forums and see why Wayland isn't working.
I want a Stream Deck mostly because Valve's support behind supporting the device.
I'm using Nvidia with Wayland without any issues. What's the problem exactly?
Using Gnome and it's just not giving me the choice. I think my driver is to old. Found this
Note: NVIDIA drivers prior to version 470 (e.g. nvidia-390xx-dkmsAUR) do not support hardware accelerated Xwayland, causing non-Wayland-native applications to suffer from poor performance in Wayland sessions.
Nvidia would need a partner to provide a processor, as the company doesn’t have a licence to manufacture x86 CPUs, unlike AMD and Intel.
The first batch of x86_64 patents elapse next year.
Which means several years of development ahead to have working silicon, and that would mean AMD64 v1, which Windows and many libraries/application in Linux doesn't support anymore.
In Debian Unstable, for example, ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 reports that it only supports v2, v3 and v4. v3 architecture , so CPUs from Buldozer/Nehalen generation or later. That version of the architecture will still be protected for a few more years.
Since both Intel and AMD are competitors on both CPU and GPU markets, Nvidia's only option is Zhaoxin, a joint venture between Via Technologies (who has a license for box X86 and AMD64) and Shanghai municipality.
Failing that, they would have to go with ARM and emulation, which would come with a performance penalty, or separate CPU and GPU chips, which would make the devices bigger and less power efficient than competing models with APUs.
In conclusion, don't hold your breath. This talk about Nvidia handheld PCs is just to appease their shareholders and create FUD on AMD and Intel ones.
Which means several years of development ahead to have working silicon, and that would mean AMD64 v1
And the other extensions can be emulated. The result should be much faster than full x86_64 emulation on ARM.
They could embrace user-space emulation, e.g., Wine faking Windows stuff and box86 faking x86 stuff.
Taki Udon had a video maybe a year ago about getting Steam to run on ARM SOC handhelds. The primary obstacle to compatibility and performance was a lack of drivers for proprietary bullshit. Obviously... not an issue for Nvidia, being a hardware designer and manufacturer. And since they didn't manage to seize ARM (thank fuck) they could do the world a solid and fancy up RISC-V.
Even if it was unrestricted, x86 is incredibly difficult to optimize well. Most of the people who know how to do it already work at Intel or AMD. Actually, they might all work at AMD.
They definitely don't work at VIA, which is the forgotten third company that makes x86 chips. Forgotten for a reason.
Now, Nvidia has a big pile of cash and can solve the problem that way. More likely, though, they'll use ARM like they have been.
