FSR1 is pretty bad as it’s just upscaling the static image, I agree.
FSR2/3, XeSS and DLSS are temporal, meaning they use info from the previous frames to construct a higher resolution image that gives much better results. They also need to be implemented in the game engine, meaning not every game supports them.

FSR2/XeSS upscaling pretty much acts as free anti aliasing, making it look better. And you get better UI rendering.

Good point. Though the deck actually keeps a backup. Updates are done to a second partition and if it fails to boot for some reason, it automatically rolls back to booting from the previous good installation. That’s why it’s really hard to completely brick the system.

But also why with every update all the modifications you did are reverted. Not that big of a deal once you know about it though, I just have a script that installs and configures everything after each update.

That’s what happens on mine if I undervolt the APU too much. If you haven’t touched those settings, it’s possible you lost the silicon lottery, and the only fix is an RMA.

One technical reason for why FSR 1 isn’t very good but works in everything is that FSR1 is the only one that just takes your current frame and upscales it, all the newer ones are all temporal - like TAA - and use data from multiple previous frames.
Very simplified, they “jiggle” the camera each frame to a different position so that they can gather extra data to use, but that requires being implemented in the game engine directly.

Yup.
The previous family share was gathering your library of games with the “console” in a single box and giving that entire to your friend. If you want to play anything, you need the box back.
Steam Families is now a common bookshelf, grab a game if it’s there and play.

Now we just need a way to use that shelf with the same account so I don’t get booted from my steam deck games just because I left something running on my PC and vice versa.

Specs are the same, the APU is just now 6nm instead of 7nm which is more efficient and lets it run a few degrees cooler and therefore boost a bit higher without overheating, and the RAM bandwidth went from 88Gb/s to 102Gb/s.

Consensus seems to be somewhere between 5-10% better fps, which means a game that ran at 50 fps might go up to 55, or one that ran at 28 might finally hit 30.

Depends on the game. There is no functionality in Steam for buffering them offline, it’s just that some games run the check for all achievements every time you load a save or gain a new achievement, while others only do it for the one you just gained.

That’s why I have “complete 40 substories” in Yakuza 4, but not the one for finishing 20 of them - it triggers when you complete the 20th, and never again.
Meanwhile I imported a complete save to a different game for mod dev debugging purposes, and it unlocked every single achievement the game had the moment I loaded that.

Surprisingly low.
Those 59% with Xbox controllers probably wouldn’t even need to use it, and neither do most of the PS users either as most games would support them natively already.

Though I have to wonder how much of that data is actually accurate - for example my setup would most likely show up as two Xbox controllers, but in reality it’s a Dualshock 3 and Dualshock 4 masquerading as Xinput devices through Vigembus and DS4Windows.

Capacitive analog sticks usable for enabling gyro, and four (afaik) fully Steam input API rebindable extra buttons, two on the back, two in front.
Also 1/4th the price of a DualSense Edge (which I believe is the one with the two back buttons?)

I assume this was planned from the beginning

Not planned, but expected. Sony said nuh-uh.

IIRC It was an april fools joke, from the people who made the Bloodborne PSX demake, hence the branding.

Heh, I actually started my replay on the Deck yesterday. Bind guard (b iirc) to a back button so you can do it while shooting without accidentally dashing all the time.

R5 is always dodge, B/circle, mostly so I don’t have to claw grip. Rest depend on the game, but usually some mix of face buttons so I can keep thumbs on the sticks while picking up items or changing weapons/items/spells etc, and sometimes with a “hold to use” added in for the same reason.

At some point SteamOS has major issues crashing when waking up from hibernation, which is probably why it hasn’t been added as an option. Which is annoying, because if you run out of battery, the deck just dies. At the very least, it should force-hibernate itself before dying.

Unsurprisingly, some of the posts about this have been removed by the subreddit moderators. That post also originally had a message from the automod that it was removed because it was in violation of rule 7 for posting “intentional misinformation” due to the “developing a very common issue” in the title, but they have since decided to remove that comment as well - didn’t restore the post though.

Now that they don’t have to optimize for last gen console hardware anymore, that’s going to be even more rare for any triple-A game. Even a well optimized PS5 game is going to seriously struggle to run on the Deck as even if you reduce the graphical setting, the PS5 essentially has an 8 core version of the 4 core CPU in the Deck.

Combine that with the 15W shared TDP limit and the game would basically have to be able to run using only roughly 25% the CPU load.

That “10W for the screen” includes them all.

No.

Taken straight from the LCD deck in front of me: With the screen as dim as possible sitting in the home menu, the total power usage of the deck is 4.9 Watts. The GPU is drawing 0.3 Watts. The CPU is drawing 0.3 Watts.
With the screen brightness turned to full but the deck idle, the power draw goes to 7.1 Watts, but the screen stops updating the image after 10 seconds. CPU & GPU are both still at 0.3 watts.
Jiggling the stick every few seconds to keep the screen on, the power draw goes to 9.6 Watts. CPU & GPU are still 0.3W each.

Result: The “rest” of the Steam Deck, minus SSD and cooling fan activity at full screen brightness, uses 9 Watts, at least 4.7 Watts of it being the screen and backlight alone, though I was not able to test how much the draw would be if the screen could be turned completely off, as that isn’t possible in SteamOS.

15W + 9W is 24W, we are a watt shy of 25W.

That “10W for the screen” includes them all.
When you reach the 15W TDP limit with the screen at max brightness (on the LCD version), the OSD will show you drawing about 25 watts, and it’s measuring it directly from the battery. This also matches what people have reported for the power pass-through mode measuring from the wall outlet - once the battery is fully charged the Deck can power itself directly from the charger, and at full tilt, it’s about 25 watts.
Sure if you really want to start separating them all out there are things like bluetooth, wifi, speaker amplifiers, the SSD etc, but compared to how much the backlight & screen controller draw, they are pretty much drops in the bucket. Well, the SSD might take a watt or two.

There is no limit to when it will charge, you can use a lower power charger to extend your runtime - I use my 9V 2A (18W) Pixel 4a charger all the time while playing. Anything higher than 25w will keep you playing indefinitely, as that’s pretty much the limit for what the deck can draw - 15W TDP and 10W for the screen, but obviously if you draw more than your charger can output eventually you will run out of battery.

But for quite a few lighter titles, 18W still gives you a few watts of net positive.

they pitch a “deck that could actually play Fortnite” - game from a company who’s CEO actively hates linux for whatever reason (maybe it kicked his dog, I dunno)

Nah you see, they just don’t have enough programmers. Poor, poor small, 4000+ employee Epic :(((

“Why is Fortnite still not playable on Steam Deck?
If we only had a few more programmers. It’s the Linux problem. I love the Steam Deck hardware. Valve has done an amazing job there; I wish they would get to tens of millions of users, at which point it would actually make sense to support it.”
-Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic.