It’s good news that Valve is doubling down on shipments so you get a faster Steam Deck, but you can get a gaming laptop that isn’t quite as fast. Updating the Steam Deck website, Valve revealed that it now includes a PCIe 3 x2 NVMe SSD in its laptop that has half the maximum speed of current PCIe 3 x4 models.
Of course, this doesn’t affect the 64GB Steam console as it relies on eMMC storage. However, if you’re still waiting for your 256GB and 512GB models, there’s no guessing which version of PCI Express you’ll find when your pre-order is complete.
Valve says there’s no need to worry as their tests “revealed no impact on game performance between x2 and x4”. Not knowing what tests you’ve done, you’ll have to take this statement with a grain of salt, especially since coupled with the better Steam Deck, the machine becomes more than just a gaming device, but a kind of replacement for a desktop PC and a gaming laptop that you can use to improve performance.
Speaking to PC Gamer, Steam Deck designer Lawrence Young explains that this change can affect transfer speeds in “extremely rare cases.” Otherwise, according to Yang, “OS performance, load times, game performance, and game responsiveness are the same between the x2 and x4 drives.”
Valve quietly made the change, with Hardwareluxx noting that the website was updated on May 28 without anyone noticing. It can leave a sour aftertaste when Valve opts for a cheaper standard and doesn’t seem to pass the savings on to you since prices remain the same as before, but it’s more of a cost-cutting measure.
The reason Valve is able to double production is that it incorporates this slower standard into production, allowing it to deal with parts shortages. Since the Steam Deck’s storage speeds are already hampered by other bottlenecks, neither model uses the theoretical PCIe 3 x4 limit, meaning x2 makes sense anyway if more people are getting their hands on it. device.
You can find out which model you have by going to desktop mode, selecting device viewer in your apps, and going to storage devices. If you don’t see “E13T” at the end of your model number, you probably missed the silicon lottery and got the slower x2 version. However, ignorance is bliss, so it would be better not to look.
Source : PC Gamesn
