How does Valve’s Steam Deck compare to the Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5?

Valve’s surprising new Steam Deck has been officially announced, promising to let players take their entire library of Steam games on the go. But how does the handheld compare to other major consoles on the market, like the Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X / S, and PlayStation 5?

First, let’s take a look at the specifications of the Steam Deck. It is powered by an AMD APU with a quad-core / eight thread Zen 2 processor and an AMD RDNA 2 GPU with 8 compute units, as well as 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM.

Three models are available: one with 64GB of eMMC storage for $ 399, one with a 256GB NVMe SSD for $ 529, and a high-end model with 512GB of high-speed NVMe SSD storage for $ 649. While the basic eMMC storage setup could potentially mean slower game installs and load times, Valve promises that “there is no difference in the game in terms of frame rate or quality. graph ”between the three models.

Image: Valve

The most obvious comparison for the Steam Deck is, of course, Nintendo’s Switch – specifically the upcoming OLED model – which offers a similar portable setup, screen size, and design. Both devices also have 720p touchscreens.

Of the two, the Switch is almost certainly the less powerful device: it features Nvidia’s Tegra X1 chipset, an Arm-based processor that’s over four years old, compared to Steam Deck’s AMD Zen 2 CPU and RDNA GPU. 2 next-gen architectures that also appear in the PS5 and Xbox Series X. The Steam Deck has also been shown to handle games the Switch just can’t, like Control (which is only available as a cloud streaming option on Nintendo’s handheld.) And other games featured, like Jedi: Fallen Order or No Man’s Sky, have never been available in a portable form factor before.

But given that the two handhelds are the closest to each other in terms of form factor and price, it’s still worth looking at them side-by-side – especially since even with the The performance gap, they are much closer to each other than the significantly more powerful Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.

Unlike the Switch, the Steam Deck replaces the removable controllers with additional input methods: there is a pair of Steam Controller-style trackpads on either side of the screen, in addition to the joysticks, and four additional buttons on the back. device that serve as additional paddle-esque type inputs. It also offers Bluetooth audio for connecting a pair of wireless headphones, which the Switch is frustratingly missing.

Images: Valve

However, the Switch gains in autonomy, with 4.5 to 9 hours for the OLED Switch, against 2 to 8 hours for the Steam Deck, with Valve indicating IGN that you can reasonably expect 4 hours of Gate 2 at 720p and 60 frames per second. The Switch is also much lighter than Valve’s laptop, weighing in at 0.93 pounds for the Steam Deck’s 1.47 pounds weight.

Choosing between the $ 349 OLED Switch and the $ 399 Steam Deck will largely depend on preference: do you prefer Nintendo’s exclusive trim level and range of games, or Valve’s rougher option on the edges – but more powerful – with its vast PC library of games? (The Steam Deck also has other perks: since it’s a full-fledged PC, you can technically install Windows and use it as an Xbox Game Pass portable machine, install the Epic Game Store and use it. for streaming services like Stadia or Luna.)

Compared to the line of next-gen consoles, like the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, the Steam Deck fares considerably worse: its processor just doesn’t match the more powerful chips in the latest consoles. Sony or Microsoft, and its GPU is significantly less powerful than even the Xbox Series S, with less than half the graphics cores of Microsoft’s weaker next-gen console. Despite the fact that the Steam Deck uses the same RDNA 2 GPU architecture, it just isn’t in the same weight class.

As the graph below shows, the next-gen PS5 and Xbox consoles win in almost any metric you want to compare them on: more cores, faster CPU clock frequencies, a lot more units. of compute, faster GPU clock rates, and more teraflops of raw GPU power.

And while that might seem like an unfair comparison, it’s worth considering that the Steam Deck – priced from $ 399 to $ 649 – is more expensive at the same stage as those more premium consoles than the Switch ($ 199 to $ 349). $).

A more relevant comparison, at least when it comes to predicting the approximate power of the Steam Deck, is perhaps that of the latest generation of consoles: at 1.6 teraflops, it sits perfectly between the Xbox One S ( 1.4 teraflops) and the PS4 (1.8) in terms of raw graphics prowess. However, the Steam Deck uses a more modern RDNA 2 architecture, so it’s difficult to directly compare the two on specs alone.