this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2024
504 points (98.8% liked)

Steam Deck

14850 readers
37 users here now

A place to discuss and support all things Steam Deck.

Replacement for r/steamdeck_linux.

As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title

The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
[Game] - News / info about a game on the deck.
[Update] - An update to a previous post.
[Meta] - Discussion about this community.

Some more Steam Deck specific flairs:
[Boot Screen] - Custom boot screens/videos.
[Selling] - If you are selling your deck.

These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.

Rules:

Link to our Matrix Space

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

This would presumably let x86 windows games run on ARM hardware.

This is almost certainly meant for the next Valve VR headset, but ARM has so much better power efficiency than x86 that a future ARM based Deck would be a huge improvement to battery life.

Also see this tweet:

VR games that have already secretly pushed Android ARM builds onto the Steam Store are ran via Waydroid (androidARM to LinuxARM)

VR games that do not have an ARM build on Steam (windows x86) are being translated/emulated via ProtonARM and FEX

Edit: here's gamingonlinux coverage of this info, includes some more information

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 39 points 1 month ago (6 children)

This is almost certainly meant for the next Valve VR headset

Based on what? Looks more likely to be Android to me. Or it could be an ARM Steam Deck.

ARM has so much better power efficiency than x86

x86 has pretty much caught up already if you look at the latest mobile chips from AMD and Intel.

[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Intel claims to have caught up with the upcoming Lunar Lake series but still to be seen.

That may be too late for whatever new device Valve is working on as given the lead time for such devices they may already have committed to an architecture for devices next year.

Also running X86 games on Arm devices is not likely to be efficient. I doubt the energy efficiency of Arm chips would outweigh the overhead of X86 to Arm translation?

But it's all speculation - even without hardware, getting Proton to work with Arm is good for steam regardless of any specific devices. For example it would allow steam to push the compatability tools onto Mac devices and even potentially mobile devices. Makes sense for Valve to do this without it meaning anything more that it being a god idea in itself.

[–] independantiste@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It depends for the translation speed, if they only make a single device, they can likely do what apple does and improve their translation layer (FEX) to use specific instructions of the CPU they are using. Apples Rosetta is very efficient at what it does

[–] entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 month ago

Even Rosetta still gives up 10%+ efficiency compared to a native compilation of the same program. I'm not saying it's not viable, but in a resource constrained (especially battery-constrained) device 10% is a lot.

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 month ago

Part of how they're identifying that proton arm and steam Waydroid exists is that the tools are being used to test VR games uploaded to steam, or were uploaded in a batch of other VR assets.

I fully hope to see this apply to Steam Deck/Chromebooks/Android/etc, but right now any hints of these have been VR specific. We haven't seen the Proton ARM before, but previous leaks about Waydroid have also all been VR related.

[–] Telodzrum@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Largest addressable market for Proton on ARM is Apple M-series devices.

[–] entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 month ago

Steam for Android ready to play my PC games from my phone sounds awesome, not gonna lie.

[–] Bogasse@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

About Intel catching up I might add that even if it proves to be true, this was not something that seemed to be expected. Valve might have been working on IR for a few years now?

[–] wallmenis@lemmy.one 1 points 1 month ago

I mean... It mentions waydroid so it is probably going to use that for android compatibility...