Is there a button in Steam Deck that Windows 10 sees as a "power button"?

Because in Windows Power Option, you can define that pressing (tapping) power button will put Windows either to sleep mode, hibernate or shutdown. Wouldn't that work then, setting it to any of those three (I think by default it should be "sleep" anyway)?

I set that power button option normally to "shutdown" so that there is always that graceful method of shutting down the whole machine in case I end up in a situation where the system "kinda" runs, but I'm on a black screen or the mouse/keyboard doesn't work or whatever. Just so that I can always do a graceful shutdown with the power button, and not having to do a hard power restart instead.

Ok I am unsure if "sleep" or "hibernate" can handle that, but frankly I am fine if I specifically have to reload a save game in order to continue playing the game.

Frankly that is how I use Nintendo Switch, even if I apparently didn't need to: I save Minecraft, exit the game, and put Switch to sleep mode. Then when it is time for my son to continue playing the game, I switch on Switch, load Minecraft and load the saved game. Yeah I guess it takes more time, but then my son plays the game like for many hours and when it is time to stop playing, it is for a longer time anyway (like we go eat, go out etc.).

So for me personally, I don't see it as a deal-breaker even if Steam Deck can't save the state of the game with a push of a button (with Windows 10). Then again I have even disabled "Fast Startup" on Windows 10 and still use a slower HDD (instead of SSD) on my main PC, so I guess I am generally more patient than most people... Who cares about a little more waiting?

it's been reported that you'll only be able to play the games off of an SD card,so the NVME SSD isn't going to be of much use, outside of installing the OS.

I’ve done that, not daily of course but dozens of times over several years ;)
The main difference is that I use a keyboard shortcut instead of closing my laptop lid for that.

(on Debian stable and Debian Sid, not on Windows)

Not much of an article, but every game tested hits 30 average FPS. Less demanding games being near 60 FPS. Though list of tested games and their performance not released.

I'm going to repost this because it clearly got lost in the clutter.

Digital Foundry put out a very interesting discussion about the SteamDeck: DF Direct Special: Steam Deck - Spec Updates, Performance, SteamOS, Compatibility. At around 46:30 they mention that Windows can't do the "suspend and resume" that Switch and most handhelds are able to do. This is why, even though you can install Windows on SteamDeck you might not want to do it. I have no idea if Linux or other distributions are able to do this.



Where has this been reported, I've never heard this and it doesn't make sense at all. All I've heard is that the IGN recording was made on a prototype that had games on the SD card, in order to prove it's a viable solution to the internal SSD.

Thanks for the reminder, I indeed missed the source.

Well, I would not put Windows on any of my devices anyway, especially something requiring optimized performances like a gaming device.

On Linux, instant suspend/resume even in the middle of a game session has been a thing for a long time already (at least several years). It already worked on my first Linux laptop, an old 32-bit Thinkpad X60 that I bought second-hand something like ten years ago.

Is this why, on Win 10 now, when you hit Shutdown it doesn’t actually shutdown? Have had issues with this on the work laptop where shutdown sets windows into a sleep mode, sure faster startup, but things generally break then. It’s always been a good idea to shutdown completely, otherwise processes don’t stop, memory isn’t freed, temporary stuff is not cleaned. I would imagine that handhelds don’t have this overhead as they don’t do anything other than play some games, up until now anyways.

Yes disabling the Fast Startup in the power options makes sure Windows is completely shut down when you shut it down. I prefer it that way even if booting Windows then takes longer.

By default, Windows 10's shutdown behaves like hibernate, not sleep/suspend. This means that the system uses no power (you can even unplug it and disconnect the battery), but has to load the state from disk, making it take longer than waking from suspend, but not as long as a cold boot.

(Word of warning: Don't access Windows 10's main drive from Linux or any other OS when it's hibernating. Or better yet, there's apparently a way to make "shutdown" a real shutdown, and you should do that if dual booting (or if you'd just prefer it to always completely shutdown).)

And, if you're dual booting, *definitely* disable this to avoid filesystem corruption (though I believe Linux tools will refuse to access NTFS volumes that aren't cleanly unmounted, at least in read-write mode).

I'm sorry for delay, I even had to re-read most of your posts to realize that you are on about theory and expressing your wishes about APUs development and sw/game optimizations for them and how it could affect prices of other hardware etc. I talked from my daily experience with AMD APUs since Richland and Kaveri A10 desktop days, how they behave in practice and not on paper in comparison to all kinds of ranges of desktops with dGPUs, not to mention my hw-oriented background. Btw optimizing future games for the lowest denominator is an utopia and regress for pc gaming in general. Steam Desk will likely have a low/mid-end settings optimized for it in some games, depending on hw requirements of said game and dev's willingness to provide it (or maybe community could provide setting profiles via cloud for various games or whatever).

You made it sounds in that post as if there are games that struggled on desktop, while an APU made them run just fine, which I find really hard to believe unless you mix apples and oranges and talk about consoles vs potatos and general use laptops. Or we can call it a language barrier.

Lastly, the memory is the single greatest bottleneck of an APU design, as long as it's your standard system memory that gets shared. That's followed by thermal envelope (no way around it with a tight enclosure of a handheld, otherwise it will either get hot or loud) and lower clocks. There are no IFs BUTs or anything else about it, sorry. I've mentioned HBM2 specifically because it has memory bus times wider than its actual distance to the gpu core. 1024bit per 4GB stack.... steam deck will have what, 128bit tops for the whole memory stack? And that would be grand, since it's ddr5 at least.

People need to get real with what to expect from Steam deck. It's great as a portable device, comparable to a low-ish end desktop of same generation in performance. Is it good news? Sure! At least there's some competition in the segment. Will it become that be-all end-all pc device? Hype aside, that's highly unlikely.
I hope that they will iron out the launch kinks and come up with some prosumer v2 model with updates, tweaks and that oled display I waxed lyrical about already for obvious reasons. I'm not worried of desoldering ssd or memory chips themselves for an upgrade down the road when possible etc, but it's not ideal for the general consumer who is unlikely to even go into the options to set display brightness right.

Do you mean disable it in Windows, or Linux?

I don't think Windows can by default access any non-Windows partitions (like ext4, xfs, btrfs or whatever), so how could it corrupt their filesystems?

Either way, I think disabling Fast Startup on Windows generally makes sure you'll have less issues overall, with the expense of longer Windows boot up times. Then again I guess most Windows 10 users are happily using it without encountering any (at least serious) issues, but then sometimes there are those cases like me helping my friend getting rid of a mouse problem, which he couldn't fix because he repeatedly tried to shut Windows down (and back up) without realizing it wouldn't completely shut down. I told him to restart the system instead, after which his machine worked again because that makes a proper shutdown too.

That's my understanding and experience too. In case of windows, think of using fastboot as using the toilet for a prolonged time without actually flushing it. Oldschool boot is the way to go to resolve conflicts/stuck drivers, ports, os updates and all the mess that windows just loves to do in the background on its own. I don't believe M$ implying that their toilet is self-maintaining and won't ever stink. Just flush it regularly bro!

On a reasonably fast cpu, memory and ssd, you would save only some ~1-2secs of boot time maybe, while doing unnecessary writes on the ssd (not that it matters that much) for hibernation. I'm not a fan of it, but I acknowledge that there are uses for it. I just don't need it personally.

Also I came across a case where hibernation savestate got corrupt on the hdd of his laptop and it carried over to game's save file that got even uploaded to the cloud after session ended, overwriting the otherwise good file there. From then on my dude was screwed royally, since it was a single save slot game to boot (dragon's dogma). It rubs me the wrong way to hibernate live session in progress. Sure it's just a game and not some critical data, but losing progress in some rpg just because I've been lazy to properly save and quit the game... why take the unnecessary increase in risks of dataloss, apphangs etc.

I mean disabling it in Windows. Linux does not do this by default.

If you hibernate Linux with an NTFS partition mounted, booting Windows would not be a good idea, as it will likely try to "fix" that filesystem, and that would not be a good idea, as then Linux will likely corrupt the filesystem furthen when resuming from hibernation. Note that this is not an issue if you shut down Linux properly (instead of hibernating) or unmount the NTFS partition(s) first, and it usually shouldn't be a big issue if Linux is shut down abnormally (power outage or kernel panic, for example); it's only an issue when Linux resumes from hibernation with a filesystem that was "fixed" by another OS when Linux thinks it's the only OS accessing that filesystem at the moment.

Modern games, particularly games on PCs with their massive amounts of storage, should not be single save slot games. I can understand it for games like Final Fantasy 1 and SaGa 1, where cart storage might have been an issue, or even older Pokemon games (lots of data to store), but not for games that save to hard drives.

I am very interested but later on with eventual revision and price drop... Glad Nintendo wo'nt get the monopoly in the portable gaming market if anything, there is a limit to shameless gluttony and crapping on nostalgic fans.

Looks like absoloute shit