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Kyle Orland-November 15, 2021 at 11:49 PM UTC

The CPU portion of the Aerith chip has four Zen 2 cores, capable of running eight threads at 3.5 Ghz. At the same time, the GPU has eight RDNA2 computing units with a running frequency of 1.6 Ghz.

Although most Steam games now only have 8 or 12GB of RAM, Valve stated that it chose to place 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM on the Steam platform because "We want to make sure that the Steam platform is not only compatible with today’s games, but can also run unreleased games. Games.” At least 1GB of RAM is dedicated to the GPU, but the unified architecture of Steam Deck means that the GPU can access up to 8GB of RAM depending on what happens in the game, even “on a game-to-game basis” that can exceed this limit. "The 128-bit wide bus of RAM also allows a total memory bandwidth of 88Gbps, or 55GB/s/TFLOP, which Valve says is better than some desktop GPUs.

As far as storage is concerned, Valve stated that its tests have shown that there is almost no difference in actual load time between eMMC drives (on low-end Steam Deck models), NVMe SSD (on high-end models), and built-in SD card readers. Although the bandwidth speed of each option is quite different, in Valve's early testing, the start-up time between them differed by 25% or less (although the company said that the current test is far from comprehensive).

Valve spent a lot of time talking about how Steam Deck is optimized for battery life, specifically designed for the tiny power range in the 4-15 W range. LPDDR5 RAM also comes in handy there, and there is no shortage of energy-saving features that play a role in low-stress scenarios such as 2D games and idle/sleep modes. Valve says this means that a suspended Steam Deck should last "hours or even days" without needing to be plugged in.

However, when it is plugged in via USB-C, Deck can consume 45 W of power, which is enough to charge at full speed and power games at the same time. Steam Deck can also provide 7.5 W of power for plug-in peripherals, enough to power webcams, wired controllers, or external storage devices. For wireless accessories, Bluetooth 5.0 means that Steam Deck can support wireless headsets and "multiple controllers" at the same time. It can also switch to Bluetooth low energy mode for less intensive use cases.

Valve stated that it wants to ensure that its APUs provide consistent performance, rather than relying on "turbo boosting" or other modes that can temporarily increase the power (and power consumption) of laptop and mobile phone hardware. Valve stated that games on Steam Deck should perform the same in the first ten seconds and after several hours of continuous use. The performance of games on Steam Deck should be consistent whether it is plugging in, using batteries, docking, charging, or downloading games. Valve said that even a moderate increase in ambient temperature should not affect performance, but if it is too hot outside, the system can limit battery charging rate, download speed, and even SSD speed to keep the GPU running as stable as possible.

Since there is no hard limit on the power consumption of the APU, Valve stated that games running on Steam Deck should limit the number of frames per second to 60 fps (to match the display) or 30 fps (for games that push the GPU) to maintain battery life. AMD stated that the frame rate limit also helps to extend the battery life of Steam Deck in many games. If the game renders a frame faster than the 16.66 milliseconds required for the 60 fps frame rate, the APU will immediately switch to very low power mode until the frame is displayed, and then switch back to full power to calculate the next frame.

Valve stated that it is developing a global fps limiter to enforce the 30/60 fps rule in all games running on the Steam platform. Developers can also use "extra knobs" to help adjust the balance between performance and battery life.

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