4 ms·

TSMC N6 is compatible with N7: https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/platform_DCE_N7_N6 https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/techno

TSMC N6 is compatible with N7: https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/platform_DCE_N7_N6 https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/pla... Which is how they could pull the APU shrink off without breaking the bank. And... Is the OLED not VRR? That was my #1 wish for the original Deck (with #2 being an OLED).

cma 3y ago
VRR would help so much for when it can't quite hit framerate.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  Yeah. Its basically free performance, and free power savings, and also makes the whole configuration process less fiddly. Those are all things you particularly want on the Deck.
smoldesu 3y ago
Judging from the Digital Foundry video[0], it appears to have a limited form of VRR that will sample the refresh rate closest to whatever you're limiting for (eg. 40fps -> 80hz). It's not a complete solution, but it should effectively "solve" frame timing issues if your framerate is high enough. For what it's worth too, my experience gaming on Wayland has been great from a consistency perspective. Once you dial in settings that work, the only performance blips you can notice are related to shader compilation. 144hz feels like 144hz, which has not always been the case on Linux. [0] https://youtu.be/Z1KLj06fn2s?t=257 https://youtu.be/Z1KLj06fn2s?t=257
- nottheengineer 3y ago
  What are you running exactly? I haven't been able to get a 144hz + 60hz setup working with KDE on X. The main monitor just doesn't want to do 144hz, even if I disable the other one via xrandr. My 1070 Ti has me afraid of wayland because the nvidia driver already breaks something once a month.
  - brucethemoose2 3y ago
    Be afraid. I tried to get my 3090 working in Wayland/KDE/Arch for about a month (after repeatedly running into the same issues on my 2060 laptop) and gave up. AMD IGP output it is... and I just game on Windows instead. But even then, neutering the leftover bits of the Nvidia driver (which I need for CUDA) that keep breaking electron/chromium is making me pull my hair out. I still hold my breath opening VSCode, wondering if its going to freeze or not.
    - glitchc 3y ago
      That doesn't sound normal, even for Linux. It almost sounds like the issue is somewhere else. My first guess would be a PSU that's unable to source the 3090's current draw under load, given everything else running on your system. Try using a dedicated rail or another PSU if you have one.
      - brucethemoose2 3y ago
        Its definitely not. I have a V850 SFX Gold, a single 3090 FTW3 and a 7800X3D, and its rock solid in OCCT's variable load test, even when overclocked (and its not overclocked on linux). I have literally all the exact same issues on my RTX 2060 Asus G14 laptop, like: - GPU rendering broken in Wayland Chromium/Electron, and sometimes Firefox - Occasional black screen on boot, from some kind of race condition. - Unpredictable artifacting on the KDE desktop and some apps. And I still get some of that when Nvidia DRM is disabled and I'm just using the 4900HS/7800X3D for display out. Completely disabling the Nvidia GPU fixes all of it, every single thing, but then I can't use CUDA.
    - davrosthedalek 3y ago
      Problems like these is one of the reason I run windows and WSL2...
      - distances 3y ago
        Also the reason why I got AMD when upgrading my graphics card.
doikor 3y ago
> And... Is the OLED not VRR? That was my #1 wish for the original Deck (with #2 being an OLED) According to LTT it is due to the physical connection. Basically the panel is the same as Switch OLED and thus uses whatever it uses which is MIPI and thus no VRR (need eDP for that). The hardware clearly supports it (just plug an external display with VRR support into the deck and it works) https://youtu.be/uCVXqoVi6RE?t=179 https://youtu.be/uCVXqoVi6RE?t=179 Basically Valve doesn't do large enough volume to make proper custom display economical so they have to take whatever they can get.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  I was wondering where they sourced the OLED from. Makes sense. The highest volume OLED with the right size is... the Switch's! >Basically Valve doesn't do large enough volume to make proper custom display economical so they have to take whatever they can get. Yeah exactly. I see a lot of online complaints (mostly outside HN) about no new APU or no custom display, but the capital costs of doing either from scratch are just hilariously high.
- danbee 3y ago
  The Switch is 1280x720 and the Steam Deck is 1280x800. They're not the same size.
  - doikor 3y ago
    As they have identical sub pixel layout they very likely come from the same factory. I think one side of the mother glass has a few extra pixels that you can just not cut off and end up with the 80 pixels more on one direction? If you start from a panel that cuts perfectly to 8K or 4K TV panels and you keep halving it won't go down evenly to 720p as it is not half of 1080p (1440p is half of 4K and 1080p is half of 1440p so they come out nicely without any wasted panel/pixels by cutting in half)
hajile 3y ago
I want a Steamdeck with four Zen4c cores and 16 CUs.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  More CUs the better. The wider it is, the slower it can run. But I don't think that's gonna happen until Zen 5, and only if we're lucky and AMD restarts the Van Gogh successors they canceled[1]. 1: https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ryzen-6000-notebook-roadmap-leaks-6nm-rembrandt-with-zen3-and-navi2-in-2022 https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ryzen-6000-notebook-roadmap-...
zerocrates 3y ago
The 7->6 move is also behind the modest shrinkage of the PS5 that preceded its new "somewhat slim" variant. (They did the shrink first with an unchanged case a little while ago).
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if they skip another shrink entirely before the PS6. Capital costs for the small nodes are said to be increasingly horrific.

cma 3y ago

VRR would help so much for when it can't quite hit framerate.

brucethemoose2 3y ago
Yeah. Its basically free performance, and free power savings, and also makes the whole configuration process less fiddly. Those are all things you particularly want on the Deck.

smoldesu 3y ago

Judging from the Digital Foundry video[0], it appears to have a limited form of VRR that will sample the refresh rate closest to whatever you're limiting for (eg. 40fps -> 80hz). It's not a complete solution, but it should effectively "solve" frame timing issues if your framerate is high enough. For what it's worth too, my experience gaming on Wayland has been great from a consistency perspective. Once you dial in settings that work, the only performance blips you can notice are related to shader compilation. 144hz feels like 144hz, which has not always been the case on Linux. [0] https://youtu.be/Z1KLj06fn2s?t=257 https://youtu.be/Z1KLj06fn2s?t=257

nottheengineer 3y ago
What are you running exactly? I haven't been able to get a 144hz + 60hz setup working with KDE on X. The main monitor just doesn't want to do 144hz, even if I disable the other one via xrandr. My 1070 Ti has me afraid of wayland because the nvidia driver already breaks something once a month.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  Be afraid. I tried to get my 3090 working in Wayland/KDE/Arch for about a month (after repeatedly running into the same issues on my 2060 laptop) and gave up. AMD IGP output it is... and I just game on Windows instead. But even then, neutering the leftover bits of the Nvidia driver (which I need for CUDA) that keep breaking electron/chromium is making me pull my hair out. I still hold my breath opening VSCode, wondering if its going to freeze or not.
  - glitchc 3y ago
    That doesn't sound normal, even for Linux. It almost sounds like the issue is somewhere else. My first guess would be a PSU that's unable to source the 3090's current draw under load, given everything else running on your system. Try using a dedicated rail or another PSU if you have one.
    - brucethemoose2 3y ago
      Its definitely not. I have a V850 SFX Gold, a single 3090 FTW3 and a 7800X3D, and its rock solid in OCCT's variable load test, even when overclocked (and its not overclocked on linux). I have literally all the exact same issues on my RTX 2060 Asus G14 laptop, like: - GPU rendering broken in Wayland Chromium/Electron, and sometimes Firefox - Occasional black screen on boot, from some kind of race condition. - Unpredictable artifacting on the KDE desktop and some apps. And I still get some of that when Nvidia DRM is disabled and I'm just using the 4900HS/7800X3D for display out. Completely disabling the Nvidia GPU fixes all of it, every single thing, but then I can't use CUDA.
  - davrosthedalek 3y ago
    Problems like these is one of the reason I run windows and WSL2...
    - distances 3y ago
      Also the reason why I got AMD when upgrading my graphics card.

doikor 3y ago

> And... Is the OLED not VRR? That was my #1 wish for the original Deck (with #2 being an OLED) According to LTT it is due to the physical connection. Basically the panel is the same as Switch OLED and thus uses whatever it uses which is MIPI and thus no VRR (need eDP for that). The hardware clearly supports it (just plug an external display with VRR support into the deck and it works) https://youtu.be/uCVXqoVi6RE?t=179 https://youtu.be/uCVXqoVi6RE?t=179 Basically Valve doesn't do large enough volume to make proper custom display economical so they have to take whatever they can get.

brucethemoose2 3y ago
I was wondering where they sourced the OLED from. Makes sense. The highest volume OLED with the right size is... the Switch's! >Basically Valve doesn't do large enough volume to make proper custom display economical so they have to take whatever they can get. Yeah exactly. I see a lot of online complaints (mostly outside HN) about no new APU or no custom display, but the capital costs of doing either from scratch are just hilariously high.
danbee 3y ago
The Switch is 1280x720 and the Steam Deck is 1280x800. They're not the same size.
- doikor 3y ago
  As they have identical sub pixel layout they very likely come from the same factory. I think one side of the mother glass has a few extra pixels that you can just not cut off and end up with the 80 pixels more on one direction? If you start from a panel that cuts perfectly to 8K or 4K TV panels and you keep halving it won't go down evenly to 720p as it is not half of 1080p (1440p is half of 4K and 1080p is half of 1440p so they come out nicely without any wasted panel/pixels by cutting in half)

hajile 3y ago

I want a Steamdeck with four Zen4c cores and 16 CUs.

brucethemoose2 3y ago
More CUs the better. The wider it is, the slower it can run. But I don't think that's gonna happen until Zen 5, and only if we're lucky and AMD restarts the Van Gogh successors they canceled[1]. 1: https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ryzen-6000-notebook-roadmap-leaks-6nm-rembrandt-with-zen3-and-navi2-in-2022 https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ryzen-6000-notebook-roadmap-...

zerocrates 3y ago

The 7->6 move is also behind the modest shrinkage of the PS5 that preceded its new "somewhat slim" variant. (They did the shrink first with an unchanged case a little while ago).

brucethemoose2 3y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if they skip another shrink entirely before the PS6. Capital costs for the small nodes are said to be increasingly horrific.