Steam Deck OS occupies 10GB, leaving about 50GB free for games in the base version

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, Dec 16, 2021.

  1. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

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  2. Tat3

    Tat3 Ancient Guru

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    OS went from 24gb to 10gb. "Easy" space saving tricks have now been done. I dont think the size of OS will drop much from that 10gb as it just gets harder and harder to shrink the OS. There might be options to shrink OS, but what that would cost in terms of RAM and CPU usage / OS load times? And possible size savings, even if they manage to get OS to 7gb, then it would leave 53gb for games, which does not really make any difference.
     
  3. WhiteLightning

    WhiteLightning Don Illuminati Staff Member

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    Wtf why would they use a 60gb hd ? Remember when 60gb was huge ? It was in the previous century.
     
  4. hawk7000

    hawk7000 Member

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    Cost, presumably?
    You can certainly argue that they should just skip the cheapest model, but it is just that... the cheapest model.

    That said, you can certainly fit some less space-hogging titles (a bunch of indie titles for instance) on the 64GB model, and storage is expandable via the SD slot, so all is not lost even if you opt for the 64GB model.
     

  5. rl66

    rl66 Ancient Guru

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    You mean previous millenium...
    Wow i was born on last millenium... make me feel as old as Gandalf...
     
  6. Tat3

    Tat3 Ancient Guru

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    Not all is lost with the cheapest model, but I dont think that microSD cards will be even close to performance of a cheap SSD, let alone NVMe.
     
  7. rl66

    rl66 Ancient Guru

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    It depend on what max size the SD can handle, it's from Steam don't forget it...
     
  8. ruthan

    ruthan Master Guru

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    Optimal second M.2 slot would be clever solution.
     
  9. Venix

    Venix Ancient Guru

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    I bet that version exists only so their marketing can say from 399.
     
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  10. Excalibur1814

    Excalibur1814 Active Member

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    So...

    -There was never any intention of releasing this in December.
    -"has just 64GB of RAM" - Blimey. That's a LOT of ram. Do you mean storage?

    I've pre-ordered the 256Gb model.
     

  11. Ricardo

    Ricardo Member Guru

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    I think it's pretty obvious that there's no free lunch: if you're buying the cheapest model, don't expect to fit a bunch of AAA games in it. Besides, the storage is easily expandable, so no problem there really.
    10GB for a fully fledged x86 OS is pretty reasonable, IMHO.
     
  12. Picolete

    Picolete Master Guru

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    60GB drive? That's almost a joke
     
  13. gUNN1993

    gUNN1993 Guest

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    I mean if you're buying this version you should really wait until reviews are out so you can see how the expansion storage will perform if that's going to be an issue for you.

    (I mean, it's pretty unlikely you'll be playing modern AAA games on this anyway)
     
  14. H83

    H83 Ancient Guru

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    This^^ We can´t expect miracles regarding entry level products.

    I´ve just bought a "normal" Switch last month for 250€ on sale and it´s easy to see where they cut corners to price it like that. One of those corners is the storage size of 32GB.

    And i also agree that 10GB for an OS is very good.
     
  15. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

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    I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around what they're filling up 10GB with. Even half that sounds a bit high. They're using Arch with KDE - my laptop has the same sort of setup installed on a 16GB Optane drive and I have an office suite, various productivity software, some SDKs, and drivers for a wider array of devices, and yet I'm still using less than 9GB. Granted, I don't have Steam installed on that laptop, but my point is, I'm running a whole lot more software than what the Deck is expected to run. So, what are they filling up all this space with?
    I could see maybe 3GB being used for a recovery partition, but even then, that means they're somehow filling up 7GB with what is basically just a Arch, KDE, Steam, maybe some 3rd party gaming-focused software, a web browser, and Proton. What else is necessary?

    Y'all seem to forget that Windows is very bloated.
     

  16. TieSKey

    TieSKey Master Guru

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    Hahhaha exactly my thoughs.

    My bet is they are including a lot of pre-configured wine (proton whatever) profiles for popular games/engines and that part of those 10Gb is just reserved free space for upgrade temp files, a recovery image, etc.
     
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  17. theoneofgod

    theoneofgod Ancient Guru

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    Yeah just go for the larger version. Faster storage there too.
     
  18. Ivrogne

    Ivrogne Master Guru

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    The cheapest model is only for marketing purpose. Afaik they almost got no profit from it.

    It's like looking at "$1/kg Apple" at the store only to find the said price is only for the almost rotten one.
     
  19. BUDA20

    BUDA20 Member

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    I hoping for btrfs with compress=zstd
     
  20. TimmyP

    TimmyP Guest

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    Been doing this about a decade with Surface Pros. I personally think this device is nearly DOA, but dont underestimate what you can run off a MicroSD card.I personally have played TR2013, ROTT, GTA V, Dragons Dogma, Watch Dogs, Witcher 3, Skyrim... They all run absolutely fine; like in between a 5400 and 7200rpm HDD for reference. Even have used compression with no real discernible loss in performance.

    Only game I could never get to work from SD card is original version of Dark Souls, and that was just a bug.
     

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