General gaming discussion

Hopefully the next AMD GPUs are affordable or Intel up their driver game, because at the moment I find it hard to recommend traditional PC gaming to anyone other than enthusiasts. Just too pricey to achieve the usual benefits over consoles.

I think most people would be better off with a next gen console (fantastic performers for the price) and a Steam Deck - a pair of excellent devices that together would be around the same price as an entry to mid level desktop PC. PC still has its benefits - from VR to emulation to niche titles / genres to highest-end graphics - but the pricing is silly. There was a time around the last gen launch when you’d get double or better console performance with a €300-400 GPU. Now you wouldn’t get anywhere near that for the price alas.

You lose a lot of the key PC advantages with a Steam Deck, and it’s seriously compromised if you wanted to connect it to a TV or monitor. It’s a pure handheld, for better and worse. But for anyone who just wants access to a good chunk of the Steam Library, emulators etc… it’s a perfect entry point, and a great companion to a traditional console. It’s also excellent value compared to the general costs of PC gaming at the moment.

Yeah this is the limitation of the Steam Deck. It works great as a handheld with a 720p screen, but you'll hit major graphical limitations when you try to play anything fairly modern (like PS4/XB1 era and beyond) on 1080p or higher. You'll get nowhere near the performance of a 30 series card, and yeah it'll look fuzzy or 'soft' on a 1440p monitor. You'll be absolutely fine with (supported) older games or streaming, but not so much on newer ones running natively.

But that's the dilemma - the chase for graphical oomph and DLSS magic comes at an increasingly high (and honestly ridiculous) cost, while the SD offers great handheld performance / price while offering a much more limited desktop experience than you'd get with a traditional PC. So it depends on what you're looking for.

If you're in no major rush I'd wait until reviews come in for the new AMD GPUs and the higher-end Intel ones. They could be a better upgrade than an expensive 30 series one, although Intel has a lot of work to do with its drivers.

Good video from Digital Foundry here showing what you can expect from the Deck performance wise - from native 4K/60 Half-Life 2 through playable but very fuzzy and ugly FF7R or Horizon.