crowley

Mike Wuerthele said:

crowley said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

crowley said:

FileMakerFeller said:

crowley said:

StrangeDays said:

1.5 to 2 hours battery life, prior to turning off features? This is…not great. I see why Apple has put so much effort into its Metal initiative, which delivers more performance at less power.

Where have you got that idea?  The article explicitly says 2-8 hours.

Metal may deliver more performance at less power, but it doesn't have the library.  What Steam has done with Proton is incredible and Apple should be talking to them about it.

The article explicitly says that Valve claims 2-8 hours but in real life it is less than that. An example is then given of a AAA title depleting the battery from a full charge to zero in ~1.5 hours.

In some circumstances it's less than that.  It's always possible to contrive circumstances, and the fact that the user has the ability to manage the performance is a major plus.

The fact the article doesn't even name the "AAA game" doesn't give me a whole load of confidence in their rigour.

Play Civ VI on an iPad for a couple hours and you'll find your battery gone or close to gone too, and Civ VI isn't a new game, or "AAA".

Give me a break.
 
Maybe if you squint at the text and ignore the test with the named No Man's Sky two paragraphs below that. Just about every AAA game left to its own devices will drain the battery on the Steam Deck between an hour and a half and two hours.

Most people wouldn’t consider No Man’s Sky an “AAA” game, it’s practically an indie game. So give me a break for not catching on when you misuse terms.

Sony seems to think it is AAA, and they're probably qualified to judge.

You're welcome to believe what you want as it pertains to rigor. You actually elaborate on the point before when you talked about Civ VI on the iPad draining the battery flat. More intensive work by a portable unit powered by a battery means you won't get "up to" whatever the manufacturer claims.

Sony have said that?  I'm surprised, but I'd still say that Sony are wrong.  AAA is a stupid term anyway, but it's only going to get more stupid if it doesn't mean anything.  High budget, big studio, high marketing costs, that's the common understanding.  No Man's Sky at most fulfils one of those (the third), it's not AAA. 

Let's look at the claims then.  Bold bits are my highlights, italics my additions.

Steam claims that 40 watt-hour battery in the Steam Deck will provide between two hours and up to eight hours of gaming. In the real world, it's less.

Left to its own devices, a AAA title (No Man's Sky) running directly on the deck will drain that battery in about an hour and a half. 

There are countermeasures to take. In recent OS updates, Valve introduced a Performance menu with advanced settings. The biggest setting there will be the framerate limit to 30 frames per second.

With the toggle off, letting the GPU run wild with the screen set to 50% brightness, I played No Man's Sky for just a hair under two hours. With the toggle on, it increased time from a full battery to a dead one to four hours and two minutes.

An AAA title drained the battery in about an hour and a half, which apparently is referring to No Man's Sky, yet later on No Man's Sky lasted for a hair under two hours.  And I was supposed to impicitly understand that this was the same game when two different results were stated?  Why?  And did you even test any other games, because if not that's an extremely limited test.

"In the real world it's less", what is the real world here then?  You deliberately run demanding games in the most battery consumptive way possible in order to say that "in the real world it's less", when clearly it is very possible to run those same games in ways that preserve battery very effectively because it is directly contradicted by the later admission that it can last for four hours.  

So that's bunk, users with any sense, very much "in the real world" will use performance modes, which Valve have made very easy to use, and according to your own tests will result in battery performance well within Valve's stated range.

Do Apple even offer per app performance balancing for demanding games and apps?  Of course not, but Valve get criticised for affording the option to run a vast library of games at full performance, or with a range of battery savings options.  That's pretty amazing, and most of those games you can't even get on Mac or iOS.  Big win for Valve, silly criticism.

Mike Wuerthele said:

crowley said:

FileMakerFeller said:

crowley said:

StrangeDays said:

1.5 to 2 hours battery life, prior to turning off features? This is…not great. I see why Apple has put so much effort into its Metal initiative, which delivers more performance at less power.

Where have you got that idea?  The article explicitly says 2-8 hours.

Metal may deliver more performance at less power, but it doesn't have the library.  What Steam has done with Proton is incredible and Apple should be talking to them about it.

The article explicitly says that Valve claims 2-8 hours but in real life it is less than that. An example is then given of a AAA title depleting the battery from a full charge to zero in ~1.5 hours.

In some circumstances it's less than that.  It's always possible to contrive circumstances, and the fact that the user has the ability to manage the performance is a major plus.

The fact the article doesn't even name the "AAA game" doesn't give me a whole load of confidence in their rigour.

Play Civ VI on an iPad for a couple hours and you'll find your battery gone or close to gone too, and Civ VI isn't a new game, or "AAA".

Give me a break.
 
Maybe if you squint at the text and ignore the test with the named No Man's Sky two paragraphs below that. Just about every AAA game left to its own devices will drain the battery on the Steam Deck between an hour and a half and two hours.

Most people wouldn’t consider No Man’s Sky an “AAA” game, it’s practically an indie game. So give me a break for not catching on when you misuse terms.

FileMakerFeller said:

crowley said:

StrangeDays said:

1.5 to 2 hours battery life, prior to turning off features? This is…not great. I see why Apple has put so much effort into its Metal initiative, which delivers more performance at less power.

Where have you got that idea?  The article explicitly says 2-8 hours.

Metal may deliver more performance at less power, but it doesn't have the library.  What Steam has done with Proton is incredible and Apple should be talking to them about it.

The article explicitly says that Valve claims 2-8 hours but in real life it is less than that. An example is then given of a AAA title depleting the battery from a full charge to zero in ~1.5 hours.

In some circumstances it's less than that.  It's always possible to contrive circumstances, and the fact that the user has the ability to manage the performance is a major plus.

The fact the article doesn't even name the "AAA game" doesn't give me a whole load of confidence in their rigour.

Play Civ VI on an iPad for a couple hours and you'll find your battery gone or close to gone too, and Civ VI isn't a new game, or "AAA".

foregoneconclusion said:

crowley said:

StrangeDays said:

1.5 to 2 hours battery life, prior to turning off features? This is…not great. I see why Apple has put so much effort into its Metal initiative, which delivers more performance at less power.

Where have you got that idea?  The article explicitly says 2-8 hours.

Metal may deliver more performance at less power, but it doesn't have the library.  What Steam has done with Proton is incredible and Apple should be talking to them about it.

Metal 3 will be providing macOS/iPadOS with compatibility for things like DirectX 12 and Vulkan et cetera. It's a lot of the same stuff that Proton does for Linux. 

I don't know where you've heard that but Metal 3 will do no such thing.  It brings Metal up to an approximate feature parity with other graphic APIs, but that's a completely different thing from "compatibility".

Proton compares more with what CodeWeavers do with CrossOver, and indeed Valve poached a number of engineers from CodeWeavers to make Proton.

StrangeDays said:

1.5 to 2 hours battery life, prior to turning off features? This is…not great. I see why Apple has put so much effort into its Metal initiative, which delivers more performance at less power.

Where have you got that idea?  The article explicitly says 2-8 hours.

Metal may deliver more performance at less power, but it doesn't have the library.  What Steam has done with Proton is incredible and Apple should be talking to them about it.