Which one should I buy, Ganker ?
ROG Ally :
> Best screen and speakers
> Little bit more powerful
> Looks better and is slimmer
> Brand new components
> Come with W11 so no problem for emulation / piracy
Steam Deck :
> Cheaper (especially on sales)
> All the community things to download
> More polished OS
> Will probably have more updates
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Steam Deck: won't melt your storage
Ally doesn't have trackpads or even gyro. It performs better but has worse battery life as well.
>Which one should I buy, Ganker ?
I think the biggest advantage Ally brings to the table is the ability to dock it. The 12 RDNA3 do really well at 30-35w so you can get resolutions more suitable for television in even newer games, it also can use eGPU's so that is a path you can upgrade too. Here is a video on docked performance.
If you want decent battery on the go then using Turbo mode will only give you about an hour while performance mode will double that but won't give you much more power than the Deck at 15w. So to make use of the extra performance you need play on a charger be it your wall or a laptop powerbank. For a lot of people this isn't a big deal so they can enjoy significantly more performance than the Deck.
Finally the device is a lot more quite than the Deck even under a much higher TDP. Asus apparently knocked it out of the park with the cooling system.
I think one of the things to consider is that the Rog Ally is still going through teething issues much like the Deck did early days. It's going to take a while before every hardware hiccup is sorted, before Armory Crate is what it needs to be, before the Drivers are optimized. The Ally should not be totally written off in these early stages. When I think back to the turbulent Deck launch I can't help but wonder what would have happened if they didn't delay it a few months and sent them out in November as originally planned.
All that aside I was making the same choice you did and went with the 256gb Deck, the Steam Sale made the decision for me and I decided to save $250 on my purchase because I am pretty okay with 800p 30-40fps, I mostly play indie and older games and I want that low watt battery life. I will probably get something more powerful next year or the year after.
>or even gyro
You can get Gyro working.
>I think one of the things to consider is that the Rog Ally is still going through teething issues much like the Deck did early days
Difference here though is that Valve has insanely autistic devs that can pump out updates every week if not every other day for the Deck. Which they did in the first few months.
So far ASUS has been entieely incompetent in directly addressing not just software issues but actual hardware shitshows their customers are approaching them with. And from how Armoury Crate has been handled not just in the Ally but as a general frontend across their other products, it's clear as day that you shouldn't expect much in terms of suppory. Especially because ASUS isn't even in control of the OS. It's u to Pajeetsoft to address half the problems with this shit.
I hope someone will make a Steam Deck clone with trackpads like the Deck, great upstream Linux driver support like the Deck, easy repairability and upgradability like the Deck, OK battery life like the Deck, a low price like the Deck and sell it in my country unlike the Deck. Bonus points for USB4 eGPU support (I think Zen 4 has this), screws that are easier to work with without harming the machine and easier battery replacement. Not sure if this is more realistic than hoping that VALVE will start shipping to my country.
Definitely the deck. I've enjoyed having mine.
>best screen and speakers
who gives a shit you're buying a portable system
>little bit more powerful
correct
>looks better and slimmer
correct
>brand new components
who cares if these components arent providing a better experience
>comes with W11
this is not an upside. emulation/piracy is just as easy on the deck
Buying a Rog Ally is the equivalent of buying an iToddler phone
>who gives a shit you're buying a portable system
Everyone does you fricking mongoloid. Having a shitty display ruins the fricking experience
the deck's screen isn't shitty
thanks for agreeing
Do a side to side comparison with an OLED, and get some fricking standards while you're at it
>aren't providing a better experience
better performance is a better experience to me, man.
>emulation is just as easy on the deck
lemme know when I can access the other 40% of my steam games, and the other launchers I have without having to do awful workarounds.
Or installing mods without having to use workarounds
or you know, using emulators without shitty workarounds (unless you use some dogshit like retroarch with it's 4 year out of date cores, yuck)
the real issues with the ally are the complete silence from asus on the hardware troubles like the SD card reader shitting itself (for a reason we don't know yet, just as many people have it running nothing but perf as people who don't have any issues and run constant 30w turbo 24/7, despite claims that it's the heat, like people also claimed the stick deadzone was hardware when it's just hte shitty armory crate nonsense
or the fricked bios update that worsened performance for a negligible gain in battery life.
The deck is a great system, especially for the cheapest price+ an SSD, totally recommend it over the ally
but man, don't pretend not being able to play anything but steam titles without having to fricking work for it is anything but complete garbage, and you'll still never have complete compatibility because devs are allergic to supporting linux.
>lemme know when I can access the other 40% of my steam games
manage game > properties > compatibility > Force the use of a specific Steam Play tool > newest proton
Boom works for 39% of that 40%
>Or installing mods without having to use workarounds
The frick does this mean? You can drag drop just fine, and if it's an exe you need to run, open that specific game's wine config through protontricks and select "run an exe"
>(unless you use some dogshit like retroarch with it's 4 year out of date cores, yuck)
Get the non steam version, that one is fully up to date with modern emulation lol
I can't speak for the "40%" part, but emulation is just as easy if not easier to get up and running on the deck.
>Press "Steam" button
>Power
>Desktop Mode
>Press the little "shop" icon in the start menu that looks like a blue shopping bag
>Games
>Emulation
>Pick any of them
>Install
>Add them to steam as a "non-steam" game
>Done
Any other setup requirements are identical to how you'd do it on Windows, the only difference is that you need to update the emulators through the shop app if you go this route, but that is as easy as clicking "update" when the deck starts bugging you about it in desktop mode. If you download your emulator directly from the developers site then it works identically to how it works on windows
least zoomer post
I heard the Ally destroys SD cards and also has insane input lag
I was originally fine recommending the Rog Ally a week or two ago but now I genuinely can't after seeing just how dogshit ASUS has been with the SD killing.
How can I honestly provide even a modicum of respect to a company that can't even admit how hard they fricked up? Not just the SD card melting too. They fricking try to dodge the problems with the deadzones, armoury crate being total garbage, and their horrid bios updates that made performance worse. Man like at least the Deck has its autistic community and Valve custoner support slobers your dick.
> Come with W11 so no problem for emulation / piracy
Steamdeck
The community shit is far better, the user experience is far better
Don't really care about the SD thing as 512 Go should be enough for me.
Are trackpads and gyro usefull ?
I have an Ally here for a few day, tried it and was very impress but idk if I should keep it as Steam Deck seems 90 % similar for almost half the price
>Are trackpads and gyro usefull ?
it can be, up to you if you use them though, i didn't
>Are trackpads and gyro usefull ?
Depends on if you give a shit. I personally wouldn't buy one of these umpcs without them. I've played shooters on my deck using gyro+flickstick and its a ton of fun, but it take a certain kind of person to appreciate that and learn new muscle memory over just using an analog stick with egregious amounts of aim assist. Trackpads with steam input make pretty much anything playable, including RTS games, but since you're asking the question in the first place, you probably wouldn't give a frick.
>Are trackpads and gyro usefull ?
If you want to play any RTS games they are a necessity.
Warcraft III and Fallout 1 is top comfy on my deck, can't even imagine how you would play it without trackpad.
For PC games? Extremely. Typically K+M games like RTS's are actually viable on the deck because of it and gyro makes shooters a lot better.
Deck because it has better controls, it's like all the other PC handheld manufacturers forget that this shit is something you should actually play video games on, it's like they think people just purchase shit based on the spec sheet and having the latest Radeon 9000 or some shit is good enough, nothing else matters. When you buy a handheld, it needs to have good controls built-in because that's what you'll be using.
Both are great (I have too many handhelds)
Steamdeck is better for low power and longer battery life.
Ally absolutely mogs the deck on AAA games and playing tethered or attached to battery though.
So depends on your usecase. Traveling a lot and won't be able to charge much? Deck is probably better. Gonna have easy access to electricity? Get the ally for sure.
5 pence has been deposited into your asus chink shill account
I shill for all vidya companies for free. Anon it's okay to like stuff.
Deck doesn't get as warm as the ally but is much louder ofc. So trade off - I don't like headphones so this pushes me towards ally.
Valve has done a great job with steamos and really as long as you can follow guides you can probably figure out how to mostly match anything you can do in windows.
I've never had to deal with either support but both devices are easy as shit to take apart
>playing tethered
The existence of emudeck alone is enough to get the deck instead. Also the ROG doesn't have touchpads and it's own software breaks the fricking gyro.
You can get the whole emudeck setup on the ally too, it's paywalled rn but supposedly will be free at some point
As I said, I have a Ally right here for a few more days. I'm scared I'll miss the screen quality and the good speakers when I send it back. Both are very cool and it's a big part of the experience for the handled.
On the other hand I'm kinda scared I'll miss SteamOS, even though I could probably install it on the Ally. Few questions for deck bros :
> Does the Deck get hot ?
> Is it easy to install pirated gamed / torrents / emulators ?
> Do you miss Windows ?
> Is Valve support good ? That's the point that scares me with Asus, ex if a joystick start to drift
Deck never gets hot, can get loud though
>pirated games:
But if most of your games are pirated or from another source out side of steam, or you find that one steam game that needs tinkering
It can be REALLY annoying to get working, for the most part pirated shit are simple, add as .exe set it with proton and it works, sometimes it doesn't which can be a simple google search away or some fricking annoying tinkering
Some games don't work because of some codec issues (KH series mainly), took forever for me to set up the mods for FO3/nv
All in all, it wasn't too bad, can be really annoying if you're not used to tinkering with your shit and searching for the solutions
Just depends on the user and their source of games mostly, could be really seamless or just really annoying
can be, for the most part, its just adding a .exe to the steam on the os side then setting proton compat, there's plugins to automatically add covers/info/meta data so it looks legit
>torrents
you shouldn't torrent on the deck, or install anything on the deck it will take a LONG time
>emulators
piss easy, emudeck is an all in one solution, sets up all the controls + folders, you only need to put roms (and sometimes bios)
>missing windows
you wouldn't, it's practically the same shit, unless you're using it as your main driver
>valve support
amazing, far better than the asos shit or chink handheld shit
I have an ally AND a deck though so let me try to answer with my experiences:
>heat
My deck gets hot, but no hotter than my ally. That is to say, screen gets warm to the touch, back gets a little toasty, but nowhere NEAR as bad as my ally on stock config. As soon as I just ramped my ally's fan curves up to 100% at 70c my ally is significantly cooler at all times
>install pirated stuff/torrents/emulators
easy as pie for emulation, most normalgays use a frontend called emudeck, but you're more than capable of using retroarch yourself, or other standalone emulators with linux support
>do you miss windows
100%. That was the entire reason I bought the ally, and I don't regret my purchase at all. I and my few friends that bought them seem to have had 0 issues. No SD card bullshitery, no performance woes, no fricked up fans, no squeaky triggers. I play a few MMOs that don't, and will never have support for the deck/linux. I love the deck but the ally is just more useful for my personal use case. I also like having game pass support natively, that's really fun, and the windows "support" on the deck is a hacky janky disaster and I would not recommend it.
>is valve support good
about 50 gorillion times better than ASUS, far and away the better choice if you're worried for the future. The deck will last another year or two (For a total of 3-4) before they even consider ramping down or creating a successor device. ASUS will 100% try to shit out a new model every year or two.
Here's a question for you.
Look at the games you've been playing on ally, then look at their compat on the deck. Do you really benefit from the ally? the power difference is honestly not significant despite what people claim. Especially with the heat issues the ally faces. MOST of the games MOST people are playing will run fine on either. There are outliers though, but ask earnestly: do you NEED the ally?
This is the crux really.
If you play multiplayer slop that needs anticheat compatibility OR you want a decently powerful laptop replacement thats just hooked in 24/7 (why get a handheld at that point lmao) then the Ally is for you. Dont expect ASUS to have any good support but it is what it is.
>(why get a handheld at that point lmao)
tbf similarly powerful laptops are 3 times as expensive
This is true. Also though don't doubt on the ability of portable batteries. You can do 25/30w turbo and get a good 2.5 hrs of re4make at 60fps which is nothing to sneeze at
You shouldn't ever be doing 25w/30w though, it raises temps so much that it can decimate your performance. This is already well documented. 18/20/25w profile gives better performance, better battery, and lower temps if you raise the fan curves. It's the difference between 720p60 med with FSR on 30w turbo to 1080p60 high no fsr. It's hilarious how fricking ass backward this entire launch has been.
I'm also curious how none of the review models seem to have any of these issues people are noting now.
Mine has literally 0 issues making out at 30w for hours on end, tbh wouldn't surprise me if you had a bad unit. Even with the default fan profile I don't have any issues with thermal throttle. I do keep my place at a nice 70c or lower usually though.
Thanks. Honestly I mainly play old games or 2D stuff (recently been going through Dave the Diver, also bought Nier;Automata, was thinking to do the P3 Royal Remake when it comes out…).
I think the deck's power would probably be enough BUT I will definitely miss the cool screen and speakers. Which is my main struggle here, but I guess I'll get a better battery life on deck so there's that
Let's say I buy a deck : which version ? Is 256 with a cheap SD enough ? The discounts are pretty nice
Let me up front with you here bud.
The battery life is gonna be exactly the same if you were playing on perf or silent with your ally. Like, within 20minutes. These devices are not meant to be played for hours and hours and hours on end, far away from a source of power. Get a power bank anyway. anker 737 is great, pretty cheap, safe (IE, not some chink shit that will balloon it's battery in a month)
the screen on deck is worse, but the bigger thing you may notice is the TOUCHSCREEN on the deck is worse. If you used the touchscreen on the ally a lot, that's why everyone heralds the trackpads (or at least why I feel they do), they make it usable in desktop mode, cause it's like using a galaxy S4 or an iphone 6 screen, just swampy and gross.
Buy the cheapest version of the deck, they all have the exact same internals, so all you get is the extra tat/stuff/fluff/e-waste like a carrying case or profile shit for your steam account. the highest end model has a nice screen, but there are replacement screens on the market for pretty cheap, and the SSD is user replacable, same as the ally, so if you bought a replacement ssd for your ally already, yank the fricker out, put it in your $400 deck and you're good to go.
Actually, the ally DOES have gyro. ASUS just fricked up and didn't seem to try and nail down official support for it for launch, maybe purposefully to have a later date/end of year marketing point (black friday i guess?) But you can currently get it working in some things, ds4windows recognizes it even and that allows you to get it pretty functional in most programs that support xinput gyro controllers like a DS4 or whatever. Still, really shitty situation.
>Let's say I buy a deck : which version ?
Cheapest + sd
Cheapest + sd + sdd upgrade down the line
It's not hard to open, if you're not a moron, it'll be far cheaper to get a 64gb and a 1tb ssd + sd card
>> Does the Deck get hot ?
Technically yes, but it has actual thermal design so the grips don't heat up at all. The touch screen does get a bit warm, though.
>> Is it easy to install pirated gamed / torrents / emulators ?
I've only installed one pirated game but it was as simple as right clicking the (windows) executable in desktop mode. Emulators and other software is one click install if it's on flathub.
The OS itself is image-based like most gaming console systems, so software installed with a traditional package manager will disappear in a software upgrade. You're not likely to frick the OS up just because you copypasted something you didn't understand because of this, though.
>> Do you miss Windows ?
Not one bit. All my computers are linux for close to ten years.
>> Is Valve support good ? That's the point that scares me with Asus, ex if a joystick start to drift
Replacement parts are available, you can even buy hall effect sticks for the deck. The hardware is as much designed for repairability as is possible. There's even a higher resolution replacement screen available somewhere.
There's a gotcha where the power button is some kind of an independent device that can soft-brick the deck if you leave a video game running and then suspend the device and let the battery drain. You'll need to do some input sequence voodoo to cold boot the system.
The deck can't run PS3 emulation full speed like the ally, also, the ally runs switch games at a higher FPS than the switch
As an example, here is the ally running mgs4 at full speed with rpcs3
%3D
>The deck can't run PS3 emulation full speed like the ally
depends on the game, it can run demon's souls at 120 fps
?t=520
Honestly, loved my Steamdeck when it worked, from steam mostly
But if most of your games are pirated or from another source out side of steam, or you find that one steam game that needs tinkering
It can be REALLY annoying to get working, for the most part pirated shit are simple, add as .exe set it with proton and it works, sometimes it doesn't which can be a simple google search away or some fricking annoying tinkering
Some games don't work because of some codec issues (KH series mainly), took forever for me to set up the mods for FO3/nv
All in all, it wasn't too bad, can be really annoying if you're not used to tinkering with your shit and searching for the solutions
Just depends on the user and their source of games mostly, could be really seamless or just really annoying
>reddit spacing
>newbie phrasing
>Come with W11 so no problem for emulation / piracy
What? What problem do you have with emulation on Linux? Last time I checked RADV driver was way more advanced than AMDVLK
Lack of trackpads on the Ally is a dealbreaker.
Am I the only person who hates the fricking trackpads? Hated it on the steam controller, hate them here, they have never once been even remotely useful to me. Are people actually playing RTS and shit on the deck? Only way I can conceive of using them, and it still seems like a terrible idea.
They feel like gigantic blobs of wasted real estate every time I pick up my deck which is a shame cause I love the device in every other way.
When you're in desktop mode they're your mousepads.
How would you navigate otherwise? The touch screen isn't great because the screen is small and the precision needed.
I don't hate then but it's kind of like gyro where sometimes is super nice and other times it's mildly annoying.
Either get the 64 and upgrade the ssd or get the 512 for the "better" screen. The 256 is objectively the worst choice. (Ironically I bought that one)
Anything that requires precision is 10x better with the pads, you should try playing CSGO on the deck with the sticks and then switch to the pads and you'll immediately notice the difference. They are also mandatory to use if you play any PC game released before 2007 since barely any games from before then have any kind of support for controller input and trying too emulate a mouse with a joystick is like trying to thread a needle during an earthquake
for any kind of shooter I vastly prefer gyro to trackpads, but trackpads still have either uses
>either
*their
I cannot fathom even humoring playing an FPS with anything but a mouse. It's like chopping off your fingers and trying to hold someone's hand.
Gyro is good. It's not better than KB&M but I also don't feel like I'm at a disadvantage when playing against KB&M users, especially after learning flickstick.
I've tried it, and it feels like a laughable gimmick. If I have to reinvest time into "learning" to use it, it's not intuitive and that means bad, to me, at least.
I was mostly curious if there were other use cases for the touchpads but it seems like people are just using them because the touchscreen sucks ass, not really because they're actually good. Feels nice to be vindicated a bit for my distaste of them at least.
One of the best use cases for the pads outside of precision mouse input is that the can emulate up to 12 different buttons with nothing but finger positioning and vibration. I tried playing XIV on ky deck and was blown away by the possibilities that the pads provided. Granted, it's "emulating" buttons, which means that they will never be as tactile as normal buttons, but they can easily be used to bind buttons you rarely use like map, inventory, settings, social and overlay functions which frees up your other buttons for actual gameplay use
Steam input can do all sorts of weird shit with the trackpads. You can map a bunch of macros into each one of them with an extra GUI so that you could have your minecraft hotbar keyboard shortcuts on one side, as an example.
>If I have to reinvest time into "learning" to use it
You have to invest time into learning literally any input method. You don’t magically get instant muscle memory for whatever you’re doing. It takes some time. That’s the case with everything. It would be no different if you decided to pick up an arcade stick or hitbox to play a fighting game after only ever using a pad.
I picked up and learned how to use a mouse the first time I ever touched one, it was incredibly intuitive, no learning necessary.
Same with a controller. You pick it up, hold it, and it's designed so your hands go where they're meant to be and fingers can access all the buttons, no "learning" necessary, intuitive.
Strange I sort of immediately got gyro.
Maybe because I was the moron who always leaned my body alongside my controller as a kid. Gyro feels like that except more minute and micro.
Whether you realize it or not, the first time you picked up a controller as a moronic child, it may have been intuitive but you didn't have the muscle memory and that took time to build.
The frick is flickstick?
(I just want to keep this thread alive to annoy the people who spam chinkshit in every damn thread)
Huh that actually looks like it could be pretty fun to use. How long did it take you to get good at it?
I don't remember exactly, less than a week? I just played old singleplayer shooters like CoD:WaW and Bad Company 2 on my deck to get used to it until it clicked.
If you are even considering not the Deck, you don't deserve the Deck.
The Steam Deck is a better platform, and has better controls.
If you could install the SteamOS on the ROG I'd consider it, but there still aren't trackpads or gyros which I really like about the Steam Deck (I have one).
I would like better performance for Switch Emulation, but I think with time the emulator may mature more.
The trackpads and gyro enable more games to be compatible with the Deck than Windows on the ROG.
Food for thought.
Is steamOS 3.5 out yet?
Deck
>your money not going to Microsoft
>touchpads
>doesn't have Asus "support"
>2023
>not playing games in bed next to your sleeping gf
based
except mine has that bug where the RGB on the sticks kicks on at random times in the middle of the night.
also I have a bf and not a gf cause I'm a gigantic homosexual, but I'm a top so it's okay
I play porn games while resting my head on gf's butt.
Valve needs to offer OLED for $100+ extra or whatever the frick. Lazy c**ts.
Unless you want one today for a real reason other than to buy thing and feel joy for 5 minutes I'd wait this is a developing product category that will only improve with time.
This, end of the day it's just a gimmick
Steamdeck 3 in 2027 will be the best one to jump into
for me it's the Steamdeck 7
For both of you disingenuous fricks best PC handheld you'll actually have a concrete use for is the one for you be it steam deck 1, 5, 20 or the MSI knock off that's better. Whatever's recent when you have an actual use case for it. Don't spend your money until you know you'll use it, like for example if you have a long commute on a train or something similar.
t. didn't wait for the steamdeck 2
lol weak willed early adoption gays, I haven't bought any hardware for anything ever. I'll get a pc and finally play video games for the first time when I'm on my deathbed 70 years from now so I can capitalize on the absolute latest best hardware with the best bang for my buck.
Deck. Better controls, far more convenient, longer battery life, better support, shit just works 99% of the time.
Anyone have that image of asus thanking the guy for contacting them and how happy they are to assist him over the rog melting his sd card just to then blame him for it because it was a "3rd party sd card" when they don't even make sd cards?
>Come with W11
Are you implying this is a good thing? lol
Can I edit videos with a steam deck? I plan to use it for making yt vidya of my indie games
Since there's too man rog ally shills around, I decided to just get the steamdeck.
I'm gonna try it out for myself and trust nobody because all of you are a huge homosexual.