Comment on [Question] Anyone know if those Miscro sd cards work well on the Steam Deck?
Stampela@startrek.website 7 months ago
Select is the one exclusive for Amazon, my understanding is that it’s meant to help with counterfeit ones, as only Amazon has them. Very good cards either way.
Not sure how it compares price wise right now, but look at the Amazon basics ones too: they’re made by the same company that bought Lexar and makes the emmc inside the 64gb Deck. Mine has been going strong for about a year now. Speed wise they’re essentially the same: the standard used in the Deck tops out at 104 megabytes per second, so any claims of extra speed are just marketing.
ekZepp@lemmy.world 7 months ago
BTW is normal that the free space on the 64 Steam Deck is actually 40-something gb?? I mean 20gb of OS?
skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl 7 months ago
20GB of OS is quite normal for a modern desktop. Steam Deck actually has two copies of the core OS installed, to ensure there’s always a bootable version and to make upgrades painless. A basic Ubuntu install requires 8.5GB of storage and that doesn’t include Steam or Proton.
Compare this to Xbox, where the 512GB drive has 148GB of system files and reserved space. The 32GB Switch reserves about 6GB and the Switch OS is purpose-built rather than a Linux distro with Steam bolted onto it.
It sucks that consoles are advertised with their storage size rather than their usable storage size. They should really put the usable storage on the box rather than the theoretical size, especially when they sell different storage tiers.
NoXPhasma@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Additionally, to what was already said, the size of storage is giving in Decimal (1000B based) while after formatting it is often shown in Binary (1024B based), which makes the storage look smaller, which it isn’t.
SuperIce@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It should be noted that the way you listed the partitions misses the dual (A/B) install method that the deck uses. There are 2 identical size partitions for root, var, and EFI. When an update occurs. The system installs the new update on the inactive set of partitions and then tells the UEFI to use the other set on the next boot. That doesn’t matter too much for 512GB models like your’s, but the extra ~5.5GB for the redundant partition layout can be significant for 64GB models.
NoXPhasma@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’ve used
df -hand that showed only this three partitions. I’ve only skipped the tmpfs mounts.themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Its on the low side but still within reason. Its not just an OS, it’s an OS, a full steam install, a web browser( actually 2 of them because steam also packs an embedded browser), a desktop environment, HD animations, HD wallpapers (several of them) and it adds up quick.
Stampela@startrek.website 7 months ago
Yep. The os isn’t tiny, plus there’s all sorts of extra stuff. For example 1gb is gone on every Deck because that’s reserved for swap… and then shader cache sneaks in and depending on the game you might run out of space in no time.
BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 7 months ago
Just buy an nvme SSD, the one in the deck is really easy to replace (if you have a good screwdriver, like in the ifixit kit/ other phone repair kits)
vlad76@lemmy.sdf.org 7 months ago
I don’t even know why they have a 64GB version.
This is the one I use. No issues with speed or reliability yet. I play ges like Elden Ring and RDR2.
a.co/d/7pFQpEB
mhz@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Not everyone is playin triple A titles, for someone like me who prefer old or/and 2.5D games (which are usually under 10Gib), the 64gb variant would be mostly fine.
lemann@lemmy.one 7 months ago
Loss leader to increase market share most likely, since Valve loses money on the 64gb model
vlad76@lemmy.sdf.org 7 months ago
I suppose that makes sense.
SuperIce@lemmy.world 7 months ago
IIRC, it was 20GB of OS at launch, but they shrunk it. Now it’s a little over 10GB.
PlasticExistence@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Shader cache takes a big chunk of the available space