this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Yeah, they made the SoC run cooler and at lower power, so I wonder why they didn't just let it push to 20W instead of keeping it at a max TDP of 15W.
Maybe their custom APU just can't yield any more performance at all and just flattens out above that? I know the 6800U and 7800U handhelds tend to flatten out above 25-30W. I've moved on from my Deck to a Windows handheld, but I still really like the tweaks they've made to this.
you can change the TDP of the steam deck, and it yields comparatively very minor performance improvements at 20 Watts of power.
If I recall the early benchmarks by The Phawx, the Deck got the best performance-per-watt around 11 W TDP. So yeah at 15 W and up, it flattens out. Pushing it harder just drains the battery for diminishing FPS returns.
I think he says the sweet spot for *800Us was closer to 18 W, but I don't remember that as clearly.
My hands-on experience with both is that the Deck sings in the 12-15 range and the stock 6800 wants to be 15-20. After that the extra heat and noise doesn't justify the gains unless you really want to play something that is just at the edge.
I only have a Deck but 9 watts has been the magic number for me. Good battery life and very little fan noise in most games. I even run RDR2 at that with Cryobyte's "prettiest" settings, and it stays darn close to 30 FPS. I may have bumped down far shadows and water a notch but honestly it still looks great.
It's definitely a matter of taste, but you still get a lot of performance per watt on the Deck between 9 and 12, so I typically prefer to crank it up a notch and aim for 35-40fps instead.
Which option is preferable probably depends on how sensitive you are to low fps vs fan noise, so there's no right answer.