They can ignore the lawsuits if they want, but Valve can’t sell anything with the screens if Samsung gets their way.

Also, I undervolted the CPU, GPU and SOC by -50mV in the BIOS before doing the testing, this resulted in a 2 FPS increase from stock.

2 FPS both with and without the repasting?

Windows has its fair share of issues, but in terms of compatibility it’s clearly better than SteamOS. I’ve had more issues with games through SteamOS than I’ve had on Windows in the 15+ years of primarily being a PC gamer.

in another year or two will be close enough to a plug and play console experience that they’ll be attractive to the masses.

Think that’s wildly optimistic personally. For Steam games it should be better, but anything that requires a launcher will still have issues, as will other storefronts. SteamOS just won’t have the market share to encourage everyone to really focus on Linux support. They need to get to the stage where it’s like Windows and everything works, and I just don’t see it.

For them, a box roughly equivalent to a PS5 or little better (running a similar APU), basically being a console that can double as a computer sold at office PC prices (~$500) would be huge

As far as I’m aware there’s nothing that even remotely matches the PS5/XSX APUs, so Valve would likely have to have their own order. Microsoft and Sony are losing money on those systems too, and that’s with 25-50x the projected sales of any Steam system. Valve would have to swallow massive losses to make those even remotely viable. They also lack the USP of the Deck in that it’s portable. People like playing their games portably, and that helps look past some of the inherent issues that PC gaming has. There’s nothing special about a wee PC in a box, it’s literally just a more inconvenient gaming platform at that point for most.

Meanwhile Cryo when publishing his tools showed performance comparisons before and after

The issue is that he’s really the only one who’s properly benchmarked his own tool. Given how prevalent it is I’d have expected someone else like DF to properly look at it.

So, better question would be “I have issues with how game X plays on SD. Will Cryo help or make it even worse?”

That’s the best way to treat it for me. The only game I’ve ever had to use it for was God of War, and I noticed no improvement with anything else I played.

What do Microsoft gain out of this? You can stream it through anything that can run an internet browser, and if you’re desperate for it on the Deck locally it’s easy to install Windows onto an SD card or internal drive. Making it a Steam app also means they forfeit a cut of their subs to Valve. Making it a bit easier for a tiny minority of the gaming market makes very little sense.

I don’t see Valve being overly keen seeing a game service with as many games as Gamepass does on its store either to be honest, considering they kinda want you to buy stuff.

The OLED SD has more refreshes than a new iPhone series and I can’t wrap my head around how anyone can think it’s not a significant upgrade.

A new iPhone generally adds a new feature or something similar, the OLED Deck doesn’t. The new screen is obviously an upgrade, but the performance boost at best maybe let’s you turn up one setting, and everything else is really just a QoL upgrade. Not having VRR is a bit of a disappointment personally.

If you don’t have one then it’s obviously the one to go for, but it’s really not hard to see why it’s not necessarily a must-have for folks already with one.

Even on the Deck it’s caused a few games to freak out on me. It’s a neat feature, but I wish it was as reliable as something like the Switch.