Announced last summer, theSteam Deckhas the potential to take the mobile gaming world by storm. True thatValve’s past hardware exploitshave not always been successful, but this time around it’s looking more and more like the upcoming handheld PC could be one of the most exciting devices to hit the recent market. Results are coming in from testers and developers, and the world is frequently hearing about the overall hardware and how well it performs. One recent test shows the difference between the internal and external storage.
According to a recent report from PC Gamer, which references a couple of videos from reviewers, theSteam Deckhas been seen running games using both the built-in SSD and a micro SD. The results show that, while they aren’t always perfectly in-sync, there’s very little difference in loading times, suggesting that anyone who wishes to use an external storage device won’t really suffer from slow loading when compared to the solid state hard drive.
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In one video, Linus Tech Tips shows two identical Decks side-by-side. They then simultaneously load upControlon both, and whether using an SD card or the internal SSD, the game loaded up quickly with very little, if any, discretion between them. Another video showed a similar experiment, and whileValve’s ownPortal 2did take a little longer to boot into the opening cut scene using the micros SD, around 13 seconds in fact, there was not much difference between overall loading times.
This should be good news for a lot of people who have been waiting in the wings for the device to finally get released. With thecheapest Steam Deck model having 64 GBof storage, some may have been concerned that it would quickly run out of space, especially given that the operating system allegedly uses around 10 GB of said storage. Having the ability to insert external storage should provide a way to ease such concerns and, at least according to these tests, should not have any significant impact on loading times.
Originally, Valve was due to launch its handheld PC late last year, but had to delay it due to the ongoing tech shortages. Luckily, that delay didn’t last too long, and theSteam Deck was finally announced for a February release. All the while, people have been hearing about what it’s capable of, and the praise lavished upon it by studios. It only remains to be seen how the general public will perceive it, but there’s not long to wait now to find out.
TheSteam Deckis due out on February 25.
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