Steam Deck manufacturing may be ramping up once more however it seems more moderen orders may very well be one thing of a fortunate dip, SSD-wise. Valve have quietly up to date their Steam Deck tech specs web page with a notice that the NVMe SSDs in “some” 256GB and 512GB fashions may now use the PCIe Gen 3.0 x2 interface, that means the drive has half the standard bandwidth of the Gen 3.0 x 4 SSDs that beforehand featured as customary.
As first noticed by German web site HardwareLuxx, there isn’t any indication as to why Valve made this alteration, and it doesn’t appear like anybody with an excellent Steam Deck order will know which SSD bandwidth they’ll get prematurely. Nonetheless, Valve’s added notice explains that “In our testing, we didn’t see any impression to gaming efficiency between x2 and x4.”
It wouldn’t be stunning to see a negligible distinction in recreation loading speeds, as most video games merely aren’t constructed to take full benefit of PCIe 3.0 x 4’s bandwidth. It’s not like Gen 3.0 x2 SSDs are sluggish, both – they’re nonetheless speedy NVMe drives with extra bandwidth to play with than any SATA-based SSD. Nonetheless, the Steam Deck is usable for extra than simply video games, and spec crapshoots are by no means enjoyable. Bear in mind how the Nintendo 3DS may include both IPS or TN screens?
You probably have ordered a Steam Deck and it turns up with the lower-spec SSD – and you discover you may’t simply dwell with it – you would doubtlessly open up the hand-held and exchange the drive your self. Valve don’t advocate this, although, particularly not for those who’re modding the Deck to suit an extended SSD design. The velocity of the microSD slot has apparently remained untouched, so you would at all times depend on among the best microSD playing cards for the Steam Deck as a substitute.