The Steam Deck's Performance on Built-in Vega 8 Graphics

We've been eagerly awaiting the release of the Steam Deck, and with it, comes the question of its performance capabilities. Specifically, we want to know how it will handle built-in Vega 8 graphics, which are a significant departure from the RDNA 2 architecture that AMD's APU is based on. We're at 1.6 teraflops on this built-in vega 8 graphics, and on the CPU side of things, clocked at 2.8 gigahertz, we're at 434 gigaflops. While flops are more of a marketing ploy for these bigger companies to throw bigger numbers out there, this is the only performance metric we really have for the Steam Deck right now.

We've done a lot of testing with Ryzen APUs and I really do feel that this is the kind of performance we're going to see out of the Steam Deck once we get it in our hands. Given its running at 15 watts and can stay cool enough to sustain those clock speeds, first on the list Forza Horizon 4 and with this setup here, I did have to run everything at 720p because my game capture wouldn't do 800p but we're at a high medium mix and we're getting an average of around 67 fps definitely playable like this and if you needed a little more out of it you could take it all down the medium. But yeah, this is a very well optimized game and I've had really good luck on different mobile APUs and desktop APUs in the past moving over to GTA 5 we have a high normal mix and basically I've just set the textures to high still at 720p and we got an average of 81 fps.

This is actually performed really well at these lower resolutions on APUs I've tested in the past so I suspect that it's going to perform about the same here on the Steam Deck given we're using the built-in screen. Coming to Fortnite and these APUs, I always do performance mode and at 720p performance mode set to high you're not going to have any trouble running this game over 100 fps as long as we're in performance mode. Um teamwork right there, kinchen impact medium settings at 60fps and it's running really well at 60. I did try to go up to high with this but I had some dips down to around 56 so I just set it to medium and it's a pretty smooth experience.

Witcher 3 actually perform way better than I thought it would, 720p medium-low settings we got an average of 63 fps and every once in a while I do notice a dip down to around 59 but I think uh with the Steam Deck having that DDR5 RAM we won't see this as much and if you needed to you could tweak these settings a little more. Doom Eternal does a great job at these lower resolutions on these APUs, it's using the Vulcan back-end, we're at medium settings here and everything's been working really well. We actually got an average of 76 fps out of this one.

Cyberpunk 2077 this one's going to be hard-pressed to run on the Steam Deck really well you know over 60 you could lock this down to 30 and have a pretty decent experience with it but here we are at 720p low resolution scale and I still only got an average of 46 fps with it set up like this with no DLSS, low 720p. You can lock this at 30 and get a pretty enjoyable experience out of it you will see it dip down to around 29 but overall it does a decent job holding this pretty steady at 30.

In the end, I really do think we're going to see similar performance out of the Steam Deck that's what we just saw in this video here. Give or take 5 to 7 fps in each of these games, I completely understand that the Steam Deck is going to be using the RDNA 2 architecture with its built-in GPU but keep in mind it's still an APU, it's clocked at 1.1 gigahertz up to 1.6 and with thermal design limits and things like that especially this little APU only running at 15 watts I truly believe performance is going to be on par with what we just saw even though we're working with Vega 8 graphics but we're not going to be able to tell until we get a Steam Deck in our hands.

This was more of a video just kind of showing off what I think that thing's gonna be able to do with all of my experience with these mobile and desktop APUs from AMD. But that's gonna wrap it up for this video as soon as I get my hands on a Steam Deck, I will be making some videos we'll run some benchmarks and then we'll kind of compare to what we just saw running here and see if it comes anywhere close.

If you have any questions or concerns about the Steam Deck's performance capabilities, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enbefore we get this video started i just wanted to give you a little disclaimer this is all speculative take it with a grain of salt i could be completely wrong but i have done a lot of testing with these ryzen apus be it mobile or desktop there's no way we can tell exactly how the steam deck is going to perform until we get one in our hands but this is as close as i think we're going to get right now without having a real steam deck ready to test hey what's going on everybody it's eta prime pack here again steam recently announced the steam deck and i did a quick little uh you know announcement video on it i've got my pre-order in a lot of people are very interested in this thing but one thing we really haven't seen from this is the performance i mean what kind of performance can we expect from the steam deck well in this video i think i've come as close as i can right now to getting that kind of performance out of a different setup now if you're a regular viewer of the channel you know i do a lot of testing with these apus from the 2000 series up to the 5000 series i've basically covered all the mobile apus and the desktop apus we've done a lot of tuning overclocking underclocking under volting i mean there's a lot of stuff that we've done on this channel with these mobile apus and the desktop apu so i have a good idea of how these perform at least the ones that are on the market right now and just taking a look at the steam deck specs i think i've come up with kind of a combination that's going to give us a baseline of what kind of performance we can expect out of the steam deck at that 720p resolution or 800p resolution because it really has a 1280x800 display when it comes to the specs of the steam deck we have a semi-custom ryzen xen2 based apu for course eight threads up to 3.5 gigahertz at 15 watts now when we're talking about that 15 watt tdp it doesn't mean that all four cores and eight threads are going to be running at 3.5 gigahertz all the time while we're gaming this will drop down a bit due to that tdp and i'm sure we will be able to up this but the way it sits at 15 watts with the thermal configuration they're using i'm estimating that this little apu is going to run very comfortably at 2.8 to 3 gigahertz continuously on all four cores now we can boost up the 3.5 but with it being at 15 watts and a handheld form factor i think heat's gonna play a big issue now i'm not saying that it's gonna overheat but if you did try to run this at a higher wattage inside of the steam deck at 3.5 gigahertz for an extended period of time would heat up quite a bit and drop that cpu speed down the next thing we have in that steam deck is the new radeon 8 graphics but it's based on our dna too and this is going to be running up to 1.6 gigahertz in the steam deck but remember when it comes to these apus it really relies on system memory and with the steam deck we have 16 gigabytes of lp ddr5 running at 5500 megahertz which will definitely help out with those radeon 8 graphics now like i mentioned i've come up with an apu combo that i think is going to get us right in the ballpark of the performance we're going to see out of the steam tag and what i have here is the ryzen 4750g i was actually going to use the 4300g but we only have radeon 6 graphics built in i've disabled 4 cores and 4 threads so right now it's running as a 4 core 8 thread cpu and i've underclocked it to 2.7 gigahertz when it comes to that steam deck i think we're going to be on par with cpu performance that we've seen out of the 4300 u which if we take a look at the pass mark scores around 8 000 with this setup here i've lowered the wattage on it i've underclocked it i've disabled cores with passmark we're right under that and i think this is the kind of performance we're going to be seeing out of that apu in the steam tag now when it comes to the built-in graphics the 4750g has vega 8 graphics we don't have any of that awesome rdna 2 tech in here but with this setup here i've paired it with 16 gigabytes of ddr4 running at 4 400 megahertz and when it comes to the clock speed of this vega 8 gpu i've actually taken it down a bit from the stock 2000 to 1800 let me go ahead and run this sensors so we're running this at 1800 megahertz which is an uplift over the 1.6 in the steam deck but i'm trying to make up for that faster ram we have in the steam deck with all that said i really do think that this is the kind of performance that we're going to see out of the steam deck gaming on the built-in 1280x800 screen but like i mentioned at the beginning take this with a grain of salt i mean we could see better performance we could see less performance out of the steam deck versus what we're about to see here unfortunately the only performance metric we're getting from valve right now on the steam deck are flops on the gpu and cpu but i went ahead and just kind of matched these up just to be safe and this is really where i came up with the clocks that i'm using on this 4750g on the cpu and gpu so on the steam deck they're claiming that the zentu 4 core 8 thread cpu can do up to 448 gigaflops that's fp32 on the gpu side of things with the steam deck teraflops now i've just run the quick gp gpu benchmark from ida 64. and with a clock of 1800 megahertz on these built-in vega 8 graphics we're at 1.6 teraflops and on the cpu side of things clocked at 2.8 gigahertz we're at 434 gigaflops now i completely understand that flops are more of a marketing ploy for these bigger companies to throw bigger numbers out there but this is the only performance metric we really have for the steam deck right now and i wanted to get it as close as possible but when it comes down to it i've done a lot of testing with these ryzen apus and i really do feel that this is the kind of performance we're going to see out of the steam deck once we get it in our hands given it's running at 15 watts and it can stay cool enough to sustain those clock speeds first on the list forza horizon 4 and with this setup here i did have to run everything at 720p because my game capture wouldn't do 800p but we're at a high medium mix and we're getting an average of around 67 fps definitely playable like this and if you needed a little more out of it you could take it all down the medium but yeah this is a very well optimized game and i've had really good luck on different mobile apus and desktop apus in the past moving over to gta 5 we have a high normal mix and basically i've just set the textures to high still at 720p and we got an average of 81 fps this is actually performed really well at these lower resolutions on apus i've tested in the past so i suspect that it's going to perform about the same here on the steam deck given we're using the built-in screen it comes to fortnite and these apus i always do performance mode and at 720p performance mode set to high you're not going to have any trouble running this game over 100 fps as long as we're in performance mode um teamwork right there kinchen impact medium settings at 60fps and it's running really well at 60. i did try to go up to high with this but i had some dips down to around 56 so i just set it to medium and it's a pretty smooth experience witcher 3 actually perform way better than i thought it would 720p medium-low settings we got an average of 63 fps and every once in a while i do notice a dip down to around 59 but i think uh with the steam deck having that ddr5 ram we won't see this as much and if you needed to you could tweak these settings a little more doom eternal does a great job at these lower resolutions on these apus it's using the vulcan back end we're at medium settings here and everything's been working really well we actually got an average of 76 fps out of this one cyberpunk 2077 this one's going to be hard-pressed to run on the steam deck really well you know over 60 you could lock this down to 30 and have a pretty decent experience with it but here we are at 720p low 80 resolution scale and i still only got an average of 46 fps with it set up like this with no dlss low 720p you can lock this at 30 and get a pretty enjoyable experience out of it you will see it dip down to around 29 but overall it does a decent job holding this pretty steady at 30. in the end i really do think we're going to see similar performance out of the steam deck that's what we just saw in this video here give or take 5 to 7 fps in each of these games i completely understand that that steam deck is going to be using the rdna 2 architecture with its built-in gpu but keep in mind it's still an apu it's clocked at 1.1 gigahertz up to 1.6 and with thermal design limits and things like that especially this little apu only running at 15 watts i truly believe performance is going to be on par with what we just saw even though we're working with vega 8 graphics but we're not going to be able to tell until we get a steam deck in our hands this was more of a video just kind of showing off what i think that thing's gonna be able to do with all of my experience with these mobile and desktop apus from amd but that's gonna wrap it up for this video as soon as i get my hands on a steam deck i will be making some videos we'll run some benchmarks and then we'll kind of compare to what we just saw running here and see if it comes anywhere close if you have any questions let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for watching youbefore we get this video started i just wanted to give you a little disclaimer this is all speculative take it with a grain of salt i could be completely wrong but i have done a lot of testing with these ryzen apus be it mobile or desktop there's no way we can tell exactly how the steam deck is going to perform until we get one in our hands but this is as close as i think we're going to get right now without having a real steam deck ready to test hey what's going on everybody it's eta prime pack here again steam recently announced the steam deck and i did a quick little uh you know announcement video on it i've got my pre-order in a lot of people are very interested in this thing but one thing we really haven't seen from this is the performance i mean what kind of performance can we expect from the steam deck well in this video i think i've come as close as i can right now to getting that kind of performance out of a different setup now if you're a regular viewer of the channel you know i do a lot of testing with these apus from the 2000 series up to the 5000 series i've basically covered all the mobile apus and the desktop apus we've done a lot of tuning overclocking underclocking under volting i mean there's a lot of stuff that we've done on this channel with these mobile apus and the desktop apu so i have a good idea of how these perform at least the ones that are on the market right now and just taking a look at the steam deck specs i think i've come up with kind of a combination that's going to give us a baseline of what kind of performance we can expect out of the steam deck at that 720p resolution or 800p resolution because it really has a 1280x800 display when it comes to the specs of the steam deck we have a semi-custom ryzen xen2 based apu for course eight threads up to 3.5 gigahertz at 15 watts now when we're talking about that 15 watt tdp it doesn't mean that all four cores and eight threads are going to be running at 3.5 gigahertz all the time while we're gaming this will drop down a bit due to that tdp and i'm sure we will be able to up this but the way it sits at 15 watts with the thermal configuration they're using i'm estimating that this little apu is going to run very comfortably at 2.8 to 3 gigahertz continuously on all four cores now we can boost up the 3.5 but with it being at 15 watts and a handheld form factor i think heat's gonna play a big issue now i'm not saying that it's gonna overheat but if you did try to run this at a higher wattage inside of the steam deck at 3.5 gigahertz for an extended period of time would heat up quite a bit and drop that cpu speed down the next thing we have in that steam deck is the new radeon 8 graphics but it's based on our dna too and this is going to be running up to 1.6 gigahertz in the steam deck but remember when it comes to these apus it really relies on system memory and with the steam deck we have 16 gigabytes of lp ddr5 running at 5500 megahertz which will definitely help out with those radeon 8 graphics now like i mentioned i've come up with an apu combo that i think is going to get us right in the ballpark of the performance we're going to see out of the steam tag and what i have here is the ryzen 4750g i was actually going to use the 4300g but we only have radeon 6 graphics built in i've disabled 4 cores and 4 threads so right now it's running as a 4 core 8 thread cpu and i've underclocked it to 2.7 gigahertz when it comes to that steam deck i think we're going to be on par with cpu performance that we've seen out of the 4300 u which if we take a look at the pass mark scores around 8 000 with this setup here i've lowered the wattage on it i've underclocked it i've disabled cores with passmark we're right under that and i think this is the kind of performance we're going to be seeing out of that apu in the steam tag now when it comes to the built-in graphics the 4750g has vega 8 graphics we don't have any of that awesome rdna 2 tech in here but with this setup here i've paired it with 16 gigabytes of ddr4 running at 4 400 megahertz and when it comes to the clock speed of this vega 8 gpu i've actually taken it down a bit from the stock 2000 to 1800 let me go ahead and run this sensors so we're running this at 1800 megahertz which is an uplift over the 1.6 in the steam deck but i'm trying to make up for that faster ram we have in the steam deck with all that said i really do think that this is the kind of performance that we're going to see out of the steam deck gaming on the built-in 1280x800 screen but like i mentioned at the beginning take this with a grain of salt i mean we could see better performance we could see less performance out of the steam deck versus what we're about to see here unfortunately the only performance metric we're getting from valve right now on the steam deck are flops on the gpu and cpu but i went ahead and just kind of matched these up just to be safe and this is really where i came up with the clocks that i'm using on this 4750g on the cpu and gpu so on the steam deck they're claiming that the zentu 4 core 8 thread cpu can do up to 448 gigaflops that's fp32 on the gpu side of things with the steam deck teraflops now i've just run the quick gp gpu benchmark from ida 64. and with a clock of 1800 megahertz on these built-in vega 8 graphics we're at 1.6 teraflops and on the cpu side of things clocked at 2.8 gigahertz we're at 434 gigaflops now i completely understand that flops are more of a marketing ploy for these bigger companies to throw bigger numbers out there but this is the only performance metric we really have for the steam deck right now and i wanted to get it as close as possible but when it comes down to it i've done a lot of testing with these ryzen apus and i really do feel that this is the kind of performance we're going to see out of the steam deck once we get it in our hands given it's running at 15 watts and it can stay cool enough to sustain those clock speeds first on the list forza horizon 4 and with this setup here i did have to run everything at 720p because my game capture wouldn't do 800p but we're at a high medium mix and we're getting an average of around 67 fps definitely playable like this and if you needed a little more out of it you could take it all down the medium but yeah this is a very well optimized game and i've had really good luck on different mobile apus and desktop apus in the past moving over to gta 5 we have a high normal mix and basically i've just set the textures to high still at 720p and we got an average of 81 fps this is actually performed really well at these lower resolutions on apus i've tested in the past so i suspect that it's going to perform about the same here on the steam deck given we're using the built-in screen it comes to fortnite and these apus i always do performance mode and at 720p performance mode set to high you're not going to have any trouble running this game over 100 fps as long as we're in performance mode um teamwork right there kinchen impact medium settings at 60fps and it's running really well at 60. i did try to go up to high with this but i had some dips down to around 56 so i just set it to medium and it's a pretty smooth experience witcher 3 actually perform way better than i thought it would 720p medium-low settings we got an average of 63 fps and every once in a while i do notice a dip down to around 59 but i think uh with the steam deck having that ddr5 ram we won't see this as much and if you needed to you could tweak these settings a little more doom eternal does a great job at these lower resolutions on these apus it's using the vulcan back end we're at medium settings here and everything's been working really well we actually got an average of 76 fps out of this one cyberpunk 2077 this one's going to be hard-pressed to run on the steam deck really well you know over 60 you could lock this down to 30 and have a pretty decent experience with it but here we are at 720p low 80 resolution scale and i still only got an average of 46 fps with it set up like this with no dlss low 720p you can lock this at 30 and get a pretty enjoyable experience out of it you will see it dip down to around 29 but overall it does a decent job holding this pretty steady at 30. in the end i really do think we're going to see similar performance out of the steam deck that's what we just saw in this video here give or take 5 to 7 fps in each of these games i completely understand that that steam deck is going to be using the rdna 2 architecture with its built-in gpu but keep in mind it's still an apu it's clocked at 1.1 gigahertz up to 1.6 and with thermal design limits and things like that especially this little apu only running at 15 watts i truly believe performance is going to be on par with what we just saw even though we're working with vega 8 graphics but we're not going to be able to tell until we get a steam deck in our hands this was more of a video just kind of showing off what i think that thing's gonna be able to do with all of my experience with these mobile and desktop apus from amd but that's gonna wrap it up for this video as soon as i get my hands on a steam deck i will be making some videos we'll run some benchmarks and then we'll kind of compare to what we just saw running here and see if it comes anywhere close if you have any questions let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for watching you\n"