Steam Deck OS occupies 10GB, leaving about 50GB free for games in the base version
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Tat3
OS went from 24gb to 10gb. "Easy" space saving tricks have now been done. I dont think the size of OS will drop much from that 10gb as it just gets harder and harder to shrink the OS. There might be options to shrink OS, but what that would cost in terms of RAM and CPU usage / OS load times? And possible size savings, even if they manage to get OS to 7gb, then it would leave 53gb for games, which does not really make any difference.
WhiteLightning
Moderator
Wtf why would they use a 60gb hd ? Remember when 60gb was huge ? It was in the previous century.
hawk7000
Cost, presumably?
You can certainly argue that they should just skip the cheapest model, but it is just that... the cheapest model.
That said, you can certainly fit some less space-hogging titles (a bunch of indie titles for instance) on the 64GB model, and storage is expandable via the SD slot, so all is not lost even if you opt for the 64GB model.
rl66
You mean previous millenium...
Wow i was born on last millenium... make me feel as old as Gandalf...
Tat3
Not all is lost with the cheapest model, but I dont think that microSD cards will be even close to performance of a cheap SSD, let alone NVMe.
rl66
It depend on what max size the SD can handle, it's from Steam don't forget it...
ruthan
Optimal second M.2 slot would be clever solution.
Venix
I bet that version exists only so their marketing can say from 399.
Excalibur1814
So...
-There was never any intention of releasing this in December.
-"has just 64GB of RAM" - Blimey. That's a LOT of ram. Do you mean storage?
I've pre-ordered the 256Gb model.
Ricardo
I think it's pretty obvious that there's no free lunch: if you're buying the cheapest model, don't expect to fit a bunch of AAA games in it. Besides, the storage is easily expandable, so no problem there really.
10GB for a fully fledged x86 OS is pretty reasonable, IMHO.
Picolete
60GB drive? That's almost a joke
gUNN1993
I mean if you're buying this version you should really wait until reviews are out so you can see how the expansion storage will perform if that's going to be an issue for you.
(I mean, it's pretty unlikely you'll be playing modern AAA games on this anyway)
H83
This^^ We can´t expect miracles regarding entry level products.
I´ve just bought a "normal" Switch last month for 250€ on sale and it´s easy to see where they cut corners to price it like that. One of those corners is the storage size of 32GB.
And i also agree that 10GB for an OS is very good.
schmidtbag
I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around what they're filling up 10GB with. Even half that sounds a bit high. They're using Arch with KDE - my laptop has the same sort of setup installed on a 16GB Optane drive and I have an office suite, various productivity software, some SDKs, and drivers for a wider array of devices, and yet I'm still using less than 9GB. Granted, I don't have Steam installed on that laptop, but my point is, I'm running a whole lot more software than what the Deck is expected to run. So, what are they filling up all this space with?
I could see maybe 3GB being used for a recovery partition, but even then, that means they're somehow filling up 7GB with what is basically just a Arch, KDE, Steam, maybe some 3rd party gaming-focused software, a web browser, and Proton. What else is necessary?
Y'all seem to forget that Windows is very bloated.
TieSKey
Hahhaha exactly my thoughs.
My bet is they are including a lot of pre-configured wine (proton whatever) profiles for popular games/engines and that part of those 10Gb is just reserved free space for upgrade temp files, a recovery image, etc.
theoneofgod
Yeah just go for the larger version. Faster storage there too.
Ivrogne
The cheapest model is only for marketing purpose. Afaik they almost got no profit from it.
It's like looking at "$1/kg Apple" at the store only to find the said price is only for the almost rotten one.
BUDA20
I hoping for btrfs with compress=zstd
TimmyP
Been doing this about a decade with Surface Pros. I personally think this device is nearly DOA, but dont underestimate what you can run off a MicroSD card.I personally have played TR2013, ROTT, GTA V, Dragons Dogma, Watch Dogs, Witcher 3, Skyrim... They all run absolutely fine; like in between a 5400 and 7200rpm HDD for reference. Even have used compression with no real discernible loss in performance.
Only game I could never get to work from SD card is original version of Dark Souls, and that was just a bug.
MonstroMart
I assume some space reserved for swap files and caches (shaders, ...). Probably some place reserved for temporary download. Some place reserved for future update. Steam itself, the OS itself, maybe Java in case there's some java games/apps on the store i would be surprised if java is not installed, not sure how Proton works but i guess it involve some kind of windows files or image or something? I highly doubt Proton takes less than 1GB i think Wine takes 1.5GB minimum or something like that. I would not be surprised if Proton takes close to 2GB. From what i've seen it's quite good. Maybe Source is pre-installed.
Y'all seem to forget it's 2021 and 10GB is like nothing nowadays 😉.
