The real performance of the Steam Deck calculated from RDNA 2 and other GPUs

[BZ]

I have calculated the real performance of the Steam Deck.
I using lot of data from the RDNA 2 chipsets and older generations, I looked at many benchmarks and can pretty much calculate the performance.

Steam Deck AMD Radeon™ RDNA 2 GPU (from official data and calculated only from other RDNA 2 GPUs)

Compute Units
8

Base Frequency (min)
1000 MHz

Game Frequency (max)
1600 MHz

Ray Accelerators
8

Peak Pixel Fill-Rate
Up to 28 GP/s

Peak Texture Fill-Rate
Up to 56 GT/s

Peak Half Precision Compute Performance
3.2 TFLOPs

Peak Single Precision Compute Performance
1.6 TFLOPs

ROPs
16

Stream Processors
512

Texture Units
32

This list is calculated from real gaming benchmarks (1920×1080 pixels, Full HD, from lot of GPU Benchmarks) and technical data from the Xbox Series S.

Approx. 17% of the performance of the AMD Radeon RX 6600 TX.
Approx. 40% of the performance of the Xbox Series S.
Approx. 44% of the performance of the AMD Radeon RX 580.
Approx. 86% of the performance of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050.
Approx. 95% of the performance of the AMD Radeon RX 560.
Approx. 106% of the performance of the AMD Radeon RX 460.
Approx. 140% of the performance of the AMD Radeon RX 550.
Approx. 150% of the performance of the Nvidia GeForce GT 1030.

So you can pretty much expect the same performance from an RX 560.
Unfortunately, I won't find many 720p benchmarks that compare multiple GPUs.
Therefore, I had to use 1080p benchmarks.
Note that games run much faster at 720p and that with FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) you can already enjoy the games at 1080p on a Full HD TV with about the performance of 720p.
If a game runs smoothly at 720p on the Steam Deck display, you can expect almost the same speed on a 1080p monitor with FSR.

Edit 07.08.2021 (DD.MM.YYYY): Games like Control und Witcher 3 runs good and of course games based on the id Tech 7 engine (Vulkan API) run fantastically on the Steam Deck.

I do not have so much money, the Steam Deck will become my new main computer. The Steam Deck replaces my old desktop PC with a 9 year old GTX 660.

I'm happy to be rewarded for my trust in Valve and having my Steam Deck in my hands in December 2021. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L2j_pFgEuk

[Nemesis]

Originally posted by BZ:

I have calculated the real performance of the Steam Deck.
I using lot of data from the RDNA 2 chipsets and older generations, I looked at many benchmarks and can pretty much calculate the performance.

Steam Deck AMD Radeon™ RDNA 2 GPU (from official data and calculated only from other RDNA 2 GPUs)

Compute Units
8

Base Frequency (min)
1000 MHz

Game Frequency (max)
1600 MHz

Ray Accelerators
8

Peak Pixel Fill-Rate
Up to 28 GP/s

Peak Texture Fill-Rate
Up to 56 GT/s

Peak Half Precision Compute Performance
3.2 TFLOPs

Peak Single Precision Compute Performance
1.6 TFLOPs

ROPs
16

Stream Processors
512

Texture Units
32

This list is calculated from real gaming benchmarks (1920×1080 pixels, Full HD, from lot of GPU Benchmarks), not from the technical data!

Approx. 17% of the performance of the AMD Radeon RX 6600 TX.
Approx. 44% of the performance of the AMD Radeon RX 580.
Approx. 86% of the performance of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050.
Approx. 95% of the performance of the AMD Radeon RX 560.
Approx. 106% of the performance of the AMD Radeon RX 460.
Approx. 140% of the performance of the AMD Radeon RX 550.
Approx. 150% of the performance of the Nvidia GeForce GT 1030.

So you can pretty much expect the same performance from an RX 560.
Unfortunately, I won't find many 720p benchmarks that compare multiple GPUs.
Therefore, I had to use 1080p benchmarks.
Note that games run much faster at 720p and that with FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) you can already enjoy the games at 1080p on a Full HD TV with about the performance of 720p.
If a game runs smoothly at 720p on the Steam Deck display, you can expect almost the same speed on a 1080p monitor with FSR.

Here is just one example that Cyperpunk 2077 is already running on Linux and FSR today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJDzkSOc8sc

You are leaving out the CPU and keep in mind the whole package has to be powered by a battery, so i think this "calculation" does not say much.

[kilésengati]

As said before by Nemesis, your "calculation" disregards the CPU. However, whether the APU gets throttled when running of the battery can only be speculated.
You also forgot to include the lack of dedicated video memory. LPDDR5 is fast, but the GPU still has to share the same bus with the CPU and cache. Also, thermal throttling becomes an issue much faster on such integrated and compact designs.
Good effort though.

[Crotor]

https://youtu.be/h8p_myiqGP4

[BZ]

For comparison, the technologically same AMD APU (Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 GPU) of the Xbox Series S:

8 core CPU @3.6 GHz (3.4 GHz w/SMT Enabled) vs. 4c/8t CPU @2.4-3.5GHz

20 CUs @1.565 GHz vs. 8 CUs @1.6 GHz

4 TFLOPS vs. 1.6 TFLOPS

10 GB (8 GB @224 GB/s and 2 GB @56 GB/s) vs. 16 GB @88 GB/s

Performance Target (Microsoft) 1440p (3,686,400 pixels) @60 FPS vs. (example) 720p (921,600 pixels) @60 FPS

The performance of the Series S is about 2.5x higher than the Steam Deck, but the number of pixels is 4x less on the Steam Deck with 720p.
In principle, the Steam Deck has about 60% more power to reach 60 FPS in 720p than the Series S in 1440p to reach 60 FPS.
You can't calculate that exactly because a lot depends on optimizations and the engine, but when console games are ported to Steam they are already perfectly optimized for the Steam Deck AMD APU because the consoles use the same AMD APU (only with more units, for more power because of the higher resolution).

So you can assume that if a game runs at 1440p @60 FPS on the Series S, that 720p @90 FPS is then possible on the Steam deck.
For 1080p (2,073,600 pixels) you need about twice the performance, so about 1080p @45 FPS.

Even if you still deduct performance here and there, 720p @+60 FPS and 1080p @+30 FPS without AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) are very realistic for new console games of Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, Playstation 5 if ported with the same engine.

Don't forget, Valve doesn't supply a 45 watt power supply for free, we don't know if the maximum performance is only reached with the 45 watt power supply.
Of course, you can't calculate exactly, because the power supply must have more power than the Steam Deck consumes. But 45 watts was probably not taken for nothing.

About the memory bandwidth:
The memory bandwidth of the 8 GB memory of the Series S is about exactly 2.55x higher than that of the Steam Deck.
Compared to the AMD RDNA 2 GPU desktop graphics cards like the RX 6600 XT, the memory bandwidth is even twice as high in relation to the performance of the Steam Deck.

So the memory bandwidth will not limit the Steam Deck, rather the opposite one "could" calculate with even higher performance per GFLOP than what I have calculated.
Because for my calculations I took the desktop benchmarks, where the GPUs have less bandwidth per GFLOP available.

Thank you for your responses, it is fun to discuss with you and expand my horizons.

Edit: Furthermore, you should keep an eye on the Vulkan games, especially under Vulkan the performance of all AMD chips is extremely strong.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_Vulkan_games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he6tdIECdoo

[Crotor]

Originally posted by BZ:

You can't calculate that exactly because a lot depends on optimizations and the engine, but when console games are ported to Steam they are already perfectly optimized for the Steam Deck AMD APU because the consoles use the same AMD APU (only with more units, for more power because of the higher resolution).

So you can assume that if a game runs at 1440p @60 FPS on the Series S, that 720p @90 FPS is then possible on the Steam deck.
For 1080p (2,073,600 pixels) you need about twice the performance, so about 1080p @45 FPS.

That's an interesting point but you assume that dev's will port their games to Steam Deck's SteamOS when in reality they might just throw a console port for Windows systems out there and that's it.

Once the Steam Deck is established and has a large fanbase I'm sure devs will optimize their games for it right away and you'll get great performance.

At the beginning stages however I don't think anyone will optimize anything for the Steam Deck and you'll end up with console ports that don't even work that great on Windows and now you have to use Proton on top of it to make them run on the Linux based SteamOS which runs on Steam Deck.

I hope I'm wrong but I think a lot of games will have artifacts, crashes, sound issues, not working cutscenes.. basically everything we already know from reports on ProtonDB. https://www.protondb.com/

I honestly don't wanna search forever in forums for solutions and fiddle around in graphic settings trying stuff by trial and error until I eventually find workarounds and configurations to make a game run properly. I believe that's exactly what it's gonna be so I'll patiently wait for the reviews upon release.