Trying out Windows on Steam Deck with a Genki SavePoint

[@chrisnotbad]

You have a natural sincere calm manner in your informative reviews. Most content creators that review games or consoles make videos that are difficult to just simply relax and watch as is not the case when I watch yours. I really look forward to seeing your channel grow tremendously. Happy holidays!

[@wiredotaku91]

Super clean, consise video with all the information laid out perfectly. You deseve way more subscribers. Good shit bro!

[@JamesFarris]

I've been waiting on a video like this. I switched to windows from steam OS permanently and I honestly don't miss it. steamOS is better at throttling the APU so it isn't using power it doesn't necessarily need but that only means the battery life is a bit better. But if you tweak windows or add steam deck tools or handheld companion you can manage battery life really well. I get 4 and a half hours with Celeste on a 3W TDP and 400mhz on the core clock in windows. Also you can install adrenaline albeit an older version you just need to extract it from the APU driver you download and install it manually. I paid $11 for my copy of windows 11 home from a key site like Kinguin or g2a years ago and you can move the license to another PC if you no longer have an old one that was installed on that particular machine.

[@Anastasios912]

Obviously windows sleep mode functionality for games won't work like steam os does but what happens if you put it to sleep when you're out of a game? Does it crash / bluescreen when you attempt to wake it back up or what?

[@GameXData]

So...this question sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, and I'm going to provide more information than you asked in case anyone comes along and finds it helpful. The short answer is that crashes can be a problem under certain circumstances, but there are work arounds if needed. As it turns out, my general Steam Deck usage is to either shut it down when I'm finished playing or to leave it sitting for several hours to sleep on its own. In both cases my SSD-SavePoint combo works just fine. Hence, I didn't mention the problem in my video. Unfortunately, after doing some testing, I did find that putting the system to sleep and immediately waking did result in a full system crash. Something about Steam Decks' implementation of USB causes it to cut power to external drives while sleeping (even when turning off those settings in Windows). So, if you're someone who frequently puts your Steam Deck to sleep and immediately wake it, this setup's not for you. However, through trial and error, I did come up with two solutions (in the context of my specific setup): 1. The problem mostly seems to exist with USB 3.2 Gen 2 cables (including the one that came with the SavePoint). Using a slower cable allowed for relatively fast sleep and wake, albeit with a penalty to start times. Windows still sometimes screamed at me about a disconnect, but it didn't crash my session of Hi-Fi Rush. I can't test it, but, given that a lower-powered cable worked well, I'd also wonder if a lower-powered drive could also help ease things a bit. My 1TB PCIe 4.0 drive is great, but likely consumes a bit more power than a 512GB PCIe 3.0 drive (or something similar). 2. After putting the system to sleep, let it rest for a bit. When Windows goes to sleep power is momentarily cut. At that point, the remaining charge left in the SavePoint appears to do its job in doing any final saves before the drive shuts down. During that final save period (the LED shines red or yellow), waking the Steam Deck will result in a system crash or require a hard shutdown. After that save period (the LED shuts off), the Steam Deck can be awakened as usual without any harm. With that in-mind, through multiple runs to test limits, I did see my game crash a couple times and Windows be a bit slow to get up to full speed afterward. In general, I'd recommend saving and shutting down a game before putting the system to sleep (as I would in SteamOS as well) to prevent any issues. However, as long as you aren't rapidly cycling between sleep and wake modes, the worst experience you'll have is maybe needing to restart a game.

[@Anastasios912]

@GameXData greatly appreciate all the info! So in summary, windows doesn't crash but the games do? That's great if that's the case as I didn't expect sleep mode to work at all. I'm fine with exiting a game before entering sleep, just want to be able to play, exit, and then wake it back up to open up another game later.

[@GameXData]

@Anastasios912 As far as I can tell, that's about correct. Given the higher speed cable, I found games more likely to crash than Windows after letting it sleep for a bit. However, trying a lower-speed cable seems like a good initial troubleshooting step if you experience otherwise.

[@StopChangingUsernamesYouTube]

Neat to see Windows might be less heavy on the Deck than I expected. I'd be curious to see a more general comparison in load times in some of the heavier games between the internal SSD and an external SSD, but this might've convinced me to check myself sometime. Funny thing to me is that just using the Deck at all sent me thinking in a different direction: I realized how well SteamOS (if not always the Deck itself) was handling anything I wanted to throw at it, how Heroic Launcher covered all my GoG/Epic wants, how I could somewhat begrudgingly install Edge to stream Gamepass games if I wanted to, how Lutris could cover a lot of the fiddly cases like World of Warcraft, how ProtonGE could even shore up compatibility issues in some Steam games (a good example right now's Lego Lord of The Rings btw; the lava in the intro clip just goes crazy RGB in every official Proton release I've seen, but it's all perfect in ProtonGE-latest,) and how I just couldn't manage to find a case where Windows seemed like a clear solution for me. Long story short I haven't had a single Windows system in my home for like a year now and I'm just waiting for at least a reason to want to run a Win10/11 VM and it just hasn't come along. VR's probably someone's other good reason (besides not wanting to upend everything like I did) to stick with Windows, btw. I'm still just surprised how much the desktop experience has shot forward over the past couple decades.

[@sagepirotess6312]

Ok boy. Go install and play dragon quest x a mmo, and ffxi a mmo non steam. To me a few mmos these and others is why I would use windows on occasion 😊

[@GameXData]

Load times are obviously going to vary slightly depending on what SSDs you have. However, for my specific setup, I didn't notice any differences that stood out during back-to-back tests. Lies of P and Horizon Zero Dawn had the largest initial load times at maybe a minute during the first startup, but every launch and in-game transition after has been relatively brief. If there are any differences, they're likely small enough that I'd be splitting hairs and wouldn't notice unless I started comparing benchmarks. Though, if you find an example otherwise, definitely let me know. I'd be curious if there were notable limits outside my frame of reference. As you suggested, I do think GOG, Epic, etc are pretty well covered by Linux at this point. (Which is why I didn't dig too deep into them in this video.) Although, I do appreciate the ease of use Windows affords for setup and game installation. Being able to install any random launcher or game from a website and run it without additional fiddling is pretty nice. Beyond personal preference, Game Pass and any online games without Linux support are probably the main reasons to try Windows these days for most folks. Cloud gaming does fill a lot of gaps, but it's not always as reliable or economical as a local install. Being able to boot up my system directly to my Game Pass library has also removes a bit of friction for jumping into a game at startup.

[@StopChangingUsernamesYouTube]

Thanks for setting some expectations for me. I'm similarly running a 512/512 config that's always a little more full than I'd like, so I might try to go this route whether or not I throw dual-booting into the mix. Definitely agreed on that last part btw. A huge weakness I see to Gamepass streaming on the Deck is that, well, it's streamed content. At home that's fine, but the Deck is one of the computers most likely to travel with me. If I'm on the go, it's local-only stuff or I'm chewing bandwidth. Actually I guess it's pretty easy to see how installed Gamepass games could be a pretty huge reason to want to boot into Windows. I'm sure I could get that working pretty well under SteamOS (or Garuda in the case of my desktop and laptop,) but it'd undoubtedly be both more fiddly than booting into Windows and more fiddly than I'm willing to bother with. In my case, my Steam library is the product of 17 years of steady accretion through bundles and so on. In others' cases, maybe subscription access to the Gamepass library looks a lot better than building up that kind of mess from a later point.

[@StopChangingUsernamesYouTube]

@@sagepirotess6312 Like I said, there's reasons to not want to do what I've done. On a related note, I think that would've been a reason for me to run a Windows VM like I've been holding off on if I was big into either of those games and couldn't get them to run native. No need for me to preach to others about how good an OS is; I switched because it works well for me and that's kinda all I need it to do.

[@Nsfwstar]

In short Windows is exactly like steam os but nothing is setup You have to manually make windows a lot lighter (any debloat app) You have to install the latest custom driver not made by valve for the steam deck Then you have to manually put hibernate instead of sleep and options to get the same sleep mode that steam os have You have to manually setup your ui for games (i recommend using playnite gamepad mode or steam big picture) And after all that you will get 99% of the steam os experience while maintaining 100% compatibility with everything [I did this on my previous deck and now msi claw and it worked like a champ lol]

[@GameXData]

I'm not sure there's a necessity to fuss too much with Windows, tbh. Most folks are going to have a good experience just by installing Handheld Companion and whatever game they want to play. In my case, the Xbox app is a perfectly fine launcher, and I haven't needed to uninstall anything from the stock Windows build (or install anything not mentioned in the video) to get good performance.

[@s01itarygaming]

You also don't have the same level of control over the apu in windows as you do in steamos. It's interesting to see the reverse (usually it's arguing that "linux is just like windows but..") though!

[@shanemitchellspencer]

I just did a similar setup, but with a different external SSD. I got it up and running, and was excited to try it. Somehow the boot portion got corrupted mid use. It's turned me off enough from trying Windows. :(

[@GameXData]

That's weird. I've used quite a few Windows computers in my time and haven't seen that happen before. Unless you're using a cheaper drive which might be more prone to failure, you should be able to just re-flash Windows and jump back in though. Unless, what kinds of things were you doing when the corruption happened? After hardware failure, software-related shenanigans would likely be the next culprit.

[@matthfarre11]

Hey man, Interesting piece of hardware. Steam input is supposed to work tho. I screwed up trying around with handheld companion once too, and ended up with broken steam input within steam client just like you. but if you do a reinstall of windows it should be working fine. and for windows-games like roblox and stuff you can use a toolset called steam deck tools turning the steam controls into an xbox controller and back at a simple button press. have fun :)

[@GameXData]

To clarify, I only installed Handheld Companion after experiencing Steam Input not working. Even if it might have detected the controller at some point, it's never functioned correctly for Game Pass games and had only limited functionality within Steam. With that in mind, Handheld Companion is honestly pretty great. I much prefer it to having Steam constantly running in the background. In Windows, it's also easier to fine tune than constantly returning to Steam settings.

[@kevincampos6394]

thought magnets are bad for the deck? i like the magsafe option but i believe there was articles before about magnetic attachments, i know that there were portable batteries people returned due to this, now i know its magsafe, but if we add the deckmate adapter maybe that would be a better way to attach the drive?

[@GameXData]

I've experienced no issues so far. However, I'd say use whatever mounting methods you're most comfortable with. A deckmate adapter seems like a great place to start.

[@kevincampos6394]

​@@GameXDataMy concern like most is long term. Altho i have a first gen i preorder my deck so if it dies guess a new handheld wont b bad either Hows power consumption if any diff? Id assume playing a game from the genki on battery would be shorter then the already battery life?

[@GameXData]

I haven’t really noticed any difference, tbh. For the games showed in the video, 1%/minute was typical. Using a slower drive or lower TDP would probably help that a bit. My only real efficiency gripe has been that it takes a few more clicks to fine tune power profiles compared to SteamOS.

[@kevincampos6394]

​@@GameXDataim planning to use it with steamOS for now. gonna jus use it for more games on the go. Thatd put me at 6tb on handheld. A bit overkill but def nice. I wanna try windows tho as well tho so we'll c

[@weberman173]

there was one specific Fan model that could suffer from this,(the Delta fans). the magnets would have to be right above the fan (or close to it, which is where most people attach stuff like batteries or kickstands(the killswitch case was where this issue came to be most well known from)to affect it. the location here, as well as the strenght of the magnets would unlikely to cause any iisuses

[@zephiiel]

Dual booting gets me timezone issue. My clock is always messed up.

[@GameXData]

Same here, tbh. It's just easy enough for me to ignore since I'm only using the system for gaming.

[@s01itarygaming]

Window's isn't all that much more "bloaty" than linux these days (as far as noticeable difference in gaming performance), it's just not great for a handheld pc or UMPC in general; it's also nowhere near as flexible as linux. SteamOS is, arguably, better because it is a more refined and streamlined experience that's tailored to a handheld, not because you get insane amounts of FPS by switching to linux.

[@HunnysPlaylists]

What about all of the docks with an m2 drive in it?

[@GameXData]

Sure. Same concept but less handheld.

[@SlyMelodica.]

Sub for how u actually went in depth on this for deck

[@Jphizzle25]

You should try installing playnite to see if it matches up to a steam OS experience

[@GameXData]

Seems okay enough from their website. However, Xbox Compact Mode is more than good enough already, tbh. If I ever missed SteamOS' UI, I could just enable Big Picture Mode on startup.

[@Burgerhs]

My game won’t use all the ram and vram I used tiny 11

[@GameXData]

It might be worthwhile to check out the official, stock Windows 11 build. The problem could be changed introduced by Tiny11. Starting from basics would at least give you a good baseline before making additional edits.

[@sagepirotess6312]

Ehhh. You didnt try out any non ste mmos. Ffxi, dragon quest x.

[@GameXData]

That's because I don't play MMOs.

[@sagepirotess6312]

@GameXData true but not testing any non ste as m ones is something that will turn away potential buyers of the device you are selling.

[@GameXData]

I'm not selling anything. I'm testing a product a company sent me by exploring a use case I'd been curious about.