Linux 6.6 Adds New Sound Support For AMD Van Gogh, Valve Galileo

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 6.6 Adds New Sound Support For AMD Van Gogh, Valve Galileo

The sound subsystem and audio driver updates were merged last week for the ongoing Linux 6.6 merge window. Interesting about the sound work this cycle is a fair amount of work around AMD Van Gogh platforms, which so far is just the APU that's known to power Valve's Steam Deck...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.6-Sound

[jeisom]

Considering the performance of the z1e devices I have seen reviewed, most perform about the same at 15 watts as the steam deck at the same settings, it is not surprising that Valve would simply do a new revision of the 1st gen rather than move to a 2nd gen as the focus in increasing performance should include battery life.

[cmakeshift]

Why does it have to be about more performance? Valve still loses money with every Deck sold. I bet my left nut this new revision is about making it cheaper, nothing else. (Which is not bad IMO).

[aviallon]

Why does it have to be about more performance? Valve still loses money with every Deck sold. I bet my left nut this new revision is about making it cheaper, nothing else. (Which is not bad IMO).

I bet they don't for all country, since selling at loss is illegal in France (except in specific circumstances).
Also, the higher end Steam Deck must increase their margins significantly.
It is, after all, the exact same hardware but with different storage...

[brucethemoose]

it's rather modest sticking to Van Gogh rather than going for the Ryzen Z1 series with the Zen 4 CPU cores and RDNA3 graphics.

The Z1 is a rebadged laptop chip, while Van Gogh is the only chip AMD has (due to Dragon Crest being allegedly canceled [1]) that is very explicitly designed for graphics performance in this low power envelope. Hence the Z1 struggles when on battery in spite of the massive process/design advantage.

Van Gogh is also very cheap, especially now.

1: https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ryze...artially-leaks

[SyXbiT]

I get a full v2 isn’t likely this soon, but if z1 matched perf at 15w and was set better at day 30w, it would be great when docked.

[Mathias]

Having a VRR capably display and stack would help quite a lot IMO. Sure you can pin the current display to 37Hz (or whatever fits per game) an hope it never drops below that. But restricting the SOC to 7W and letting VRR do its thing is better and more comfortable. IMO this would be the best and cheapest upgrade they could do without alienating their old base with a Deck2

[slalomsk8er]

Why does it have to be about more performance? Valve still loses money with every Deck sold. I bet my left nut this new revision is about making it cheaper, nothing else. (Which is not bad IMO).

Source?

They sold more units then expected (economy of scale) and more of the high end models (better margin).
My guess, the reduced prices at the summer sale where at cost.

[brucethemoose]

Having a VRR capably display and stack would help quite a lot IMO. Sure you can pin the current display to 37Hz (or whatever fits per game) an hope it never drops below that. But restricting the SOC to 7W and letting VRR do its thing is better and more comfortable. IMO this would be the best and cheapest upgrade they could do without alienating their old base with a Deck2

Yeah, exactly. VRR would be such a huge performance and power efficiency upgrade for the deck.

As an example, on battery, one could massively throttle the chip and get "about 40fps" with basically no downside over running it at a higher TDP and hoping it stays locked at 30. And you could still cap the fps to avoid wasting power in low-load parts of the game.


Docked, the chip can run free instead of being locked at 60, and the dips will feel much better.

[Nille]

Valve still loses money with every Deck sold.

Thats nonsense and Valve just says that the price point was challenging and not that the loose money with it.