Is the 64gb model + 512GB SD card enough for casual gaming?

a year ago by spaciouskarter78 to c/steamdeck

I'm eyeing on getting a 64gb base model since thats the only one available in my nearest store. Valve doesnt sell decks in my country so scalpers are the only way.

64gb is the most affordable option for me. I plan to get a 512gb sd card and play some casual cod zombies, deep rock galactic, fallout 76 etc.

Is it enough or will the SD card bottleneck it? There's no 256gb or 512gb model unless I take the risk of getting scammed.

Grass 11 points a year ago

I got the 64gb and swapped in a 1tb nvme later on when I found a cheap one

the 64gb is an emmc in the same form factor as the nvme so probably doesn't perform much better than the sd if at all.

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HoloPengin 1 point a year ago

The 64GB drive is indeed rough. I had massive troubles downloading, updating, and launching games, even with a large fast SD card. The only thing that ever truly fixed it was swapping to my current 512GB SSD.

256GB would be fine though if OP can manage to snag one. It'll be a bit tight if you want to have multiple modern AAA games installed, but most everything else will run comfortably on an SD card.

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spaciouscoder78 1 point a year ago

just watched a few videos on youtube about ssd vs sd card and it isnt all that bad unless i play some fast paced game

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Grass 1 point a year ago

the one game I felt might be affected is spiderman where you can traverse fast enough that the map streaming bottlenecks. even long loading screen games are way faster than back in the day

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bl4kers 3 points a year ago

I have all my games on my SD card and still filled up the 64 GB internal storage. Yes you read that right. I guess shaders have to go on it (and OS)

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Gebruikersnaam 3 points a year ago

I symlinked the shaders to the SD for a friend and that seemed to work fine.

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bl4kers 2 points a year ago

Any docs/guides for that?

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spaciouscoder78 2 points a year ago

What kind of games do you play?

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bl4kers 1 point a year ago

Top games: Maze Mice, Inscryption, Slots & Daggers, Megabonk, Is This Seat Taken?

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LuckingFurker 3 points a year ago

Just to note, and by no means is this a common issue I've seen, but I recently had the SD card I had in mine (a legit Samsung card, 512gb) just randomly corrupt itself so all the games installed on it couldn't be seen by the Steam Deck anymore. That also lead to a bonus issue where the Deck thought the games where still installed whenever I tried to reinstall them and them not booting once they had been reinstalled, and at least one of them games (once I fixed that problem) still occasionally needs me to verify the installed files so it can reaquire one before the game will load

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Monkyhands 2 points a year ago

I did this, and I have never had any issues. I have mainly been playing BG3 to be honest, but it runs great on the 64gb for me.

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spaciouscoder78 3 points a year ago

I watched some youtube video where he used that set up but the cache and stuff was filling up the internal drive.

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Monkyhands 2 points a year ago

Possibly it is filling up the drive. Honestly, I have not checked my settings or storage in a long time.

I have been playing like this since BG3 came out. I also occasionally play other games on the deck. So far, no issues. If I run into a problem, I'll have to see about clearing space then.

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Auster 1 point a year ago

If you get the Steam Deck and storage runs low, as the Deck is based on Arch, may I suggest ncdu?

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Midnitte 1 point a year ago

You can also always upgrade the SSD - it's just a specific type of m.2

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umbrella 2 points a year ago

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