We\u2019ve known for some time that the long-rumoured Valve Deckard will supposedly be an entirely standalone VR headset, but now we have an idea of roughly how powerful it\u2019ll be. The goggles are touted to run Half-Life: Alyx without the intervention of a gaming PC, although there might be a small caveat.<\/p>\n
Tyler McVicker, formerly known as Valve News Network, says that \u201cSteam Deck and Deckard are one in the same in terms of philosophy.\u201d Both are portable devices that grant access to the majority of your Steam library (give or take) out of the box, provided you tinker with the settings to ensure it runs smoothly. And that\u2019s the kicker. When it comes to Half-Life: Alyx, both he and I \u201cwould assume on lower graphics\u201d rather than the full whack.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not too surprising considering McVicker states it\u2019ll run on an ARM-based CPU, much like Deck. With a lower power draw, this ought to keep battery life reasonable where a traditional x86 variant would drain it in minutes. The trade-off is that computational output isn\u2019t quite on par with your usual desktop CPU, unless you\u2019re talking about Apple\u2019s M Series specifically. <\/p>\n
Granted, it doesn\u2019t take much to run Half-Life: Alyx from a raw specifications standpoint. An Intel Core i5-7500 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600 gets the job done with 12GB of memory and a 6GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580 in tow. Steam Deck\u2019s custom Van Gogh APU already has similar muscle to an RTX 1050 Ti or RX 570, so it doesn\u2019t require much tinkering to reach those minimum asks.<\/p>\n