Man, same. I used to only consider Asus motherboards when I built a PC because I'd had such good experiences with them.

I had an ex girlfriend who owned one of their laptops, which was a nice machine. I owned their 7" Nexus Android tablet. I'm sure I owned other stuff as well.

Now that word has gotten around that they're voiding warranties over bogus reasons, I definitely won't be giving them anymore business. That is really disappointing though.

@FartsWithAnAccent @ylai @Veraxus Asus has been enshitifying for a couple of years now. I used to get their ROG phones year after year, until they sent me the last one without the Kunai cover (I bought the phone with the controller) and when I reached out to them they wanted me to send the whole thing back, phone and all, to determine if they would send it back with the cover to me. Beyond ridiculous. Returned it, got a refund, never looked back.

Unless Valve can either find or pay a company that does a custom packaging of a Nvidia GPU with x86 (like the Intel Kaby Lake-G SoC with an in-package Radeon), very unlikely. The handheld size makes an “out of package” discrete GPU very difficult.

And making Nvidia themselves warm up to x86 is just unrealistic at this point. Even if e.g. Nintendo demanded, the entire gaming market — see AMD’s anemic recent 2024Q1 result from gaming vs. data center and AI — is unlikely to be compelling enough for Nvidia to be interested in x86 development, vs. continuing with their ARM-based Grace “superchip.”

Nvidia does not make x86 SoCs. Even if Valve goes with a separate Nvidia dGPU like in laptops, they would have to abandon their last 10+ years of Linux work, and goals of having a platform which isn't controlled by Microsoft.

It's most likely to be AMD, given that all recent consoles have been AMD, including the Steam Deck and Switch...

I don't think Intel is really compelling for any mobile device and AMD's APU makes things rather compact.