Genuine question for new PC people coming from consoles

Hello,

I am new to the gaming PC world. The Steam Deck is my first gaming PC (if I can say that). I am genuinely curious to know where does the SD fall in the gaming console space in regards to power. In other words, Where would the Steam Deck rank for power compared to consoles (xbox, PS, Nintendo, PC graphics cards, etc.)?

I’d say it’s more powerful than a switch, perhaps almost equaling a ps4?

The thing is that since you’re rendering games at a far lower resolution, the hardware doesn’t have to be as strong to run the same games you would need more powerful hardware for at 1080p+

But when it comes to full blown PCs, a mid range configuration, like an i5 + a gtx 4060 or something equivalent would blow it out of the water I’m sure.

Well, as Fartus said, almost equal to PS4. In terms of raw power measured in Teraflops:

Nintendo Switch ______ 1.0 Tflops
Gforce 1030 _________ 1.1 Tflops
Steam Deck _________ 1.6 Tflops
PlayStation 4 ________ 1.8 Tflops
Radeon HD 7870 _____ 2.2 Tflops
Geforce 1060 ________ 4.13 Tflops
Geforce 4060 _______ 15.0 Tflops
Radeon RX 7900 XT _ 53.0 Tflops

That is not bad for people who never had a PS4. They ca so of play PS4 at high settings.

I hope that the steam deck 2 can be higher than PS5 since that would be a great upgrade. The Switch 2 sounds disappointing as far as the rumored specs go. Seems like I should get a PS5 to play those games for a good experience. Do you think a Playstation has high resell value like an Iphone or Macbook has such value? Maybe I should wait for the PS5 pro…

Can a gaming laptop with a 4060 beat out a PS5 in gaming performance? Maybe I can go with AMD instead since those are cheaper and easier to deal with and the PS5 uses AMD?

Well, using fendrik’s approach on comparing teraflops, a ps5 pro is more powerful than a 4060 apparently, while the non pro PS5 is slightly less powerful.

But of course there are so many variables, like what the processor is, how much and what kind of RAM you have, and also the fact that a gaming console is designed to do just that, gaming.

It doesn’t have to worry about all other things an PC OS has to do, it ends up squeezing more power out of the hardware compared as to if that same hardware was to be used in a PC.

If all you want is gaming, than a gaming console is more preferable, a PC of course has many different uses other than just gaming, it depends on what you want to do.

But, a laptop with a 4060 will be able to play all the new games at pretty decent graphical quality and performance, perhaps not all maxed out, but still pretty good.