Steamed RAM
How does the hardware perform?
OUT OF THE BOX, THE GAME WAS LOOKING GREAT AND RUNNING AT AN UNBELIEVABLY SMOOTH 81FPS
The Steam Deck is one of the most versatile, most intriguing gaming PCs I’ve ever played with. It’s a handheld device that will draw immediate, probably unfair comparisons with Nintendo’s Switch, but is 100% PC in both the best and worst ways.
It’s important to note I’m writing this before launch, with a 512GB version of the Steam Deck that still has to be considered unfinished. But that’s only in relation to the software side of the equation and, while that is absolutely vital to the smooth running of the device, the hardware itself is final. And really impressive.
Core to the whole thing, and the piece of the puzzle most responsible for the Deck actually being a genuine gaming PC, is the AMD silicon sizzling away at its heart. The custom-designed
AMD Aerith APU (heavily based on the long-rumoured AMD Van Gogh design) is using the same GPU cores as those in the outstanding RX 6000-series graphics cards. Yes, the ones you’re still struggling to buy.
One of the keys tenets of the chip is its sustained performance. There’s no throttling here. Whether you’re getting your juice from the mains or roaming free, sucking on the 40Whr battery inside the Deck, you will get the same performance no matter watt. And that sustained performance is great, too.
STACKED DECK
At the reveal event I listened with some scepticism as Valve devs claimed the Deck would be able to run your entire Steam library and they had yet to find a game the hardware couldn’t handle. But, while we’ve found some Windows games in our libraries that won’t run on Valve’s custom SteamOS Linux distro, the majority do, and run well.
I’m not just talking about having Stardew Valley and FTL running like a dream either (though they obviously do), I’ve had The Witcher 3 looking great locked at 30fps, with Deathloop on high between 30 and 45fps, and even Forza Horizon 5 skipping across the desert at a 47fps framerate with high settings. The one that really got me was just how well Resident Evil Village plays on the Deck, though. Out of the box, the game was looking great and running at an unbelievably smooth 81fps on average.
That’s largely thanks to the fact I’m outputting to its 1280x800 resolution screen, but we’ve long had integrated laptop graphics struggling to get playable framerates, at high settings, in modern titles at 720p. AMD’s first RDNA 2 APU looks a winner if the Steam Deck is anything to go by.
We’ve not been so lucky in other games, however. GTA V refused to get past Rockstar Social Club, Skyrim sadly freezes regularly despite otherwise great performance, Civilization VI (listed as a Deck Verified title) doesn’t load, and neither did Halo Infinite. Though that meant my ego was not bruised from being brutalised online, struggling with the gamepad-based controls.
Then I’ve also had Valheim running like a bit of a dog, too, despite it not really being the most demanding of games. At high settings in the Viking survivalists’ playground I was seeing an average of just 23fps, with minimum framerates at just 14fps
Still, the fact that a host of modern, high-end games run so well on this wee handheld – the majority we tried in fact
– is testament to the work Valve has put in on the Deck and its Proton Windows game compatibility layer. And future updates may still solve this issues.
POWER PLAY
The issue with running at both high framerates and high settings with a sustained level of performance, however, is the battery takes a pounding. We’re used to gaming laptops with battery lives measured in minutes, but as a handheld gaming device the Steam Deck needs to do better than that. And, when I first pulled it from that travel case, it most definitely did not.
About an hour-and-a-half uptime was the standard response from running any of these games, but Valve has now added in advanced settings which allow you to set a global limit on framerates, TDP, and GPU clock speed. Lurking in there is also a setting which allows you to add AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution to any game running on the device. That’s an incredibly powerful feature which has the dual benefit of improving both performance and battery life.
With these settings in tow, set to a stable 45fps, I’m now seeing battery life going into the three hour mark and beyond, with Football Manager hitting a pleasing five. Messing around in FTL and Starbound, maybe I might even be able to get close to the mythical eight hours Valve originally promised.
Throw an external battery pack into your bag and there’s a transatlantic flight’s worth of high-end PC gaming in the Steam Deck.