Everything You Need to Know About Valve’s Steam Deck
Valve’s portable gaming PC is upon us
The Steam Deck is a handheld console/portable PC announced by Valve on July 25, 2021. It made some waves after the rumored “Switch Pro” ended up being a better screen, and thanks to its starting price of $399— and with less than a month for them to start shipping on February 25 for those who reserved it early, here is all the important information you need to know right now.
If you want one, you’ll need a Steam account with at least one purchase prior to the announcement date in order to reserve a Steam Deck (Valve did this to deter scalpers). After logging in and dropping $5— which you can get back if you regret it — you’ll be added to the Steam Deck queue, but you won’t be getting it any sooner than Q2 this year.
The Steam Deck has a similar (but bigger) form factor to the Switch, but it’s still an x86 computer inside. Valve capitalized on the fact that it’s computer hardware, and made it so the Deck would change its interface when connected to an external display in order to allow you to use productivity programs on it, so it can be used to play and work.
The fact that the Deck is a computer means that, in theory, all games that target PC should work on it, but there are two caveats: Hardware and software.
Hardware
The Steam Deck has everything you expect from a modern controller: sticks, analog triggers, rumble, gyroscope, etc... but it also has a multitouch 7" display, two trackpads with haptic feedback, and four grip buttons on the back.
This may seem like a lot, but all those options are there to compensate for an issue inherent to PC gaming: Not all games are optimized for controllers. So with the extra options you can enjoy games that normally wouldn’t play nicely in such a device.
You can also use Bluetooth to connect other controllers to it, or do the opposite and connect the Steam Deck to another computer as a controller.
The Steam Deck has stereo speakers, dual microphones, and an audio jack port, as well as a microSD card slot.
But what about horsepower? The Steam Deck is a mobile device, and can’t be compared to a top-of-the-line gaming PC. It uses a 4 core Zen 2 CPU along with an RDNA2 based Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), it has 16 GB of RAM, but a part of it is shared with the APU.
The 7", 60 Hz display, has a resolution of 1280x800 (aspect ratio of 16:10), so it should have enough power to handle most games if you turn down some settings — don’t expect to play Dying Light 2 at max settings. It can display a higher resolution if connected to an external display.
The deck has a 40Wh battery, and Valve claims it can last 7–8 hours at light loads, down to 2 with intensive games. Note that the Steam Deck lets you limit the frame rate, change the GPU power or target a given TDP in order to help maximize battery life.
There was also a dock announced for it that will be sold separately, but know that the Steam Deck won’t gain more performance from using it, so it’s mostly there for those who want to use it as a desktop computer. You should also be able to use any USB-C dock you have around.
There are three Steam Deck models. The base model costs $399 and has a 64 GB eMMC storage which gets replaced with a 256 GB SSD in the $529 model, and finally, the $649 model has a 512 GB SSD, anti-glare etched screen, and a different carrying case from the other two models.
There’s no difference in performance between them, and they are all 298 mm x 117 mm x 49 mm in size, and approximately 1.54 lb / 699 g. For comparison, the Switch OLED is 242 mm x 102 mm x 13.9 mm and 0.93 lb / 422 g, so the Steam Deck is definitely heavier.
Content Update: With the release of some excellent preview coverage this week, I’ve come back to the piece to add some benchmarks graphics and my thoughts on what was revealed!
A few media outlets and YouTubers were given Steam Decks to test, and those YouTubers were allowed to give their first impressions on hardware and a few games on February 7. One of those was Gamers Nexus, which tested the thermals of different components, battery life under different loads, and, of course, some gaming benchmarks.
While I won’t cover everything shared by them (go watch their video!), I wanted to cover the performance we see, and start with a slide that I think could be unintentionally misleading…
This graph is comparing High and Ultra modes in Ghostrunner, but the problem is that it’s likely the Steam Deck isn’t actually doing Ray Tracing(RT). While we don’t yet know whether the Deck actually has hardware support for RT, the software side is still a work in progress, with the drivers not being ready yet. While that article is from last year, there’s an open bug for Ghostrunner so it probably doesn’t work as of yet, in fact, and to even try testing it you need a launch parameter.
So even though it’s not impossible that RT is working on the Deck, I think it’s more likely that the toggle in the game isn’t doing anything.
With that out of the way, testing was done when un/docked which showed a negligible performance difference, and that Forza Horizon 5 (FH5) and Control are both playable tweaking some settings — with Control running at ~30 frames per second (FPS) at medium, and FH5 averaging 32fps with dips on high, and never dipping under 30fps when on low
On the other hand, Devil May Cry 5 (DMC5) runs at an average of 62 frames per second (FPS) with every setting at max. Note that this is a frame time graph, and it shows how long it takes to go from one frame to the next, with a lower number being better (faster transitions).
And because Dead Cells requires a lot fewer resources than the other games, they measured input latency instead, the lower the better.
On the battery side, we have a worst-case scenario with an uncapped DMC5 discharging it in 1.5 hours (2 hours if using Vsync and “only” High preset), remote streaming lasting 6 hours, and Dead Cells just a little less.
There is also a VLC for 4K/60fps playback, and I have to say I would have liked to see a 1080p test as well. 4K playback makes more sense if you have an external display connected, and at that point, you probably aren’t running on battery.
It would also be nice to know how the video was encoded and if the Deck was using hardware acceleration, but I’m still thankful for these results.
On a sillier note, the Steam Deck’s chip is called “Aerith”, and they happened to lif the embargo on February 7 — the same date as the birthday of Final Fantasy VII heroine Aerith Gainsborough’s birthday. No idea if that’s from planning ahead or just coincidence.
Software
This is where it gets dicey. When thinking of a computer, most people think of Windows, especially when it comes to gaming…but that’s not the case here: the Steam Deck will use SteamOS 3.0, which is based on Linux — although Valve said users will be able to install another operating system on their Steam Deck if they wanted to (so you can install Windows or another Distro on it).
Before talking about SteamOS itself, I want to talk about why Valve might have wanted to steer clear of Windows:
- Valve doesn’t have to pay licenses for Windows this way (and let’s not forget that Microsoft has its own competitor to Steam in the form of the Microsoft Store and the Game Pass).
- GOG, Epic Game Store, EA Origin, Ubisoft Connect, and Microsoft Store all have something in common — they don’t offer a Linux client. While there are hoops you can jump through to get most of these (except Microsoft Store) working on Linux, most user will gravitate to what’s easier to use and better supported.
- The system and updates are things Valve are in control of, so they can avoid third parties causing issues with the system. The Steam Deck will use an immutable file system by default to avoid users from potentially soft bricking their devices by fiddling, and while it can be disabled, the measure should be enough to protect most users from themselves.
So what’s the deal with SteamOS? When the Steam Deck is used normally, it’ll just show an interface focused on letting you play and install your games, like any other console. But if connected to an external display, it’ll look like a normal desktop computer (note that Valve is using KDE Plasma, which isn’t exactly like Windows, so there might be a learning curve for new users).
What does this mean for Windows games? Well, PC games that are explicitly made for Windows don’t run natively on Linux. Valve used Wine — a tool that allows you to run Windows software — as base for the gaming-focused Proton. When you click “Play” in a windows game, Proton is what will take care of getting the game to run.
However, This doesn’t mean that all games will work. There are many reasons for this, but Valve has taken measures to mitigate the two major issues — videos not being able to play due to patenting issues, and it’s handling kernel level anti-cheat systems* by working with popular services like BattleEye and Easy Anti-Cheat. While the ground has been prepared, anti-cheat support is up to individual game developers.
*Kernel level anti-cheat refers to software that runs in your computer with elevated permissions compared to normal programs.
If not all games will work, how do I know what games are going to work? To address this, Valve launched Steam Deck Verified, which displays as a badge in each game, representing varying degrees of compatibility (“Verified”, “Playable”, “Unsupported”, and “Unknown”).
“Verified” means it works fine out of the box, “Playable” means that it requires some tweaking or has some small issues, “Unsupported” games don’t work (or may have big issues like videos not playing), and “Unknown” is simply untested. Valve plans to go through the whole library, but it’s an ongoing effort, and as of the writing of this story there are 142 “Verified” games, 114 are “Playable” and 40 are “Unsupported”.
The verified list contains some well known games like God of War, Deathloop, Hitman, Bayonetta, Hollow Knight, Celeste, Metal Gear Rising, Mad Max, Dark Souls 2 and 3, and more.
Note a few issues that take “Verified” games down to “Playable”:
- Bad text scaling: The text isn’t readable on the Steam Deck’s screen.
- Some functionality is not accessible when using the default controller configuration: If it requires use of the touchscreen, virtual keyboard or a community configuration, it’s out.
- Single-player gameplay requires an active internet connection: This includes single-player mode in multiplayer games.
- The game does not support external controllers for the primary player: This would affect players trying to play docked, as the external controller wouldn’t work.
- The game shows non-Steam-Deck controller icons: Xbox controller prompts are fine due to using the same naming for buttons.
So it’s still worthwhile to check them out, as depending on what or how you’re playing, its issues might not affect you.
The rest
The Steam Deck will allow for switching between Steam accounts without having to re-enter login details which isn’t possible in the desktop client, at least not yet.
Valve is introducing Dynamic Cloud Sync, which allows you to suspend a game on the Steam Deck and immediately continue on your computer seamlessly. Note that this is something that game developers have to add support for, so it won’t work with every game.
It’s also likely that the Steam Deck will support AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR). For those who don’t know, it’s an upscale technology, so the image doesn’t degrade as much when rendering at a resolution lower than the display. Though bear in mind that it does a worse job at lower resolutions, so this will be more useful when connected to an external, higher resolution, display.
Because the Steam Deck isn’t locked down, you’ll be able to install other things on it (emulators, for example). Most emulators out there have native Linux support, so you won’t need to install another operating system for it, which you could also do if you desired it.
Installing Windows will probably have a number of trade-offs. Some games that don’t work on SteamOS will probably work if Windows is installed, and some games that work on both might have better performance on Windows (although a few might run better on SteamOS). On the other hand, it might have a degraded battery life or introduce user interface issues due to its uncommon form factor.
If you aren’t tech-savvy, you should wait for others to try others operating systems on it first and document any issues, as it could end up being worse for your use case.
Conclusion
Depending on your use case, the Deck might look a versatile console with a large initial catalog, or a cut-down PC with several compromises. For this reason, you should evaluate the game list and whether having the option to use desktop programs in such a device is important to you.
Of course, the fact that you’ll have to wait several months if you were to reserve right now means that you have plenty of time to make your decision.
