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.
P OWE R PL AY
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.FAR LEFT: Even if a
game isn’t ‘verified’
with the Steam Deck
most games we tried
mostly worked.
Mostly.
BELOW: The library
screen is your classic
Steam library plus a
list of the titles that
are ‘Great on Deck’.Sorry, what?
Failing the significant
other test
Thermals
Thanks to the AMD Aerith chip’s
sustained performance the chip
does get warm. In-game I was
regularly seeing the Deck’s silicon,
both CPU and GPU components,
hitting around 77 to 83°C. That’s well
within the capabilities of the
system’s cooling, and won’t have an
impact on the lifespan of the device,
but it’s not quiet.Hot stuff
Thankfully, because of the Deck’s
chonk design, you’re not going to get
scorched hands playing at that
temperature for any length of time.
The ergonomic grips on either side of
the device blessedly never get hot,
and the main vents pushes hot air out
of the top of the chassis, and away
from you.Decibels
Sadly PCG Towers does not afford us
a soundproof room in which to carry
out proper acoustic testing, but
sitting zen-like in a small silent space
in my house I was able to measure the
sound of the Deck during gameplay.
And 48 to 50dB means it’s very much
a noticeable noise when the fans are
going. Which is most of the time.Pitch
The actual noise itself isn’t the big
issue, however. The thing which really
grates is the pitch of that fan noise.
There is a notable whine to the sound
and that will grind on you over a
lengthy play session – it certainly did
for my wife as I was playing Forza
Horizon 5 on the sofa one evening.Steam Deck
COVER FEATURE