The valve consolethat is, the Steam Deck, is undoubtedly one of the most desired gadgets among video game fans. Since it allows titles not found on the Nintendo Switch to be played on a portable console with PC hardware. However, despite the origin of its architecture, it comes with some standard technical limitations and apparently they are beginning to weigh on it.
One of the keys to any video game console or dedicated system is that they don’t run PC applications, but instead have their own software, written and optimized around the strengths and limitations of the system. A way of proceeding that is not usually given on PC and not on the Valve console, which is still a computer.
The Steam Deck does not perform well in certain games
The Steam Deck’s performance in certain recent games is worrisome to say the least, and it seems that Valve’s console hardware is beginning to show the seams. To the point where many throw their hands up their heads about the future of the PC in the form of a portable console. Specifically where the Steam Deck is being limited is in games like:
- Plague Tale Requiem, where the game has to work with all the graphic options to the minimum and with an image buffer lower than 720p, which tarnishes the image quality. The worst thing is that it runs below 30 FPS in certain areas.
- Callisto Protocol It runs at native resolution on the Deck, but it averages around 20 FPS, so it’s not the best experience playing this title on the Steam Deck.
- Gotham Knights It requires running with the graphics options trimmed and FSR 2 active in order to reach 30 FPS.
- Need for Speed Unbound it runs at 30 FPS on the Steam Deck, well below the stable 60 FPS that a racing game should be required of.
It is said that the problem is due to a bottleneck of its CPU, which is made up of four Zen 2 cores similar to those found in the Ryzen 4000. Which is strange since the minimum requirements of the four games it can be played with a quad-core CPU and lower performance than the Van Gogh APU. Rather, the problem comes from the fact that they are games that have been poorly optimized on PC and not native versions.
Has the Valve console been limited?
One of the reasons the Steam Deck has built a catalog of games so quickly is due to the fact that they are not games created from scratch for the console, but PC titles that run through an interpreter, which it does not emulate. no hardware, but it does move certain calls from Windows to Linux, the operating system on which SteamOS is based. So it is a small overload to the processor.
In any case, we cannot forget that it is a fairly modest piece of hardware and if used on a gaming computer it would not even be considered a gaming system. Given that its integrated graphics card, despite being based on the same architecture as the next-generation consoles and the RX 6000 for PC, is far below performance. Which is one of the prices to pay in order to have a console with this form factor.
Be that as it may, the solution seems to be to make native versions and, therefore, optimized for the Steam Deck. However, the sales of Valve’s laptop don’t seem to justify these types of dedicated versions, which is a shame. Since we will not be able to play on it with many games properly.
