The Steam Deck receives its first major update

Since the launch of the Steam Deck, Valve has not skimped on system updates for its PC / portable console, released at a breakneck pace, up to several times a week. Each usually contains its small batch of minimal (but not necessarily minor) improvements. The new update published on the morning of April 26, 2022 moves away from this routine, since it brings in its suitcases the first major novelties known to the Steam Deck since its launch.

These are thus several important functional novelties that it brings to SteamOS, in particular with regard to the options for optimizing the performance of the games. Firstly, the machine’s system options now allow the user to opt for a frame rate fully unlocked in game, and no longer systematically limited to 60 fps at most. In this case, the Steam Deck does not disable vertical synchronization, but essentially makes the game believe that it is running on a screen at an infinite refresh rate, similar to what the “ultra low latency” mode offers for example. on Nvidia graphics cards. In fact, this mode of operation makes it possible to slightly reduce the latency of the commands when the frame rate exceeds 60 fps, at the cost of a slightly irregular animation and above all of an unbridled power consumption, and therefore of an autonomy scaled down.

Just below the limiter frame rate, we also see the appearance of a switch by which we can ask the Steam Deck to try to force the use of Variable Rate Shading even on games that do not support it natively. By doing so, we could gain a few performance or autonomy points in exchange for a negligible drop in image quality. However, the option didn’t seem to work on the few games we’ve tested so far (god of war, F1 2021, Hellblade). Much more experimentation would be necessary to judge its interest.

A first step towards Windows 11

Another major change, the update comes with a new firmware for the AMD Van Gogh Steam Deck CPU, with support for the fTPM security standard. This opens the door to installing Windows 11 on the machine (until now, only Windows 10 could fit there). Remember, however, that the installation of Windows is currently not at all recommended for “normal” use of the Steam Deck: the very basic optimization of the CPU and GPU drivers means that performance anomalies still occur very regularly. in some games and applications. What’s more, the Steam Deck still does not support the dual-boot and therefore installing Windows can only be done by overwriting SteamOS. These two limitations should be lifted in the more or less long term, but who knows who can predict when exactly.

Alongside all that, the update also brings its usual boatload of more secondary user experience developments. There is improved compatibility with USB-C chargers and hubs and microSD cards or better management of power consumption in states of very low activity. On the interface side, we note the appearance of a PIN code lock screen, a utility for managing windows opened in parallel, a new organization for the success pages… and the possibility, finally , to use another layout than QWERTY for the virtual keyboard!

Last improvement, and not least: Valve has significantly reduced the brightness of the battery indicator. People who have become accustomed to leaving the Steam Deck on charge on their nightstands are extremely grateful.

Let’s conclude with a small warning for Steam Deck owners: Valve says it has confirmed that the update may not launch correctly if launched from the machine’s desktop mode. It is therefore strongly recommended that users return to SteamOS mode before launching the update, to ensure that they will not need to completely reset their machine to make it usable again. If necessary, the manipulations necessary for this reset are specified on the dedicated Steam support page.