Testing the Deck against the baseline for next-gen games development.
Looking at the specs, the two systems don’t look quite as far apart as you may think.
Both machines are based around the same AMD technologies - Zen 2 CPUs paired with RDNA 2 GPUs.
One levelling factor to consider, however, concerns power consumption.
In assessing each title, we’re aware that some compromises will be necessary.
On Steam Deck there are two potential paths to take here.
Both approaches yield a very consistent 30fps when paired with SteamOS’s frame-rate limiter.
These are extremely impressive results.
Cyberpunk on a handheld, at good configs and with solid frame-rates - this is really excellent stuff.
It’s another Steam Deck winner.
60fps is the target here, and 720p60 is actually possible most of the time.
Smaller corridors and combat sections hit 60fps at 720p mostly but there are frequent drops.
It’s not all roses for Steam Deck, however, and some titles struggle.
is required to lock to 60fps.
A more conservative route is to simply lower our performance expectations and accept a cut to 30fps.
Performance is a locked 30fps during gameplay at least, with no deviance whatsoever that I could detect.
So why isn’t the Steam Deck performing better here?
Dirt 5’s PC port is fairly unforgiving, with heavy CPU and GPU demands.
The title still looks and runs great, but we’re not particularly close to the Series S experience.
The only tool we have to address the performance faults is to engage FSR 1.0, which is built-in.
It’s definitely playable, but far from ideal.
Meanwhile, flickering issues remind us that Valve’s Proton layer can’t always translate DirectX without issues.
However, graphics issues aren’t uncommon either, even if they aren’t show-stopping complications.
So, can Valve’s Steam Deck be a match for the Series S?
In current software, the results are surprisingly close in many scenarios.
Overall, though - it’s a strong showing on a range of demanding games.
The software environment is easy to use while giving enthusiasts plenty of levers to tune performance just right.
Looking forward, however, there are some potential trouble spots.
However, the picture changes dramatically when Steam Deck is stacked up against Series S in running legacy titles.
On Series S, we’re getting a 720p30 rendition of Eidos Montreal’s first-person RPG.
There are some key advances here - most notably, frame-rate is locked, unlike the 360 original.
However, the performance targets are all identical to the original code.
Let’s close things out.
