Have you ever wondered if you can achieve 4K resolution and 60 FPS when playing on the Steam Deck? Well, apparently it is possible. Of course, the result has a trick, and it is that an impractical process is needed to get it. This has been proven by youtuber ETA Prime, who in a video shows step by step how to achieve it. Spoiler: It’s not easy… or cheap.
The video uploaded to the channel ETA Prime It lasts 10 minutes. During this time, we see the man successfully connect a Radeon RX 6900 XT video card to the M.2 port of the device. This was achieved by removing the SSD drive from the Steam Deck and replacing it with the card.
ETA Prime points out that, although it tried to use Nvidia cards of different generations, none managed to work with the Steam Deck. This left him with the only option to use a Radeon card. Of course, he had to connect the Radeon RX 6900 XT to an adapter with which it was possible to connect it to the console. In addition, it required an external power supply to power the video card.
This is how ETA Prime has described his ingenious invention. Although of course it removes the grace of the Steam Deck, which is to be a PC gaming portable. However, demonstrates customization capabilities that exist with this interesting device. “It’s definitely excessive,” says ETA Prime in his video.
With the SSD removed, ETA Prime proceeded to power up the console using a copy of Windows 11 installed on a microSD. However, the games used in the test were installed on an external SSD connected to the Steam Deck via a USB-C port.
After all this, he connected the Steam Deck to a monitor and turned it on. Thus, managed to run The Witcher III: Wild Hunt at 4K with all settings on Ultra. As for the frames per second, the tests show that it remained around 108 FPS, an impressive result. Grand Theft Auto Vfor its part, managed to reach 70 FPS on the Steam Deck with the graphics set to “Very High”.
Unfortunately, the graphics card did not manage to use its full potential in the tests. The reason is clear, and it is that the internal CPU of the console is bottlenecking with the video cardwhich severely limits the performance that more modern titles can achieve.
For this reason, games like Cyberpunk 2077 they only reached between 40 and 80 FPS at maximum settings at 1080p. The same configuration was used in the newly released Elden Ringand in this case the Steam Deck managed to hit around 46 FPS on average.
The Flexibility of Steam Deck
Valve’s Steam Deck has proven to be quite multifaceted. Almost a month ago he was released Xbox Cloud Gaming support through Microsoft Edge on the console, and recently Valve published the console drivers so you can install Windows without problems.
Valve hadn’t had much luck with the consoles and gadgets released in the past. However, it seems that on this occasion they have put their heartsand the results show it like this.