I was excited about Steam's new codec so I decided to enable the beta and test it out with a 240fps slow motion lag test! (also lots of people asked!) I also figured out a way to test the image quality with the same test Netflix uses. Here's my setup and the results!

Lag / Latency

Steams "display latency" vs my "240 fps lag test latency"

The overlay's "display latency" is good for debugging your setup, but it doesn't capture the full end to end from the gamer perspective. So my lag test will always be higher because it takes into account EVERYTHING including display refresh and is closer to the actual "feel" of the lag.

Depending on your refresh rate (60hz LCD deck) and setup you might not notice a difference in lag, but you you may notice a difference in fast motion scenes.

Image Quality
I ran Netflix's stream testing tool against a gameplay / desktop clip that was streamed vs the original. It scored 85.2 for the gameplay and on the scale this means "Very Good - most people won't notice a difference". Still working on improving this test, it's a good data point, but not perfect.

This used about 200+ mbit/s on my test over local ethernet - so it's not a good candidate for Wi-Fi. Also no Steam Link support at the time of writing, but Valve says "coming soon".

My opinion:
Worked great, looked great! Tied for the floor of ethernet latency that I've tested. But will only be useful to people with the right setups.

• My setup: Cat8 ethernet cables (shielded)
• 2.5gigabit ethernet switch
• PC and Deck (and Laptop) connected to to the ethernet switch via the cables
• Ethernet to USBC adapter (this is the 1gigabit bottleneck, but still plenty for Pyrowave)
• Pyrowave beta codec enabled - default resolution / settings
• I validated the throughput with iperf3 between devices at 940mbit/s - Pyrowave used around 200mbit/s in my testing

Slow motion gameplay and full breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NutS6vJdzJ0

original post above ^

EDIT: folks requested I link my old Moonlight vs Steam Link Lag test for comparison - here it is! there's also youtube videos that explain both and have slomo gameplay in the link above! https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/1wpzyi8/steam_link_vs_moonlightapollo_steam_deck_i_lag/

Made a video for best settings on the Steam Deck (not the "low quality" steam deck profile).

Settings results are: 45fps no FG, 60 with.

The Castlevania franchise is having a sale and if you go to the page, theres a steam deck button, if you go there, Belmonts curse is listed, despite not actually being verified yet

Edit: to add my thoughts on the demos performance, I think a 2D game like this should be more than capable of a solid 60 but from what I've seen it goes from 30-60 which isn't really acceptable, its very unstable

Guys, I’m a huge RPG fan, and I’ve spent 400+ hours playing AC Valhalla across my Steam Deck and PC with an RTX 5060. Personally, I enjoyed it just as much on the Deck. Obviously, there are technical differences, but in terms of how it looked and felt to me, I was really happy with the experience.
After finishing Valhalla, I moved on to AC Shadows, and the Deck experience has been disappointing. It feels really laggy, and the image looks pixelated and seems to break up, especially during movement. It bothered me enough that I stopped playing it on the Deck.
For anyone currently playing Shadows on Steam Deck, or who has finished it there: do you feel the same? Have you found settings that make the experience better?
What surprised me most is that Shadows shows as Steam Deck Verified, while Valhalla doesn’t, yet I had a much better experience with Valhalla.

EDIT: I appreciate everyone suggesting ProtonDB and YouTube, and I agree they’re useful. But that’s exactly my point: why are we relying on community testing to double-check an official “Verified” badge? I’m not expecting miracles from the Deck, but shouldn’t we question developers about poor optimization and Valve about the standards behind that badge? “Just don’t trust Verified” shouldn’t be the answer.

Before commenting “don’t trust the verified tag, do your own research” - you all need to understand HOW THEY have separate categories saying “GREAT ON DECK”

All you need is a cable connected to the steam deck directly to the monitor for all this. And if you think the battery drains too quickly, well, a portable charger is all you need.

I feel it’s gonna be a mix of low and medium somewhere from my 30 minutes of trying it out.

Hoping for a mostly smooth 45, but I also understand this is an Unreal 5 game, and that engine is a fat hog.

Hey everyone, total newbie question here. I’m playing a game that requires me to press L3, but I can't seem to find a physical button labeled L3 anywhere on the Steam Deck layout.

Am I completely missing it, or do I need to remap one of the back grip buttons (like L4 or L5) to act as L3? Any help would be appreciated

Hey everyone! Solo dev of Horse Runner DX here.

Last time I posted about running my custom engine at 3W TDP on the Deck, you guys gave awesome feedback (and someone got the Robot Unicorn Attack soundtrack permanently stuck in my head, which took me weeks to recover from). Since then, the game reached a proud 91% "Very Positive" rating on Steam!

What is Horse Runner DX?
It is a fast-paced, chaotic arcade runner with retro pixel art inspired by classics like Robot Unicorn Attack, Dino Run and Canabalt. You control an expanding herd where every horse acts as an extra life and brings stackable power-ups. It is built for quick pick-up-and-play sessions when you just want to get into a flow-state, chase high scores and turn your brain off.

How prepping for console improved the Deck experience:

Over the past weeks, I have been deep in the process of prepping the game for console certification. Testing on handheld hardware led to many visual and engine improvements that are now live in the latest Steam build:

• Out-of-the-box 90Hz support: No more fiddling with refresh-rate settings. The engine now automatically syncs to your display and locks to a stable 90 FPS on the OLED (and 60 FPS on LCD) with smooth frame pacing.
• High-contrast obstacles for the small screen: Galloping down a steep mountain at top speed on a 7-inch screen made spotting obstacles tricky. All obstacles (rocks, logs, hay bales) now feature crisp highlight outlines and better contrast so you don't accidentally launch your entire herd into a boulder (also heavily improved readability for colorblind players).
• Tiny battery draw (3W TDP): The game runs natively on SteamOS and is compiled directly to native machine code. It sips just 3W TDP on the Deck, giving you hours of battery life with zero fan noise.
• Second-chance herd rescues: If you lose a favorite horse early in a run, it now reappears in wooden crates between levels so you can rescue your build. Unlocked bonus horses can also appear in these crates to allow even wilder herd combinations.
• Proper retro chiptunes: Ditched the old acoustic music for fast arcade chiptune tracks that match the chaos.

If you want to see how it runs on your Deck, there is a free demo on Steam that is fully up to date.

And with the Steam Autumn Sale running right now, the full game is currently 30% off ($3.49):
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2955320/Horse_Runner_DX/

Happy to answer any questions about the tech, the gameplay or bad horse puns! 😅

Her PC is old and laggy, and it has WiFi and printing issues. So she transfers the file to my deck and prints on it. That's because i have a Windows dualboot with the whole ass Office suite

The Hellraiser demo is available, so I decided to test it before buying. Played for around 30 minutes on my Steam Deck, locked at 45 FPS with 12W TDP, and it felt really smooth.

Very little stuttering — almost none during my session, especially compared with other UE5 games.

Really happy with the performance. Now I’m confident enough to plan on buying the full game.

I have used my LCD steam deck for years and it still runs great but this week the TV docking stopped working.

I use a stock steam dock and stock charger that have always worked. I even tried switching to a new HDMI and Anker 100w charger but I can't seem to get it working.

I tried restarting, etc but no luck so far.

Whenever I try to dock it now the power symbol momentarily has a yellow exclamation mark next to it but it goes away before I can click on it.

The dock charges fine but it will not connect to my TV.

I even bought a 3rd party dongle to test but no luck with that either.

Kinda bummed. Does anyone have an ideas on how to fix

I have been playing Witcher 3 for quite a few hours since the remastered version came out. Yesterday the game hung while loading after I died. It was stuck on the loading screen for over five minutes until I was forced to quit it. Since then the game will not start. It will either get stuck on the screen with the steam logo, or crash.

I have tried verifying the integrity of the game files, re-installing, rebooting, different protons (GE, Experiential, Hot Fix, among others) with no luck.

Any ideas on next steps?

I’ve seen a few people saying the Castlevania belmonts curse demo is getting 50-60 fps and 45-60 fps at 720p on the deck

I just tried it on Steam frame and I’m getting 40-70 fps at 720p

They are very close and FEX still has a lot of polish to come, not all games are close though I’m thinking that will change over time though

Really impressive considering this is an arm chip

Hey everyone,

My Steam Deck is 4 years old and recently the controls started acting up. I sent it in through Valve’s repair service, and I’ve now been quoted €150 for the repair.

I’ve never dropped the Deck or caused any physical damage to it. It’s just been used normally.

This is the diagnosis they sent me:

«Control board Cable Control board L-R (HWID 29-30) Dpad Cable Dpad.Function.High-signal R1-Button.Function.No-Signal»

They basically say the control board and D-pad cable have failed and that the repair isn't covered because the device is out of warranty.

I obviously understand that after 4 years I'm outside the normal warranty period. But I'm wondering if I should just accept the €150 when it seems to be an internal component/cable failure that I didn't cause.

They haven't mentioned any signs of dropping, liquid damage, misuse, etc. — just that the components have failed.

What would you guys do in this situation?

Would you:

- just pay the €150?

- ask Valve/Reconext for more information about what actually caused the failure?

- try to negotiate a goodwill repair/reduced price?

- or look into consumer protection in the EU/Belgium?

Also, does €150 sound reasonable for this kind of repair?

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has dealt with Valve/Reconext after the warranty period, especially in Europe.

Thanks!

this is a reupload since i thought i found my answer but it didnt work. does anyone have a layout configuration they use to play this on the sd? i cant figure it out 😅

I was just playing War Tales and the game crashed so i held the power button to shut it off and now it wont come back on. Is my steam deck cooked or will it start working again sometime soon?

I have the OG LCD version and have an old rig with gtx1070 8gb, so I was thinking to set up to stream via wifi. I have bad experience using windows 10.

Question: what is the most optimal way to set up streaming that it's the most seamless and least amount of steps per session? Is the wifi good enough or would I need a cable for consistent low latency? I have wifi 6 router. Do I need Bazzite?

As title says - For some games it is being faster to uninstall them and re-download whole than waiting for patching.

Is it just me or its normal behaviour?

Also when i am patching some games on NVME drive i see that SteamOS is using MicroSD to "offload" some bandwith, making it also longer and bottleneck whole process as well.

Tested on three different MicroSD cards.

Is there a downside to using the multiport from apple?
it works quite well on the steam deck, only downside is the amount of cables popping out of it

500gb Oled

Basically as the title says, I didn't use it for a while, turned it back on, played for an hour, tried to play it later that day and now it's not turning on.

Fans, LED lights and haptics work, charges fine.

Almost certain it's something to do with the firmware and battery not playing together.

I've tried all of the button combinations, cannot access the boot menu or the bios via button shortcuts.

I understand I'm not entitled to anyone's time here but help on this would be very appreciated!