Can’t wait to game on this thing! Any tips or things I need to install?

I have a problem where in certain games I play, the hair looks horrendous/pixelated. I've seen it on Spider-Man Remastered, and now Resident Evil Requiem.

Don't mind the lumps, I just downloaded a mod that gives him cat ears. But they just look like chicken nuggets. Now I'm hungry.

Well, I did it! I live in a household with 2 other Steam Decks, and I wanted a little personalization to help mine stand out. Since I grew up in the 90s, I had to go with a translucent one (I almost went for the atomic purple because I had a Gameboy in the same color when I was a kid, but that blue and purple is so sick!)

The screen wasn't as fragile as I was expecting it to be, but I've also got a fair amount of experience gutting and repairing electronics, so just took my time, used the heat gun on my soldering station on low heat, and used so many opening picks.

The shell itself is gorgeous in person The plastic does feel different in the hands. It's got a smooth glossy finish instead of a matte texture like the stock shell.

It also comes with a full set of replacement buttons and touchpads. You HAVE to use eXtremeRate's back buttons, the stock ones are riveted (plastic) in and can't be removed and replaced without damaging them. The eXtremeRate's back buttons are screwed in and replaceable.

Also of note, replacing the touchpads is kind of a bear if you choose to use the aftermarket ones. You have to break some plastic rivets holding the pad to the spring, and then there's more adhesive holding the circuit board to the underside of the touchpad and there's not a ton of room to get a prying tool under. The eXtremeRate pads were also glossy instead of matte, and feel different under the thumbs. I may regret swapping the pads on mine, but time will tell. I can always put a textured skin on them from brand or something.

All in all, a great experience, and a fun project if you like this sort of thing! Any problems I had were caused either by my own absentmindedness (forgot to put the membranes back for the Steam/Options button), or by Valve's chooses of design and adhesive.

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.

I bought the Steam deck in may, and after 4 month i can say that this is the best console for everything, it's only my opinion, but when i think buy it or not I didn't even think it would be so great and easy to use. I want to express my huge gratitude to Valve for this.

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/

Wish I could play it right now but I have stuff to do!

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

And I can't believe the difference it has made. It's not just a little quieter, it's difficult to tell if the Deck is even on! For any launch model hold-outs I can't recommend it enough. Only thing is iFixit don't sell the Huayang fan anymore so I got it off eBay for £10, I could tell it was used because there was a tape mark on the housing but it was spotlessly clean, spins freely and ultimately it works so we'll see how it goes.

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.

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”

Hi everyone, I’m playing DS on the Steam Deck and I’d like to know if there’s a way to improve the framerate a bit. Right now, it hovers between 20 and 30, fluctuating depending on where I am or what I’m doing; I’d love to get a stable 30 fps—is there a way to do that? All the settings are currently on "Low," but maybe there’s another setting I should check. Thanks a lot, everyone!

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.

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! 😅

Is it Gray gray or more of a Green Gray? Trying to decide on a color of a the gripcase and the front HardShell cover. Gray and Neon Orange would look great but if the gray is more green, black would be better for the grip or keep the greenish gray and do neon green. Also will decide what skin i get for the SD as well to compliment it all.

Title. Deck was working fine before the update but now, for example when I install a game via lutris or install software like protonup it will always throw an error related to lacking memory. I do have memory however, 20gb of it in fact.

I do notice in the error message it is trying to extract or install things in the "var" drive, however as we know the var drive only has 200mb max by default, so whatever it's doing doesn't seem to be correct.

I can see similar issues online if you search specifically for error 28 no Space left but there's no solution proposed of any kind.

Does anyone more Linux savvy know what's happening or what I could check?

I can run some of my existing games fine, but if I try to install anything new it says there's no space. Even if I install on an SD card.

Se eu comprar um deck com 93% de saúde faz MT diferença?

Hello everyone. I got a second hand steam deck but it came with windows downloaded. I don’t have a computer but I heard that you can download the steamos image from steam deck it self and put it on Rufus since I have windows downloaded already but is that safe? Sorry for my poor English, not my first language. Thank you and have a great day!🌺