It's been a few weeks since the Steam Deck released, and many gamers have been getting to grips with the device. Recently, Valve has been looking for user feedback so it can continue to work on the handheld system, especially when it comes to the games themselves. One of the machine's biggest selling points is the fact that it's essentially a fully functional PC that can be used on the go, giving it a bit of an edge in the mobile market. However, one modder wondered what would happen if it could be given the strength of an external desktop graphics card.
In a video uploaded to YouTube a couple of days ago, the ETA PRIME channel decided to see what would happen if the Steam Deck was given some different graphics hardware. In this case, it's been attached to an AMD Radeon 6900 XT, a card that is almost one and half times as big as Valve's device itself. While it makes the portable console less wieldy in that it needs to be physically hooked up to the beastly GPU, the aim was to see whether it would have an impact on game performance.
When hooked up using the device's built-in M.2 and connecting it to a PCI-E dock, the 6900 XT gives a fairly significant boost to framerate during play. However, the performance overall is bottle necked by the Steam Deck's CPU, meaning that it's unable to unleash the full power of the graphics card. That being said, games like The Witcher 3 and GTA 5 do show a marked fps improvement on 4K outputs. But in games like Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077, there doesn't appear to be much of a boost. But, again, this is likely due to the CPU.
Given that the Steam Deck now has over 2000 verified or playable games, the main attribute that users are interested in is how well it runs things. Even though it's essentially a mobile PC, the addition of the AMD card means that it can no longer be transported. However, the video itself is just a fun little exercise to see the ways in which the Deck can be modified.
With Valve discussing the future of its handheld device, the Steam Deck has the potential to really make an impact on the mobile gaming industry. It's still got some teething problems at the minute, especially when trying to install something like Windows, but all the feedback users provide will hopefully give the developer the chance to make significant improvements on upcoming iterations.
