FSR improves performance and saves battery by upscaling a game from a lower resolution. You can use AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) with any game on Steam Deck, but enabling it is a little confusing. The lower resolution doesn’t matter in pixel art games, but be careful with half-rate shading in more graphically complex games - it can really hurt image quality. If you’re a big fan of platformer games and indie titles like me, half-rate shading will save you a ton of battery life (hours, in many cases). Although half-rate shading is available in every game, I recommend using in pixel art games in particular. Half-rate shading basically cuts the resolution of pixel shaders in half. The Steam Deck now supports half-rate shading, which can massively improve your battery life. Turn on half-rate shading in pixel art games Jacob Roach / Digital Trends There aren’t a ton of options now, but I expect we’ll see a lot more keyboard themes in the future. You’ll have a few themes by default, plus an extra if you have a 512GB model, and Valve sells more themes in the Steam points shop. Head to the Settings menu and select Keyboard to change it. The default Steam Deck keyboard theme is boring. Although you should explore your full library, I recommend starting with the best Deck Verified games first. Swap over to your full library and press the X button to select Filter by Verified and playable. Countless titles work perfectly well on Steam Deck but don’t have full verification due to a pregame launcher or a minor configuration issue. That doesn’t mean the rest of your Steam library is out, though. These are all of the Deck Verified games in your library, which means they’ve been tested by Valve and provide a seamless experience when playing on Deck. The Steam Deck automatically sorts your library and provides a “Great on Deck” category that’s a little misleading. Ignore the ‘Great on Deck’ category Jacob Roach / Digital Trends Valve even includes several controller templates to get you started, regardless of if a game supports controllers or not. Scroll to the right and select Controller settings to rebind any of the buttons on the Deck, browse community layouts, and create your own layouts. You can customize your controls in any game by launching it and pressing the Steam button. You have access to four back buttons on the Steam Deck, but they don’t do anything by default. Steam + Left joystick down: Decrease screen brightness.Steam + Left joystick up: Increase screen brightness.Steam + Right trackpad (click): Left mouse click. Steam + L2: Right mouse click (this is correct, believe it or not).Steam + B (long press): Force game shutdown.You’ll find the full list of shortcuts by holding down the Steam button, but here they are for quick reference: Hold it down for a couple of seconds longer to pull up a list of Steam Deck shortcuts that show you how to take a screenshot, force quit a game, and more. The Steam button will quickly become your best friend with the Steam Deck, but it does more than open your menu. Show 4 more items Pull up Steam Deck shortcuts Jacob Roach / Digital Trends Turn on half-rate shading in pixel art games.That kind of flexibility might be pretty cool for those who would be willing to compromise and not have the fastest gaming PC going by any means, but something that could do the job while saving a pile of cash in the process (the only outlay would be the graphics card, of course, and its enclosure). Who knows, maybe the Steam Deck 2 will run with a Thunderbolt port, and indeed folks have already dreamed about a future dock for the sequel handheld which allows for hooking up an external GPU and monitor plus peripherals on your desk, so you could use the Deck as your PC at home (perhaps with a considerably beefier APU inside Valve’s portable next time round). It’s worth noting that UFD Tech (opens in new tab) has previously done this using a lesser RX 6600 XT GPU on YouTube, as PC Gamer (opens in new tab) points out, and that ETA Prime did try Nvidia graphics cards, but didn’t have any joy getting them functioning in this fudged setup. In short, this is a seriously messy setup, and as we said, more about experimenting with what’s possible with the Steam Deck, rather than what’s realistic. Oh and let’s not forget, the GPU needs its own separate power supply of course (a 750W Corsair PSU was drafted in on that score). Those include needing to ditch the SSD from the Steam Deck – hence having to run the OS as Windows 11 on the SD card – in order to actually plug in the graphics card to the M.2 slot (using an M.2 to PCIe adapter). While this is an interesting – and let’s face it, fun – experiment, as we mentioned earlier it’s not something that anyone would actually want to do with their Steam Deck because of the army of caveats involved. Analysis: Messy and impractical, but fun – and a (sort of) glimpse of the future?
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