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The new Steam Deck OS update improves a little bit of everythingAlso adds overclocking controls, for the confident or mad
Also adds overclocking controls, for the confident or mad
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
It’s hard to pick out the highlights from theSteam Deck’s latest SteamOS update, 3.6.19, just because its collection of tweaks and fixes seems to span the entire gamut of handheld PC hardware as a concept. Graphics driver improvements! Third-partySSDsworking better! More balanced display colours! No more “spurious power LED blinking”! Brilliant, I hate spurious power LED blinking. The original LCD Deck also now gets theSteam Deck OLED’s overclocking controls in the BIOS, which you’re welcome to try if you’re braver than I am about cranking up the temperatures of a already squished-in handheld chip.
Full patch notes are here. If some of these amendments seem familiar to experienced Deck users, that’s because they’ve been knocking around the Preview and Beta branches of SteamOSsince at least May. Version 3.6.19 finally brings them all together on the Stable branch, the default and least bug-prone flavour of SteamOS that I’d suspect the majority of owners have never switched from.
Also, sod it, let’s pick out some of the best stuff. ImprovedmicroSD cardreliability – especially for certain SanDisk models – sounds good, and I’ve actually bumped into the exact black screen issue when switching betweenDesktop Modeand Gaming Mode that this updates banishes. The LCD Steam Deck getting up to 10% better battery life “in light load conditions” might be handy for lengthy download sessions as well, and it’s nice to see that the older model specifically getting more love.
Don’t get your hopes up too much about the suggested graphics performance improvements; I’ve ran a few quick benchmarks inCyberpunk 2077andShadow of the Tomb Raider, and neither seem to run any faster. But you might still see better stability in certain RAM-heavy games, and at the very least, I’ll take the higher responsiveness when flicking through the UI. I’ve been testing out theZotac Zonethis week (review forthcoming) and, like all Windows-based handhelds, it quickly made me pine for SteamOS’ snappiness.
