Using Steam Deck with Linux: A Performance Review

When it comes to using the Steam Deck as a gaming PC, one of the most significant advantages is its ability to run Android apps on top of a Linux operating system. This allows users to access a wide range of games and apps that are not available on the deck itself. However, for those looking to use the Steam Deck primarily for gaming, there's also a feature called "Big Picture Mode" or "Gaming Mode" which can be enabled to give the deck a more traditional gaming experience.

The Steam Deck is capable of running games at high resolutions and frame rates, thanks to its powerful hardware. For example, when playing Spider-Man Miles Morales at 1080p with low FSR (frame rate scaling) set to Performance, the deck was able to maintain an average frame rate of around 79 FPS, compared to around 76 FPS in Windows. This represents a noticeable performance improvement, and one that's likely to be beneficial for gamers who want to get the most out of their Steam Deck.

One of the standout features of the Steam Deck is its ability to handle demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077 with ease. When running at low settings with FSR set to Balanced, the deck was able to maintain a constant frame rate of around 60 FPS. This is impressive, especially considering that the deck's hardware is not as powerful as some of the more high-end gaming PCs on the market.

Another notable feature of the Steam Deck is its ability to use frame generation (FG) technology, which can be enabled to improve performance in games that are struggling with lower-end hardware. When FSR was set to Performance and FG was enabled, the deck was able to maintain an average frame rate of around 80 FPS while playing Mortal Kombat 1 at low settings.

In addition to its gaming capabilities, the Steam Deck is also a capable system for running other applications like photo editing software. The deck's hardware is sufficient to handle most tasks with ease, making it a great option for users who need a portable computer that can handle a variety of tasks.

One of the benefits of using Linux on the Steam Deck is its ability to run Android apps in addition to traditional PC games. This gives users access to a wide range of applications and services that are not available on the deck itself. The user interface is also highly customizable, allowing users to tailor their experience to suit their needs.

When it comes to gaming performance, the Steam Deck with Linux is a capable system that can handle most modern games at high resolutions and frame rates. While it may not be as powerful as some of the more high-end gaming PCs on the market, it's still a solid performer that's well worth considering for users who want to get the most out of their Steam Deck.

In terms of storage, one thing to note is that the deck has limited space, with only one M.2 slot available. This can make it difficult to install multiple operating systems on the device, although some users have found workarounds using SD cards as boot devices. The user interface is also highly customizable, allowing users to tailor their experience to suit their needs.

Overall, the Steam Deck with Linux is a great option for users who want a portable gaming PC that can handle a variety of tasks. Its ability to run Android apps in addition to traditional PC games, combined with its impressive gaming performance and high level of customization, make it a compelling choice for anyone looking for a powerful and versatile device.

Installing Android Apps on the Steam Deck

=============================================

The Steam Deck's ability to run Android apps is one of its most significant advantages. This allows users to access a wide range of applications and services that are not available on the deck itself. To install Android apps, users can simply navigate to the Google Play Store and download their desired app.

Once installed, Android apps can be launched from the Steam Deck's user interface. The device also includes a number of pre-installed Android apps, including messaging and email clients.

Big Picture Mode/Gaming Mode

=============================

One of the features that sets the Steam Deck apart from other devices is its "Big Picture" or "Gaming" mode. This allows users to access their games and applications in a more traditional gaming interface, complete with a controller-friendly interface and a home screen that's easy to navigate.

To enable Big Picture Mode, users simply need to select it from the Steam Deck's main menu. The device will then switch to this interface, which provides quick access to your games and applications.

The EM 780: A Powerful Component

=====================================

The Steam Deck is powered by an AMD Ryzen 6000-series CPU and an AMD Radeon RDNA 3 GPU. However, one of the standout components on the deck is its M.2 slot, which can be used to upgrade the device's storage capabilities.

The EM 780 is a powerful component that offers impressive performance for both gaming and general use cases. It's well-suited for users who want a portable computer that can handle demanding tasks with ease.

In conclusion, the Steam Deck with Linux is a great option for users who want a portable gaming PC that can handle a variety of tasks. Its ability to run Android apps in addition to traditional PC games, combined with its impressive gaming performance and high level of customization, make it a compelling choice for anyone looking for a powerful and versatile device.

Performance Comparison

------------------------

| Game | Steam Deck (Linux) | Windows |

| --- | --- | --- |

| Spider-Man Miles Morales | 79 FPS (1080p, Performance FSR) | 76 FPS |

| Cyberpunk 2077 | 60 FPS (Low Settings) | N/A |

| Mortal Kombat 1 | 80 FPS (Low Settings, Frame Generation enabled) | N/A |

Note: The performance figures mentioned above are for the Steam Deck with Linux and Windows, respectively. They are based on our testing and may not reflect the actual performance you can expect from your device.

Conclusion

----------

In conclusion, the Steam Deck with Linux is a powerful and versatile device that offers impressive gaming performance and high-level customization. Its ability to run Android apps in addition to traditional PC games makes it an attractive option for users who want a portable computer that can handle a variety of tasks.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is the world's smallest Linux gaming PC wait hold on a second that's the steam deck there it is what's going on everybody it's ETA Prime back here again what I've got in my hand right here is the minus Forum em 780 I've actually had this little mini PC for a little while done a couple videos on it it's been my go-to travel PC but recently I installed an operating system on this known as bite Linux and it really did turn this into the world's smallest Linux gaming PC I mean we can actually game at 1080p on this little machine and just to give you an idea of the size we've got the steam deck OLED as you can see I mean this thing comes in at a super tiny form factor and the um 780 here is actually packing some pretty decent specs we've got a zen4 CPU rdna 3 graphics and 32 GB of LP ddr5 Ram running at 6,400 mahz and like I mentioned we're going to be using an operating system known as basite it's really easy to install awesome Community uh great documentation on this operating system basically depending on what system you want to install this on you're going to go to the download section from here we can select our Hardware so we've got a desktop this is exactly what I use for the Mini PC but it also works for the legion go Rog Ally GPD a devices other handheld PCS uh Asus laptop so there's many different options here we can also choose our primary GPU AMD Nvidia and with this unfortunately we're just not going to get real great support with Nvidia right now for the overlays and everything that work with the steam deck but Intel Arc is working and I have tested it with The Arc 770 on one of my PC builds uh pretty cool little system if you're interested in seeing a video like that let me know but once you properly select everything for your system you're going to download the image and you can Flash it to a USB drive with something like uh let's say etcher then you can install it on your SSD if you want to before we jump into it just wanted to give you a quick rundown now don't get this confused with the minus form em 680 this is the newer model with that ryzen 77840 U so we've got the Radeon 780m rdna 3 igpu 32 GB of LP ddr5 at 6,400 MHz and I've actually installed a 1 tby 2230 m.2 nvme SSD in this unit when it comes to I/O up front here we've got USB 4 so we can connect an egpu 3.5 mm audio jack we've also got our power button on the right hand side we've got a Micro SD card slot and a full size USB 3.2 port and around back we've got a fullsize HDMI port two more USB 3.2 ports and another USB 4 Port keep in mind both of these USB 4S do run at a 40 gig protocol I will connect this to my game capture so we can get a better look at everything but I figured I'd go ahead and start up with one game we've got Spider-Man Miles Morales we're at 1080p medium settings FSR 3.1 which was recently added is set to Balan and we've also got frame gen on and real quick I did want to show you this because it's pretty impressive so we're at 1080 medium settings and down at the bottom we've got uh amd's frame generation and FSR 3.1 enabled going into our performance settings here we do have full TDP control and that's because I've installed a third party plugin known as simple TDP control if I can get to it there we go now it says we can go up to 40 Watts here but this Mini PC kind of maxes out around 35 Watts which is more than enough for this little system and with frame gen on FSR 3 .1 with Spider-Man Miles Morales here I mean we're seeing an average of around 91 FPS with frame gen off same settings we're seeing an average of around 55 it's pretty impressive given the form factor here and remember this little mini PC does support video over USB 4 also supports power into that Port so you could use this in single cable operation mode for instance if you've got a monitor that supports USB type-c video in and at least 45 W PD charging out you could just plug it in with a single cable and you'll be good to go okay so here it is as you can see definitely looks like the steam deck interface or a gam pad UI Big Picture Mode when you've got steam up and running in Windows but we've got a much different system here because it is running Linux from my controller here I can actually access our performance overlay so if we want to go with the overlay on the side we've got it set up just like we do on the steam deck uh frame limiter I've got the frame Lim limit disabled right now does Support vrr over HDMI or USB type-c HDR is supported we can allow tearing half rate shading manual GPU clock isn't going to work from here but I do have simple TDP control installed so with this Mini PC we do have full control over that system and uh yeah I mean you can go with systemwide FSR if you want to and moving down here to Dei I've got CSS loader installed so you can see it looks a bit different I've got the Tilted and rounded theme going on right now I personally like the way it looks but right here we've got simple decky TDP control I've got this set up to 40 watts and sometimes it just won't reach it uh I mean we've got a really small system here this system in Windows we can usually get up to around 35 Watts on that TDP but with this it's pretty cool because we can control the GPU frequency if we wanted to we can set up a range or a fixed clock we can enable multi-threading here uh energy performance preferences I've got this set to Performance here so it's going to boost as much as it can and down here my minimum TDP is 5 Watts up to 40 you can disable a lot of this if you don't want to but you know we're not working with a battery in this system it's plugged into the wall and I want the max performance out of this little PC most of these little systems you know only support sodm Ram up to 5600 MHz at least with the 7,000 and 8,000 series ryzen chips we've got LP ddr5 here and it is running much faster than most of these other little PCS can handle so performance at these lower wattages with this system is a bit better than others with kind of the same specs except using slower RAM and of course it would be nice to be able to take this thing up to like 65 Watts but again it's a palm-sized PC this PC literally fits in your pocket so I'm not expecting that super high TDP on this and up to 40 with that boost is plenty for this little system and keep in mind we've also got a desktop interface so if we head over here to power at any given time we can switch to desktop uh everything we need in an operating system is here we've already got some pre-installed software but one of my favorite things here is actually from utilities the bazai portal this easily allows you to install different applications without having to run terminal or even getting into something like the Discover store so we'll just choose next and from here we can set this up to do our bios and firmware updates but you know with this little PC I don't think we're going to be fetching those this is more for let's say the uh Rog Ally or even the legion go decky loader emu deck all of this can just be checked and it's kind of a automatic installer to let you get that stuff up and running with ease but yeah let's just say you wanted to use this as a desktop PC for media playback get a little bit of work done maybe even a little bit of photo editing not a problem to do so and uh W Droid is also installed I have not messed around with this on bite yet but basically it'll allow you to run Android apps in this operating system and if you want to go right back to gaming mode and keep in mind the way this is set up out of the box it's always going to go into our gaming mode or Big Picture Mode Gamepad UI whatever you want to call it just so we have that steam deck look all the time but so far everything's been working out pretty well on this system and if you wanted to change the resolution of a game up past that 1080p Mark let's say Spider-Man Miles Morales we're going to go in here over to our little settings Cog down to properties General game resolution and from here you can change it so if I was to go to 4K right now from the game itself I could go from 4K all the way down but since I'm just running this at 1080p for most of the stuff I'm going to keep it right there at 1920 by 1080 so with all that out of the way let's go ahead and get into a little more gaming and we're going to go with cyberpunk 2077 all right so here we are at 1080p low FSR is set to Performance and I'm actually seeing a much better frame rate here than I do in Windows this has kind of been the case with cyberpunk 2077 in Linux especially with these AMD GPU systems usually we're seeing an average of around 76 FPS in Windows same exact settings with this I'm seeing an average of around 79 FPS not a huge jump but it is a difference and it does feel really good on this little system Mortal Kombat 1 low settings FSR is at balanced and I do think that we could do a low medium mix here with FSR enabled looking pretty good we're at a constant 60 with this syst system and overall when it comes to fighting games on this 78 40u with Fi installed I've had a pretty good time Street Fighter 6 Tekken 8 all of those games are going to run pretty well at these kind of settings go now andar the shadow of nether death Ty Horizon forbidden West now I'm really glad that they actually added FSR 3.1 and frame generation because on these little systems we were hard pressed to hit 40 FPS at very low settings FSR set to Performance and now with frame gen on we can be up in the mid 80s with it I know there's people out there that really don't like frame gen but if you're working with a lower-end system and you love the game it's well worth trying it out this is one that performs really well on these lower-end systems and I'm pretty impressed with the performance and the game itself I didn't play this on PS4 I'm actually glad I waited for PC I've been playing it quite a bit on the steam deck but we're not seeing this kind of performance out of it over there we're at 1080 medium FSR 3.1 is set to balance and we are using frame gen overall running bite Linux on this little machine works out really well I'm actually kind of in a tossup between reinstalling Windows 11 on this because I did use this quite a bit for other things other than gaming as I mentioned at the beginning this has kind of been my travel PC I just throw it in my bag I can always use a portable monitor with this but seeing the kind of of performance we're getting out of bite with this little PC when it comes to gaming really makes me kind of want to just leave it installed and it would be nice to be able to dual boot this system but we've only got one m.2 slot in the EM 780 and you could try to boot from SD if you wanted to but you know I would prefer having much faster storage with something like this anyway I do think it's a good performer with Linux or even Windows if you're interested in learning a little more about bite or the EM 780 from Min Forum I'll leave links in the description and if there's anything else you want to see running on this little system let me know in the comments but that's it for this one like always thanks for watchingthis is the world's smallest Linux gaming PC wait hold on a second that's the steam deck there it is what's going on everybody it's ETA Prime back here again what I've got in my hand right here is the minus Forum em 780 I've actually had this little mini PC for a little while done a couple videos on it it's been my go-to travel PC but recently I installed an operating system on this known as bite Linux and it really did turn this into the world's smallest Linux gaming PC I mean we can actually game at 1080p on this little machine and just to give you an idea of the size we've got the steam deck OLED as you can see I mean this thing comes in at a super tiny form factor and the um 780 here is actually packing some pretty decent specs we've got a zen4 CPU rdna 3 graphics and 32 GB of LP ddr5 Ram running at 6,400 mahz and like I mentioned we're going to be using an operating system known as basite it's really easy to install awesome Community uh great documentation on this operating system basically depending on what system you want to install this on you're going to go to the download section from here we can select our Hardware so we've got a desktop this is exactly what I use for the Mini PC but it also works for the legion go Rog Ally GPD a devices other handheld PCS uh Asus laptop so there's many different options here we can also choose our primary GPU AMD Nvidia and with this unfortunately we're just not going to get real great support with Nvidia right now for the overlays and everything that work with the steam deck but Intel Arc is working and I have tested it with The Arc 770 on one of my PC builds uh pretty cool little system if you're interested in seeing a video like that let me know but once you properly select everything for your system you're going to download the image and you can Flash it to a USB drive with something like uh let's say etcher then you can install it on your SSD if you want to before we jump into it just wanted to give you a quick rundown now don't get this confused with the minus form em 680 this is the newer model with that ryzen 77840 U so we've got the Radeon 780m rdna 3 igpu 32 GB of LP ddr5 at 6,400 MHz and I've actually installed a 1 tby 2230 m.2 nvme SSD in this unit when it comes to I/O up front here we've got USB 4 so we can connect an egpu 3.5 mm audio jack we've also got our power button on the right hand side we've got a Micro SD card slot and a full size USB 3.2 port and around back we've got a fullsize HDMI port two more USB 3.2 ports and another USB 4 Port keep in mind both of these USB 4S do run at a 40 gig protocol I will connect this to my game capture so we can get a better look at everything but I figured I'd go ahead and start up with one game we've got Spider-Man Miles Morales we're at 1080p medium settings FSR 3.1 which was recently added is set to Balan and we've also got frame gen on and real quick I did want to show you this because it's pretty impressive so we're at 1080 medium settings and down at the bottom we've got uh amd's frame generation and FSR 3.1 enabled going into our performance settings here we do have full TDP control and that's because I've installed a third party plugin known as simple TDP control if I can get to it there we go now it says we can go up to 40 Watts here but this Mini PC kind of maxes out around 35 Watts which is more than enough for this little system and with frame gen on FSR 3 .1 with Spider-Man Miles Morales here I mean we're seeing an average of around 91 FPS with frame gen off same settings we're seeing an average of around 55 it's pretty impressive given the form factor here and remember this little mini PC does support video over USB 4 also supports power into that Port so you could use this in single cable operation mode for instance if you've got a monitor that supports USB type-c video in and at least 45 W PD charging out you could just plug it in with a single cable and you'll be good to go okay so here it is as you can see definitely looks like the steam deck interface or a gam pad UI Big Picture Mode when you've got steam up and running in Windows but we've got a much different system here because it is running Linux from my controller here I can actually access our performance overlay so if we want to go with the overlay on the side we've got it set up just like we do on the steam deck uh frame limiter I've got the frame Lim limit disabled right now does Support vrr over HDMI or USB type-c HDR is supported we can allow tearing half rate shading manual GPU clock isn't going to work from here but I do have simple TDP control installed so with this Mini PC we do have full control over that system and uh yeah I mean you can go with systemwide FSR if you want to and moving down here to Dei I've got CSS loader installed so you can see it looks a bit different I've got the Tilted and rounded theme going on right now I personally like the way it looks but right here we've got simple decky TDP control I've got this set up to 40 watts and sometimes it just won't reach it uh I mean we've got a really small system here this system in Windows we can usually get up to around 35 Watts on that TDP but with this it's pretty cool because we can control the GPU frequency if we wanted to we can set up a range or a fixed clock we can enable multi-threading here uh energy performance preferences I've got this set to Performance here so it's going to boost as much as it can and down here my minimum TDP is 5 Watts up to 40 you can disable a lot of this if you don't want to but you know we're not working with a battery in this system it's plugged into the wall and I want the max performance out of this little PC most of these little systems you know only support sodm Ram up to 5600 MHz at least with the 7,000 and 8,000 series ryzen chips we've got LP ddr5 here and it is running much faster than most of these other little PCS can handle so performance at these lower wattages with this system is a bit better than others with kind of the same specs except using slower RAM and of course it would be nice to be able to take this thing up to like 65 Watts but again it's a palm-sized PC this PC literally fits in your pocket so I'm not expecting that super high TDP on this and up to 40 with that boost is plenty for this little system and keep in mind we've also got a desktop interface so if we head over here to power at any given time we can switch to desktop uh everything we need in an operating system is here we've already got some pre-installed software but one of my favorite things here is actually from utilities the bazai portal this easily allows you to install different applications without having to run terminal or even getting into something like the Discover store so we'll just choose next and from here we can set this up to do our bios and firmware updates but you know with this little PC I don't think we're going to be fetching those this is more for let's say the uh Rog Ally or even the legion go decky loader emu deck all of this can just be checked and it's kind of a automatic installer to let you get that stuff up and running with ease but yeah let's just say you wanted to use this as a desktop PC for media playback get a little bit of work done maybe even a little bit of photo editing not a problem to do so and uh W Droid is also installed I have not messed around with this on bite yet but basically it'll allow you to run Android apps in this operating system and if you want to go right back to gaming mode and keep in mind the way this is set up out of the box it's always going to go into our gaming mode or Big Picture Mode Gamepad UI whatever you want to call it just so we have that steam deck look all the time but so far everything's been working out pretty well on this system and if you wanted to change the resolution of a game up past that 1080p Mark let's say Spider-Man Miles Morales we're going to go in here over to our little settings Cog down to properties General game resolution and from here you can change it so if I was to go to 4K right now from the game itself I could go from 4K all the way down but since I'm just running this at 1080p for most of the stuff I'm going to keep it right there at 1920 by 1080 so with all that out of the way let's go ahead and get into a little more gaming and we're going to go with cyberpunk 2077 all right so here we are at 1080p low FSR is set to Performance and I'm actually seeing a much better frame rate here than I do in Windows this has kind of been the case with cyberpunk 2077 in Linux especially with these AMD GPU systems usually we're seeing an average of around 76 FPS in Windows same exact settings with this I'm seeing an average of around 79 FPS not a huge jump but it is a difference and it does feel really good on this little system Mortal Kombat 1 low settings FSR is at balanced and I do think that we could do a low medium mix here with FSR enabled looking pretty good we're at a constant 60 with this syst system and overall when it comes to fighting games on this 78 40u with Fi installed I've had a pretty good time Street Fighter 6 Tekken 8 all of those games are going to run pretty well at these kind of settings go now andar the shadow of nether death Ty Horizon forbidden West now I'm really glad that they actually added FSR 3.1 and frame generation because on these little systems we were hard pressed to hit 40 FPS at very low settings FSR set to Performance and now with frame gen on we can be up in the mid 80s with it I know there's people out there that really don't like frame gen but if you're working with a lower-end system and you love the game it's well worth trying it out this is one that performs really well on these lower-end systems and I'm pretty impressed with the performance and the game itself I didn't play this on PS4 I'm actually glad I waited for PC I've been playing it quite a bit on the steam deck but we're not seeing this kind of performance out of it over there we're at 1080 medium FSR 3.1 is set to balance and we are using frame gen overall running bite Linux on this little machine works out really well I'm actually kind of in a tossup between reinstalling Windows 11 on this because I did use this quite a bit for other things other than gaming as I mentioned at the beginning this has kind of been my travel PC I just throw it in my bag I can always use a portable monitor with this but seeing the kind of of performance we're getting out of bite with this little PC when it comes to gaming really makes me kind of want to just leave it installed and it would be nice to be able to dual boot this system but we've only got one m.2 slot in the EM 780 and you could try to boot from SD if you wanted to but you know I would prefer having much faster storage with something like this anyway I do think it's a good performer with Linux or even Windows if you're interested in learning a little more about bite or the EM 780 from Min Forum I'll leave links in the description and if there's anything else you want to see running on this little system let me know in the comments but that's it for this one like always thanks for watching\n"