Hi sorry if this has been asked 100 times before but I can’t find many posts pertaining specifically to my question. I’ve seen a dozen posts around “can you use eGPU with steam deck? Answer: yes, but it’s a hassle”, and “is Steam deck powerful enough for VR: Answer: hell no”. What I’m wondering is, if you go through the trouble of setting up an eGPU, would the steam deck then be capable of PCVR, or would it be too much CPU bottlenecked? I’m not serious enough about gaming to get a big gaming PC. I don’t have much desk space and I already have a nice mac desktop (which I prefer for everyday tasks), so a gaming PC would have no use for me other than gaming. Steamdeck is coming tomorrow. If no one has tried this I may give it a whirl. Thanks!
The biggest thing holding it back is that it requires a m.2 -> occulink adapter. Which means you have to put your OS somewhere else. You also have to use windows.
If you did have everything setup, and the eGPU was good enough for it; sure. It would play vr titles okay.
I even got a ROG Ally to run VR decently without even using an eGPU, (https://youtu.be/6sHIFKspgH4) and we all know that the Z1 Extreme isn’t all that much more powerful than the Steamdeck.I don’t recommend it, due to Steam Deck not officially supporting either VR or eGPUs (and how much of a pain in the ass it is to get either working. Seriously, opening your Steam Deck and removing its boot drive, forcing you to boot off a slow SD card, and leaving it open until you decide you’re done and want to put it all back together). And I really doubt the Steam Deck’s CPU is fast enough to do that.
Compound that fact that the cost of a GPU and eGPU housing is closing in on the cost of a desktop gaming PC on its own, you may as well just get a whole PC and Oculus Quest 2 for PCVR for around the same cost.
I am pretty sure Valve is working on VR for the Steam Deck 2, I’d just hold off until then.