Overall I love it, have used it WAY more than I expected. I am disabled and many days stuck in bed so this thing has just been perfect for me, not having to be up at my computer all the time for gaming related stuff.
A few tips for people new to the Steam Deck:
- Get a SD Card to store games, I use the main storage for updates and apps and sometimes a game or two but not many games, I put most those on my SD card.
- Get a Docking Station, even if its not the official one from Valve, it is great for hooking up to your TV to play and also good for if you want to hook up a USB storage stick or an external hard drive,etc… Also can use it for a plug in if you have a mouse or keyboard you want to use when its docked. Many good uses for it, I picked up a 3rd party one and its been mostly great (the bottom things came off but I just put my own ones on there that are used for the bottoms of chairs and desks).
- Get Decky going on your Steam Deck, it works awesome and I have not had any big issues. The ones I use are: ProtonDB, Animation Changer, Storage Cleaner, VibrantDeck, Steam Grid DB, CSS Loader and Bluetooth. Adds many good things that I find useful. Get Decky and mess around to see what ones work best for you.
- Get CryoUtilities. This is pretty awesome here, I waited about 3 months to try this and I wish I would have got it right from the start. Easy to install and helps a decent amount for performance.
- When you launch each game for the first time, press that button below the RIGHT Mouse pad. This will bring up a section for Performance. Set each game how you want it for Power usage and Framerate and Hz limit. I have mine set to low power usage for the default, but then every game I play has its own settings for framelimit, power usage,etc…
- Have had a blast setting up 4 xbox controllers when family comes over and hooking it up to the TV, works really good with wireless controllers (just make sure the are updated and they should work).
- I use Lutris for playing Diablo 4 and Diablo 2 Resurrected on Battle.net and also some Epic game games. For me it has worked great.
- Set your Sudo password and save it to a text file or something incase you forget it, its needed to install CryoUtilities.
- Yes its great for Emulation but I would honestly say wait a few months to try that stuff, try out your old steam games, try some new ones, try your battle net, gog and epic games out,etc… and then later start to tinker with some emulators if you are interested.
- I am sure most won’t agree, but I love using it before bed as I am laying in bed to watch a movie or tv show. You can either stream something from a browser or you can also download say VLC from the Discovery app and watch your movies you have backed up from DVD, Bluray, downloaded, etc…
- Have fun! You will learn and enjoy this thing more and more as you learn the ins and outs of things. Also, check out youtube videos and reddit places, you will find some interesting things about the steam deck around those places.
My favorite games on the Steam Deck:
- Elden Ring, runs well once you get settings right and have CryoUtilities done up. This got me back playing it again and I have played it a ton on here
- Pretty much any Bullet hell/Vampire Survivors style game, like Halls Of Torment, Fatalzone, Death Must Die, Army of Ruin, Brotato,etc…
- Sea Of Stars and Tactics Ogre: Reborn are great modern jrpgs style games that control good and look good on SD
- Thronefall, really fun tower defense style game that controls great with a controller
- Witcher 3 Next Gen
- Diablo 4, I have been playing the non steam game for awhile now, works good with Lutris, but now that its on steam even better time to play it. Handles great with a controller, performance is good to.
- The Pale Beyond, one of my favorite games this year, perfect for the steam deck.
- Resident Evil 4 Remake, runs great and looks awesome on the Deck
- Tape 2 Tape, me and my Nephew love playing this game in coop on the Steam Deck on the big tv with controllers, its great fun.
- Terror of Hermasaurus, another great game when friends or family are over, good silly fun
- Tetris Effect: Connected, works great :)
- Batman Arkham City
- Cuphead
- Dave The Diver
- Dirt Rally 1
- Disco Elysium
- Risen
Anyways, just some thoughts from an older gamer who has had the Steam Deck for a little over a year now. Take Care
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I have a HP dock that work provided so I can WFH with my laptop. Its great.
2 main questions for me…How and does it reliably run Sims 4 and GTA 5/FiveM? Looking to get my daughter one for the holidays and I have to have zero regrets.
My wife has been playing sims 4 on hers and hasn’t had any problems. She said the controls took some getting used to but wasn’t too hard.
GTA V really surprised me at 60fps, I’ve heard frames dip in GTA online though.
> Get a SD Card to store games, I use the main storage for updates and apps and sometimes a game or two but not many games, I put most those on my SD card.
I used to have a 1TB SSD on my LCD Deck. With the OLED, I’m using a 1TB SD Card and I love it. Games take longer to load for sure but it’s whatever. I’m just glad that my OLED doesn’t feel like it’s not snapped back into place properly since it was never unscrewed to begin with.
> Get a Docking Station, even if its not the official one from Valve…
My third-party one stopped working, unfortunately. I thought it was the OLED since it always worked on my LCD but after trying it a few times on my phone, it gradually stopped working on it as well. If you do end up going with an unofficial one, check reviews and make sure none of them say that it eventually stops working.
> Get Decky going on your Steam Deck, it works awesome and I have not had any big issues. The ones I use are: ProtonDB, Animation Changer, Storage Cleaner, VibrantDeck, Steam Grid DB, CSS Loader and Bluetooth. Adds many good things that I find useful. Get Decky and mess around to see what ones work best for you.
What do CSS Loader and Bluetooth do? The others you recommended are great, can vouch.
> Get CryoUtilities.
I read somewhere that – either with the new update or OLED (can’t remember) – the creator of CryoUtilities themselves said that there won’t be a performance boost anymore from it or changing VRAM due to a change in the BIOS. Regardless, I would only recommend this if you use your Deck and think it’s not performing well. If you’re happy with the performance, leave it as-is.
> When you launch each game for the first time, press that button below the RIGHT Mouse pad…
Again, I would only recommend this to users who are seeking an optimal play session. If they’re happy with how it plays, I’d leave this as-is. And even if you’re looking for better performance and/or to save battery, I’d recommend checking ProtonDB first before trying to configure it on your own.
> Have had a blast setting up 4 xbox controllers…
Which xbox controllers do you have? I have to look into them because my PS5 controller and Pro Controller had a hard time staying connected simultaneously on the LCD. Not sure if that has changed on the OLED.
> I use Lutris…
I have to try this because when I play Rocket League via Heroic, I get logged out over time and have to sign back in.
> I am sure most won’t agree…
I agree to an extent. I would personally use my TV to watch something before bed but I wouldn’t mind playing something on the Deck in bed while trying to go to sleep. Then when my eyes feel heavy, I can suspend the game, put in the case, zip it up, put it in my nightstand drawer and go right to bed.
I’m just glad that my OLED doesn’t feel like it’s not snapped back into place properly since it was never unscrewed to begin with.
FWIW, the OLED should fare better in this regard as the screws now thread into metal rather than the plastic (and they have Torx heads too, which may help with getting correct tension).
Would love to hear about your settings for elden ring. Does cryputilities make that much of a difference?
At least according to the creator of it, there shouldn’t a big difference in general after the version 3.5 OS update.
Why tf would you advise people to put their games on SD cards instead of the faster NVME inside ? Please anyone don’t follow this stupid advice. Just use the storage of your deck. Use the SD card for other smaller indie games or storage to play with, but run your main AA or AAA games on the SSD.
Great to hear your tips.
I just got a 1TB san disk extremt card and hope to installl som bigger games on it for when im travelingI have a Question regarding SD Cards.
Is there a Performance Difference between SSD and SD card? Should I Prioritize to install certain games on the SSD or does it not really make a difference?
For simple reference, cheap SD cards will have speeds around 75-100MB/s a gen 3 NVME SSD(What’s in the deck) Will have speeds around 2500-3500MB/s. (I should mention here that there are very substantial diminishing returns for many many games once you get beyond around 600MB/s speeds and you will not likely see a 3-5x faster load time in most games.)
High end SD cards can reach around 170-180+MB/s Which is about as fast as a pretty fast Spinning Hard drive, but with lower latency(Which is the biggest killer of HDDs, seeking to get the needed data).
Game load times will definitely be worse off of an SD card(Especially cheaper slow ones)
I picked a Samsung Pro 512GB SD card for my deck with claimed 180MB/s speeds. I’ve installed games onto it and even played Nioh 2 off of it. Load times weren’t terrrible, but could be faster. An inconvienence, but a cheap and easy way to double my decks storage and put lesser used games on the SD card.
You can also migrate a game from card to SSD or back easily.
Just a comment, VibrantDeck is no longer necessary and even hurts color balance since 3.5.5. If you want to boost colors use the official balance tool in display settings.
I have been looking at buying the 1tb OLED. Does the steam deck run quicker with 1tb, or should I save £100 with the 512gb and get an SD card? Is the 1tb is purely storage benefits and can this be offset by an SD card?
Ah thanks for the info, very much appreciated. I’m looking at getting one perhaps over Christmas or in the new year, depending on budget and whatever else hits be in the face finance wise.
Have you happened to try Bainshed, the village builder on it? One of my favourite low key builders and love it to bits. Or anyone else… ?
The main thing I really need help with is getting emulation working. It’s so hard to do.
What are your settings for elden ring and the Witcher?
I’ve read using cryo-utilities is a placebo thing, not really all that.
Some are saying with latest update its not working. But in the past I couldn’t even play the Marvel xcom game without having CryoUtilities, it would just crash during sleeping and fps would be low, beat the whole game on steam deck after installing CryoUtilities, ran better and would let me past the going to sleep and crashing.
Back in the day it wasn’t a plasibo thing at all, playing games again with it after playing them without it I could tell the difference. But its been awhile since I did any testing comparing it and some on here are saying the dev said the latest steam update made it so this won’t work anymore, Ill have to look up that stuff :)
Just posted my experience from the past :)
Out of curiosity, I’m waiting for my deck and dock to arrive, but want to be able to play split screen multiplayer games locally or coop locally via a couple of Xbox controllers. Are there any games people would recommend for this purpose?
The last game I played in split screen was Time Splitters…
Black Ops 3 has a splitscreen mode, primarily for zombies but I’m pretty sure it works for multiplayer and campaign too. Ideally you’d want to get it with zombies chronicles because that’ll give you a bunch of classic maps, but even with absolutely zero DLC you can get a TON of custom maps.
I BELIEVE Portal 2 has splitscreen support on PC? Picking up the new Lego Star Wars is a good time, too, and Left 4 Dead 2 has a couple of relatively easy-to-install mods that enable a splitscreen mode too.
Some couch co-op games… Kingdom Two Crowns, an easy resource builder
Platform puzzlers:
Trine game series
Portal 2
It Takes TwoReally depends what ya’ll like to play.
One thing I’d say is maybe don’t keep your sudo password in a text file… Especially if you’ve reused that password anywhere else. Thats a really bad security practice.