A quick news post as there has been some leak from a Chinese developer (probably) showcasing the Steam Deck‘s side bar menu within SteamOS when running a game. Let me first share the video below:
Since everything is in chinese let me explain what you can see.
There are four types of setting:
- Interface performance
- GPU performance
- Framerate limiter
- TDP setting
- FSR activation
The first one is probably putting less priority on the overlay client in terms of process when running games (just my assumption.)
The second one about GPU performance lets you select between “auto”, “manual”, “low” and “high” settings. These probably impact the battery life.
There there is a framerate limiter, as mentioned by Valve before, to switch between a higher and lower framerate probably to manage power consumption further.
TDP setting will directly impact how much power the GPU is getting, which is yet another tweak that is possible on the Steam Deck.
Finally, there is a way to activate FSR directly form the sidebar, making it possible to user lower resolutions to further improve performance, or simply to scale up from the native Steam Deck resolution to a larger screen without losing too much framerate.
Very exciting details – we never see this kind of settings on regular portable consoles.
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This looks fantastic—making these important performance characteristics easily accessible via the GUI is good news for user-friendliness. I’m particularly pleased by the framerate limiter. Since this device does not have Freesync, demanding games could be limited to 30fps to prevent tearing.