Video blogger ETA Prime demonstrated what a Steam Deck portable set-top box can do if you connect a desktop video card to it. This boosted the performance of the device enough to be able to run games in 4K. But still, this decision is unlikely to become a mass one.
Image Source: YouTube / ETA Prime
The thing is that the console does not have a Thunderbolt connector, through which external video cards are usually connected to thin laptops. Therefore, the accelerator had to be connected through the M.2 slot, in which the NVMe drive with the operating system and games was installed. Steam Deck can run OSes and games from an external SD memory card, which is how the SSD was replaced.
None of the NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards wanted to work with the console. However, ETA Prime managed to connect the flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics accelerator to it, which is not at all surprising, since the set-top box’s central processing unit was also developed by AMD. We add that a 750 W power supply was used to power the external accelerator, and the card itself was connected to the console via an adapter.
In the 3DMark Fire Strike synthetic benchmark, the performance of the console with a connected graphics card was limited by the capabilities of the AMD Van Gogh APU (four core Zen 2) of the console. But even despite this, the prefix scored 26,855 points in this test. For comparison, without an external graphics card connected, the Steam Deck scores regarding 4856 points in the same test. Thus, the Radeon RX 6900 XT made it possible to increase the performance of the console’s graphics subsystem by 5.5 times.
The results of the 3DMark TimeSpy test were even more impressive. If with the “embedded” the console scored 1576 points, then with the external Radeon RX 6900 XT the graphics performance increased by almost 10 times. The prefix scored 15,579 points.
With an external graphics card and monitor connected, the console is capable of running games in 4K resolution. At the same time, the average frame rate per second in The Witcher 3 with the Radeon RX 6900 XT and maximum quality settings was regarding 108 FPS. In GTA 5, at very high graphics settings, the average frame rate was 73 FPS.
In Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p and high graphics settings, the frame rate ranged from 47 to 70 FPS. Such a low result is a consequence of the lack of processor power of the set-top box and the not very high bandwidth of the interface through which the video card was connected.
It is obvious that Steam Deck was developed without taking into account the possibility of working with external video cards. After all, this is a portable gadget, with limited performance to increase autonomy. However, the experiment with connecting the Radeon RX 6900 XT turned out to be very interesting.
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