Try an external RX 6900 XT for better Steam Deck game performance

Try an external RX 6900 XT for better Steam Deck game performance.

If you think Steam Deck game performance is not strong enough, You can try an external RX 6900 XT.

With the help of AMD RDNA2 architecture GPU, Valve’s Steam Deck is actually relatively strong on the current PC handhelds, but the barely 60fps frame rate performance is obviously not enough to satisfy some hardcore players, and there is a video recently. The main idea is to add an external graphics card to Steam Deck.

Screenshot source ETA Prime

In fact, on some Intel-based notebooks or handhelds, it is not difficult to connect an external graphics card. However, Steam Deck uses an AMD platform, and there is no Thunderbolt or other dedicated graphics interface.

It has only a full-featured Type-C interface, which cannot pass through A perfect way to support external graphics cards, but the video master ETA Prime thought of using the M.2 interface ( PCI-E 3.0 x4) in the machine to connect the graphics card. This method is generally used on some old notebooks, which is relatively early.

An external graphics card is available, but the Steam Deck has only one M.2C slot, so the operating system needs to be booted through microSD.

After the RX 6900 XT is connected externally, although the speed of the PCI-E interface of the Steam Deck limits part of the performance, the GPU performance can still be improved by 5.5 times in the 3DMARK FireStrike, and the actual game frame rate is greatly improved, “The Witcher” 3” has a performance of around 100fps under 4K ultra-high quality, even if the recent 3A masterpieces “Cyberpunk 2077” and “Ayrdon Ring” have the highest quality of 1080p, there are 40-50fps.

Don’t know if Valve will consider adding the design of supporting external graphics cards to the second-generation Steam Deck after seeing this magic change.

In fact, some AMD platforms can already use the USB 4 interface to connect external graphics cards, so that in Steam When the Deck is used in Dock mode, the performance is close to that of a desktop gaming computer, and the handheld mode also has certain portable gaming capabilities. Such a dual mode should be what many players want.