Valve’s Steam Deck ‘consistently met or exceeded’ 30 FPS during performance tests

Ever since Valve announced the Steam Deck, we've been left wondering what sort of performance to expect from the handheld in newer games. While Valve initially said that it was targeting 30 frames per second on the Steam Deck, a Valve programmer has since clarified that 30 frames per second is the minimum level of performance observed during testing. 

The Steam Deck is a handheld gaming PC using a custom APU from AMD. Due to the Steam Deck's 720p display, it should have about as much ‘power per pixel' as an Xbox Series X playing games at 4K, which sounds great for marketing, but still leaves plenty up to the imagination.

Valve coder, Pierre-Loup Griffais, took to Twitter to better explain the performance targets for the Steam Deck, confirming that the 30 FPS target refers to the baseline acceptable level of performance. Many tested games “consistently met and exceeded” that bar. Here is the full quote:

“The '30 FPS target' refers to the floor of what we consider playable in our performance testing; games we've tested and shown have consistently met and exceeded that bar so far. There will also be an optional built-in FPS limiter to fine-tune perf vs. battery life.”

The Steam Deck will begin shipping later this year, although new pre-order customers may end up having to wait until mid-2022, as the reservation queue has continued to grow.

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KitGuru Says: Thanks to the 720p display, I think we'll be pleasantly surprised by Steam Deck performance in games. Hopefully we'll be able to get our hands on one for testing before the end of this year. Have any of you reserved or pre-ordered a Steam Deck? 

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