Many players were attracted by the vision outlined before the Steam Deck was launched, and chose to buy this handheld console that looked so huge that it was reminiscent of the Sega Gamegear back in the day. But even if this big guy has an RDNA 2 architecture GPU, the gaming experience is still not as comfortable as many people’s home desktops. The part of the Steam Deck carried has tried its best to satisfy users, but the performance may have to wait for the next generation of models, or it can be modified by oneself. An avid gamer expressed his love for the Steam Deck by adding an external RX 6900XT graphics card to it.
The concept of external graphics card (eGPU) is no longer an epoch-making revolution in 2022. For many mobile devices such as tablets and laptops, major computer manufacturers have launched products with external graphics card accessories, such as ASUS’s XG Mobile. Even Apple has launched an eGPU-specific external box with BlackMagic. External graphics cards can be said to give slim laptops/computers with limited development the opportunity to expand their performance. Even though the price is high, there are many people who need it.
The built-in GPU has limited power consumption, but external GPUs don’t have this problem.
As a portable gaming device, the Steam Deck is a bit too large and heavy in size and weight. However, it is easy to imagine that the reason why it is larger and heavier is to fit in a better-performing CPU and GPU. Even if the built-in processor integrates an RDNA 2 architecture GPU, it must sacrifice the potentially smaller size and lighter weight for heat dissipation and power consumption. But even so, as a portable PC, playing games is still somewhat unsatisfactory. Although it is playable, it is difficult to go further.
So, wouldn’t it be better to try adding an external graphics card to the Steam Deck? Aside from the fact that the Steam Deck does not have a built-in high-speed connection interface such as Thunderbolt, Valve does not seem to intend for the Steam Deck to be tied up with too many external devices, so it is relatively generous in terms of connection ports. If you want to make magic changes, you have to think in a more bizarre direction.
Foreign Youtuber “ETA PRIME” came up with a strange trick. Although the Steam Deck only has USB-C, which is not fast enough, in terms of external ports, it actually has an M.2 interface in order to communicate with the SSD. The built-in M.2 interface is PCI-E 3.0 x4 in terms of bandwidth. Although it is still not fast enough for the graphics card, it is actually the best choice.
Through modification, ETA PRIME allowed an RX 6900XT to be successfully recognized and driven by Steam Deck. Although the lack of M.2 interface means that SSD cannot be installed, which means that the system has to find other storage devices and connection interfaces, but fortunately there is an SD card slot on the Steam Deck. After modifying the system to the SD card, the M.2 interface can be freed up for external graphics cards.
ETA PRIME conducted tests with such a configuration. In 3DMark Fire Strike, the GPU score increased by 5.5 times. “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” was able to run 100 frames at 4K resolution, while “Cyber 2077” and “Ring of Elden” also had results of over 40 frames at 1080p resolution, which can be regarded as a noticeable upgrade.
After all, using M.2 bandwidth to feed the desktop RX 6900 XT graphics card is a drop in the bucket, and it is difficult to fully utilize the performance of this graphics card. But even with such a difficult external connection method, you can clearly feel the performance improvement.
The author thinks that maybe Valve should seriously consider the external graphics card solution. After all, although the Steam Deck is advertised as a portable game console, its huge size and weight, and even poor battery life, make many players buy it and plug it in on their desks to play instead of taking it everywhere to enjoy 3A masterpieces. If the option of adding an external graphics card is added, it will be a good attraction for players who want to experience smooth picture quality in a handheld device without worrying about budget resources.
See the original video from ETA PRIME here:
Source: KOCPC Chinese