this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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Steam deck. OLED. Linux. Not locked down to hell. Nuff said.
I bought a Steam Deck with my first paycheck ever, and it was more expensive than my salary. Zero regrets.
Preach. I do couch gaming, so this machine is unbelievably nice.
What games can one actually play on such console. I mean it surely can't run triple A games right?
Depends
https://steamdeck.com/en/verified
All these game will work swimmingly. Those marked playable will usually work perfectly fine out of the box, but maybe have an ugly launcher or something you need to use the touchscreen for. Those marked unplayable will have bugs but in my experience work fine too. There's a more detailed less conservative compatibility db online too.
In terms of power it's about between a PS4 and PS4 Pro, with a faster CPU, more RAM, slower GPU, but with a really fast NVMe SSD so games like CP2077 are very playable but not at the highest settings.
Gotta remember the Deck has a 7.4" 800p screen, so its not comparable to the horse power needed for a PC at 4K or something.
Most consoles end up around the same render res once you've accounted for checkerboarding, dynamic res and DLSS/FSR nonsense.
The deck also does shader pre-compilation and caching for games on steam so it often performs much better compared to a Windows PC with the same hardware for example.
Anything ray tracing is out of the question though as it uses AMD, not Nvidia.
I don't play AAA games (nor know what new ones are there) - if you have a game in mind I could try it and report back?
The only game I tried that it really struggled with was NFS Unbound.
I was also able to do PS3 emulation on it, including Skate 3 and Motorstorm.
I can play zero dawn on mine and boy did it make train rides tolerable.
What LainTrain said. But you might find yourself playing less powerful games - emulators, Factorio, Hades, stardew, modded mc, etc...
I am planning to buy a Deck when I can afford it. I've been a PC player all my life but this is going to be my way of supporting Valve for all the good things they have done for Linux gaming. I mostly play Paradox strategy games, so I'm not sure how that will work on the Deck without a mouse. But maybe Terraria and Stardew Valley might be playable using controller style keys.
You're in luck, the deck runs those fairly well in my xp.
arent you locked down to Steam now? ie the games you buy are only through steam
Nope. Runs Linux and there are launchers for pretty much all the other games stores. It's just a significantly smoother process for things you have in Steam because of the work Valve has done on Linux compatibility.
You can pirate on the deck. It's like two extra steps compared to PC, but you can.
If you're not a Linux weirdo there are subreddits and people have made it easy, though you do have to use desktop mode to download games afaik.
If you're already a big linux weirdo, just ssh in and look at htop while playing any steam game in deck mode and figure out how the magic works yourself, trust me it's a lot of fun and the thing is really nice to explore because it's not locked down at all.