We Added A Fast GPU To The Steam Deck! Most Powerful Deck So Far? Hands-On Testing

We attached an external GPU to the steam deck and it works! In this video, we see how the steam deck performs with an external M.2 Video card. The Radeon RX 6900XT is overkill for the steam deck but I could not get any Nvidia Graphics card working yet so the 3080 and 3090 were out of the question for now. So can we game at 4K on the steam deck with an external Video card attached? Let's find out. By the way we did have to use WIndows 11 on The Deck for this to work right now

00:00-Intro
00:15-Overview
01:00-The Set-Up
01:40-Attaching the Graphics Card to the Steam Deck
03:00-Booting the STeam Deck From SD Card
05:00-Benchmarks with eGPU
05:42-The Witcher 3 4k STeam Deck Test
06:12-GTA5 4k STeam Deck Test
06:48-Elden Ring
07:15-4K Cyberpunk 2077 Steam Deck
07:42-God Of War STeam Deck 4k and 1080P
09:03-FInal Thoughts

Equipment I Use:

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[rnpasinos]

someone from valve's probably got ideas for the next version already. (1) put a thunderbolt port (2) sell a docking station (similar to what switch) but with an option to attach a full size gpu.

[carlosramon]

The Steam Deck 2 needs to have a port that will allow their dock to do this.

[UFDTech]

So jealous that you had a 6900 XT to do this with. Great video!

[Berserkism]

The power IC for the Deck runs very hot already with the back on, 90'C and even hotter with it off as there is no airflow. You might want to check on that if anyone intends on doing something similar. It could lead to a failure.

[reductostupefy]

Definitely wish I could get my hands on one of these. I’m enjoying the content you have on this powerful handheld.

[BenWillock]

I feel like something like a 6500XT would be a great match for the Deck.
Doubling the raw GPU performance, and it's already limited to 4 lanes of PCIe out of the box.

[little_forest]

Well, what one can take from that, is that Valve together with AMD did an awesome job designing the APU. Cause it seems the CPU is just enough to serve the purpose for what the iGPU can handle, thus keeping the cost of the CPU part down to its usefull minimum. The fact, that other handhelds do not run into a CPU bottleneck with an external graphics card means in their actual usecase as an handheld, the CPU is too overpowered and thus in parts useless, but you have to pay it anyways. So actually one would hope, that AMD takes this idea and produces more APUs like for the Steam Deck, cause very often, you just dont need the CPU power without a matching iGPU power. Probably many handhelds and mini-pcs would benefit from that.

[Jermungand]

🤔 imagine a Steamdeck V2 with Thunderbolt 4 and a docking station for the TV (like a Switch), but with an integrated desktop (or maybe laptop) grade GPU to boost the graphics performance for 4k60 gameplay

[Jeakerek]

Steam Deck Case is designed to divert the hot air in a specific direction, and leaving device opened like that actually makes temps worse. Would be cool to have some custom 3d printed replacement with cutout for the adapter and some standoffs.

[claytonyoung]

"Because we can"-every cat after everything they ever did.

[HandheldHardware]

I saw UFD tech had the same problem with nvidia, I had a similar one with lattepanda using a thunderbolt adapter and it had to do with space allocated for pcie registries. It’s possible to modify but it’s not worth the effort 🤣

[ZDY]

would be nice if it could sit in a dock and automatically attach to an external dGPU. that'd be sick.

[stevenbmeza]

You need to cover the back. The backplate is necessary to cool the internals of the steam deck. You could be missing out on performance

[xyrs]

I actually had this question when they first announced the deck. This would be an absolute banger of a way to have a gaming pc with low money for any one needing a temporary upgrade if your on a stone age pc lol.

[DeadDaemn]

The only problem is that the performance loss was not on the processor, but due to the connection of the video card with only 4 pcie v4 lines.

[NoNamenoonehere]

really need a double m2 card adapter(they do exist just form factor needs working on, need to be reworked into a different shaped pcb) so you can have a m2 ssd and a external video card plugged into it at the same time, then clean everything up so gpu n psu can be made into a type of dock for the deck, VALVE ADD A EXTRA M2 SLOT PLZ!!! love the idea of having deck as a ultra portable, then coming home sticking it in the dock n having it run in ultra mode

[cptcrogge]

It would be great to create a custom case to connect external GPUs easily :)

[anggafebrian]

this is the reason why i like this channel.

[mobilechaosyt]

I don't know if anyone mentioned it, but that M.2 can be cut to size to fit. It has no electronics in it other than at the tip where it converts to the cable. Essentially you could leave it installed and modify the back of the Steam Deck to allow the cable to pass through. Only Problem is that you no longer have the M.2 for storage.

[actionjaxson]

Linus just brought this up on TechLinked and mentioned your channel. Moving up in the world ETA.