Steam Deck handheld play Elden Ring and Hitman 3 measured, Windows 10 game performance is far worse than SteamOS

Valve has launched a Windows 10 driver for the Steam Deck handheld, and users can manually flash the new system to replace the original SteamOS.

So, what is the experience of installing Windows 10’s Steam Deck, and is the game performance satisfactory? YouTube channel LinusTechTips has produced a test video that ran three gaming benchmarks, including Hitman 3, Doom: Eternal, and the recent hit Elden Ring.

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The test shows that the frame rate of SteamOS is higher than that of Windows 10 under the same screen performance of the three games:

  • Hitman 3 averaged 34 frames under SteamOS and 19 frames under Windows 10;
  • Doom: Eternal averaged 60 FPS under SteamOS and 47 FPS under Windows 10;
  • Elden Ring averaged 37 FPS under SteamOS and 30 FPS under Windows 10.

Additionally, Linus touched on some issues with installing Windows 10 on Steam Deck. For example, there is no audio driver, so the built-in speakers and 3.5mm headphone jack cannot be used; the controls of Windows 10 and Steam Deck do not match, and many operations cannot be completed with buttons.

So, if users want to get a good gaming experience and play games unique to the Windows platform, is it possible to install SteamOS and Windows 10 at the same time?

Steam’s official website shows that Steam Deck can only install one of them at present. While Steam Deck is dual-bootable, the SteamOS installer that provides a dual-boot wizard is not yet ready.

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