A brand new Steam Deck replace provides one of many most-requested options

The best characteristic of the Steam Deck — bar none, in the event you ask me — is how the moveable gaming PC permits you to get absolutely the most from its AMD RDNA 2 graphics and 40 watt-hour battery. As of the final replace, you can decrease the display’s refresh price to enhance your efficient framerate and decrease latency, and also you’ve been in a position to throttle the CPU, GPU and body limiter since launch. The catch: even in the event you found out a fantastic mixture that gave you the battery life and/or efficiency you crave, the Steam Deck wouldn’t save these settings per recreation.

You’d must memorize them, and flick the toggles appropriately, each time you switched to a distinct recreation. That modifications immediately.

Wednesday’s replace now comes with per-game efficiency settings, letting you flick a single swap within the Fast Entry menu to set a customized efficiency profile for every of your video games.

Photograph by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Flick it off, and also you’ll be again to your world system settings, so you’ll be able to have each a “typically I like my video games working at 30fps” setting but in addition “Elden Ring ought to run at 40fps with a 40Hz refresh price” and “Vampire Survivors ought to run at 10fps and 5 watts as a result of I need to play it for the whole lot of this automobile journey” if you want.

This has been one of many most-requested Steam Deck options because the starting, and I’m hoping there’s extra to return — as a result of it doesn’t allow you to set a number of profiles (like one profile while you’re plugged into AC energy, and one other for the longest battery life you’ll be able to handle), or save and share profiles with the bigger group in order that we Energy Customers may also help the less-tweak-happy amongst us get their video games working higher.

Photograph by Sean Hollister / The Verge

(Valve already confirmed us how highly effective that may be with group controller profiles — an enormous cause many historic video games had been instantly playable on the Steam Deck is as a result of customers had been inspired to add configurations for the Steam Controller again within the day.)

I think Valve could be very conscious of this, and that immediately’s replace lays the groundwork for that as properly. As a result of whereas the Steam Deck nonetheless would possibly not be prepared for everybody who would possibly decide up a Nintendo Swap, replace after replace has proven Valve is listening carefully and intently to energy consumer suggestions.

Digital Foundry just lately did a wonderful look at how the earlier replace’s adjustable refresh price and fan curve allow you to get extra out of the Steam Deck. I’m embedding a replica beneath in your viewing pleasure.

You possibly can learn the total Steam Deck changelog right here. The remainder is usually bugfixes, although it’s also possible to now maintain down the facility button to “cease streaming” a recreation, and Valve moved the haptics and rumble toggles away from the Fast Entry menu. That’s a change I really disagree with; they got here in useful when an older recreation (can’t keep in mind which) was actually overzealous with the vibrations.