Steam Deck will not be more powerful when docked

The Steam Deck, like the Nintendo Switch, can be docked and connected to a TV or monitor. Valve confirmed this during its announcement. But now the publisher behind Steam has revealed that docking the laptop PC won’t improve gaming performance. This could cause problems if you decide to plug in your Steam bridge to a large 4K TV.

In an interview with PC playerValve’s Greg Coomer explained that when developing and designing the Steam Deck, Valve thought about adding a “higher power mode” that would be activated after connecting the device. However, the company decided not to do so.

“… We felt it was actually best not to change based on docked status or mobile status,” Coomer explained.

“We really wanted to prioritize its use in what we thought was the highest use case, which is actually mobile.” Coomer said PC player. “And so since we were focusing on that, and we chose as a threshold where the machine will perform well, and with good frame rate with AAA games in this scenario. We didn’t really feel like we were We needed to target the dock scenario at higher resolutions as well.We wanted a simpler design target and prioritize that.

We know from past interviews that Valve has tested many games on Steam Deck and runs at least 30 fps in as many games as possible. According to the company, tthey meet and exceed these goals in most games. But it’s in portable mode, running games at 800p. Docking the Steam Deck to a 1080p TV or higher resolution monitor would require more power and if the dock does not provide this, it is very likely in this scenario that some high end games could suffer from performance issues.

Of course, the Steam bridge is not a locked console. These are PC games and gamers will be able to change the resolution and visual settings in the game just like they do on a desktop PC. So if something like Control, a game that according to Giant bomb had some performance issues on Steam Deck, works even worse on a 4K TV, gamers could lower settings to smooth things out. And it should also be noted that Control is a game that pushes even next-gen consoles and powerful PCs pretty hard. I guess older, less graphically intense games should work fine on the Deck most of the time when connected to a TV.

Still, if you’re planning on using the Steam Deck as a home PC and handheld console, this might be something to consider before trying to grab one later this year.

To this day, we also don’t even know how much the Steam Deck dock will cost, when it will be available for pre-order or purchase, or really any other detail for that matter.

The Steam Deck will begin shipping to some customers in December, with more arriving in the following months. You can pre-order one now, although Valve warns people who order today won’t receive one until 2022.