I have fallen into a new habit with my Steam Deck that I did not expect when I bought it. I have my desk set up with my Steam Deck connected to my monitor and a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. My gaming PC is also on the desk connected to the same monitor with its own keyboard and mouse. I have been using the Steam Deck for daily use more than my gaming PC. At full tilt my Steam Deck uses approximately as much as my gaming PC does at idle. I will pull my Steam Deck off the dock to go to bed, the couch, or even the bathroom. I've been using my Steam Deck more than my gaming desktop. If I didn't like certain demanding games so much I would happily sell my gaming PC.
What is the difference between Gold and Platinum on that site? Both can have the Green Verified checkmark, but still be Gold or Platinum, so I don't get it. I still prefer the Steam Store as you get review scores from the community as your scrolling the lists.
As proton defines it on their website,
- Platinum runs perfectly out of the box
- Gold runs perfectly after a few tweaks
- Silver runs with minor issues, but is generally playable
- Bronze runs but often crashes or has issues preventing from playing comfortably.
- Borked either won't start or is crucially unplayable.
These rankings are created from user reports. I have included a screenshot of Proton's statistics for the top 1000 games on Steam as measured by peak concurrent players.
In my personal experience, anything marked Silver or above has played perfectly out of the box on my Steam Deck. Proton's user reports encompass all versions of linux and you can't account for every hardware configuration. Although things might work incredibly well on the Steam Deck, its software and hardware were specifically designed to maximize compatibility.
Steam Deck's verified system is simplistic to the point of almost being useless. It is borderline misinformation. Most of the "playable" but not verified titles are because of text scaling issues and being hard to read on a 7 inch screen. The Steam Deck Verified list is at most a basic guide for what games work well. If you want to know how well a game works or if it works at all, Proton does a better job.
does the steam deck have an option like geforce experience where they optimize games?
for e.g for battery life instead of performance
Hey guys I have a genuine question regarding battery drain on the steam deck oled… which one drains the battery quicker?
1. Higher game settings but resulting in lower fps (sub 50) for example
2. Lower game settings but resulting in higher fps for 90hz fluidity.
Steam Deck / Valve does not yet and may never have a way to automatically optimize games like GeForce Experience. There are an abundance of user reports for popular games with descriptive settings for optimized performance or battery life. Proton's user reports include a lot of this information but not every user report does. ShareDeck and SteamDeckHQ both created their own third party game settings databases. Between all three sources you can hopefully find what you need if you are unwilling or unable to experiment yourself.
Find the ideal settings that match your desired playstyle on your Steam Deck, whether you prefer a higher framerate, better graphic setting, or battery life (or a mix between them).
sharedeck.games
Optimize your play with Game Settings guides: Learn to adjust graphics, controls, and more for the best Steam Deck experience.
steamdeckhq.com
Depending on your game settings, the Steam Deck will provide more power to the CPU or GPU. Unless you are plugged in it does not have enough budget to fully power both. You would have to measure for each game if 50fps higher visual settings or 90fps would drain the battery more. Luckily Valve has provided easy access to power usage information so you can accurately measure this while playing the game. I doubt there would be much of a difference in battery life if you are using the full extent of the hardware.
I tend to save demanding games for my PC while I play low power games on my Steam Deck. I play Stardew Valley, Hades, and similar games where I can get 3-8 hours of battery life. You can limit the TDP to increase battery life as well. I prefer battery life over FPS.
