Many people have, like me, realized that they use their deck more than their main rig.

For the last few years I’ve gone from 1080p to 1440p to 4k to 800p and don’t think my main box will need to get beefier until the next big VR advancement. My machine is already three years old. I may rock it for another three at this pace.

How many of you will be laying off of CPU/GPU upgrades since handheld are so compelling?

  • I use my Steam Deck daily, but more often than not I am streaming from my PC upstairs to my Deck. I get way better battery life, can play non-Steam things like Emulation with nicer outputs, and for graphic intensive games it’s pretty good.

    Having said that, I don’t see myself upgrading for the next few cycles. The games I do play natively are running fine on Deck, and when streaming I don’t need 4K 9388647832 frames so I think my current rig will be satisfactory for longer because of my Steam Deck usage.

    • I do this a lot too, have a steam link I used to use all the time before my deck. The latency is not noticable on the same network but there’s a lot of little things that taint the streaming experience for me, never seems to go smoothly. I’m curious if others have that same experience.

      I’ve mainly had issues with either the controls not getting passed through, or an issue where the frame rate jumps really high (like 2500) then drops and gets stuck around 20 until I force the deck to update the display’s framerate.

      Once I’m in game things are usually fine but getting it goong can be a headache.

      • That used to be a problem for me when I had a Steam link in Australia. I have not experienced that issue with the Deck at all. Are you using the Steam streaming service, or something like Moonlight?

        A lot of people talk bad about the Steam service, but it has always worked fine for me. I just use Moonlight for things off other services like EA Origin, or for when I want to play some emulation stuff on my PC.

        No issues for me on my end, I could just be lucky though!