While the Steam Deck’s technical specs have mostly been received with widespread praise, one aspect of the device that a few have been skeptical about is its frame rate, with Valve recently having said that it will be targeting 30 FPS performance in games running on the system. However, it seems you needn’t worry.
Valve designer Pierre-Loup Griffais recently took to Twitter and clarified the above statement, stating that the 30 FPS target for the Steam Deck is “the floor” of what Valve has considered acceptable while playtesting games- in other words, it’s the minimum. According to Griffais, games have “consistently met and exceeded” that target during testing. Meanwhile, he also adds that players will also be able to use FPS limiters to decide whether they want better performance in games or better battery life for the device itself.
With impressive specs, support for ray tracing and variable rate shading, user upgradable SSDs, and more, the Steam Deck has certainly impressed people with its technical aspects. Valve has also said that in all the time it has spent testing games from the Steam library on the Steam Deck, it hasn’t been able to find something that the device cannot handle- which is certainly cause for optimism.
The "30 FPS target" refers to the floor of what we consider playable in our performance testing; games we've tested and shown have consistently met and exceeded that bar so far. There will also be an optional built-in FPS limiter to fine-tune perf vs. battery life.
— Pierre-Loup Griffais (@Plagman2) July 25, 2021
