Steam Deck Won’t Receive a Performance Boost When Docked

The Steam Deck has drawn comparisons to the Switch in numerous ways since Valve unveiled it, from its form factor to how it’s going to be able to double as both a handheld and a more traditional console (or, well, PC) when used with a dock. With you do use it with a dock, however, it won’t see any boosts to frame rates, according to Valve.

The Steam Deck will be targeting – at minimum – 30 FPS an 800p for all the games that it runs, and while you can, of course, get higher resolutions when docking it to screens capable of them, the frame rate isn’t something that will see a boost because of docking. That’s according to designer Greg Coomer, who recently spoke with PC Gamer about the same.

“We didn’t choose to make it a really high priority design target,” Coomer said when asked if the feature should be expected from the device. “We felt that it was actually better all things considered to not modify based on docked status or mobile status.”

“We really wanted to prioritize for using it in what we thought would be the highest use case, which is actually mobile,” he elaborated. “And so since we were focusing on that, and we chose like a threshold where the machine will run well, and with a good frame rate with AAA games in that scenario. We didn’t really feel like we should target also going after the dock scenario at higher resolutions. We wanted a simpler design target and to prioritize that.”

The Steam Deck is launching this December in select regions of the world, though as you’d expect, stocks are going to be limited. Valve is planning on sending out more waves of stocks throughout 2022.