Steam Deck + Radeon RX 6900 XT as external GPU: better at 4K than PS5

Valve's new Steam Deck has been used in an awesome custom way: with its external GPU capability infused with the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card with 16GB of GDDR6 memory.

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The new Steam Deck was used by ETA Prime with a custom ASRock Radeon RX 6900 XT OC Formula graphics card, connected through the M.2 slot on the Steam Deck... as there is no Thunderbolt port to connect an external GPU. If you use the M.2 slot for an external GPU, then you will have to load your games from the microSD card inside of the Steam Deck, and not an M.2 SSD.

ETA Prime ran a bunch of benchmarks and games with some damn good results, including The Witcher 3 at 4K Ultra settings at 118FPS average... 4K 118FPS average. Sure, it's an external GPU running that... but it's being done through an M.2 slot, as an external GPU connected to a portable, and not-so-fast Steam Deck. Impressive to see.

• Read more: Valve teams with AMD on getting Steam Deck to support Windows 11
• Read more: Valve's new Steam Deck: RDNA 2 GPU is more powerful than Aya Neo Vega

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The Valve Steam Deck + external Radeon RX 6900 XT was capable of 73FPS average in Grand Theft Auto V, while both Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077 were hitting 47-70FPS average at 1080p on High settings. These results aren't perfect, but we do have bottlenecks with the AMD Van Gogh APU + GPU connected through an M.2 slot.

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