Steamdeck booted with discrete GPU

[ryao]

Summary

ETA Prime has installed a discrete GPU (RX 6900 XT) in his steam deck via the M.2 slot. He booted Windows 11 off a SD card since the M.2 slot was no longer available for storage. The steam deck CPU had good performance, but the steam deck was CPU bound in a few poorly optimized titles like God of War. ETA Prime said that he saw higher performance in systems with stronger CPUs.

 

Quotes

Quote

Because we can

My thoughts

He should have booted SteamOS 3.0 or at least some sort of Linux distribution. It is not very hard to boot any Linux distribution off a SD card on a system that supports booting off SD cards. He just did not ask anyone. Linux uses less CPU resources than Windows according to Valve, so he might have seen higher FPS in those CPU bound games had he done that.

 

Also, Xbox <whatever it is called> and PS5, eat your hearts out. The steam deck can be given a discrete GPU, while they cannot get GPU upgrades without replacing the entire console.

 

Sources

 

[da na]

When will we see a Steam Deck dock with a dedicated GPU? 

[ryao]

3 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

When will we see a Steam Deck dock with a dedicated GPU? 

Probably never since the steamdeck does not have thunderbolt. He had to open it up to access the M.2 slot to do this. It is likely a possibility for a Steam Deck 2. I do not expect to see a Steam Deck 3 unless people at Valve call it Steam Deck Alyx.

[brwainer]

3 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

When will we see a Steam Deck dock with a dedicated GPU? 

Never, because the Type-C port is USB3, not USB4 or Thunderbolt. It doesn’t provide PCIe lanes. That is why they had to be taken from the M.2 NVMe slot, which is not something a regular user or commercial product would expect.

[da na]

2 minutes ago, ryao said:

Probably never since the steamdeck does not have thunderbolt. He had to open it up to access the M.2 slot to do this. It is likely a possibility for a Steam Deck 2. I do not expect to see a Steam Deck 3 unless people at Valve call it Steam Deck Alyx .

Just now, brwainer said:

Never, because the Type-C port is USB3, not USB4 or Thunderbolt. It doesn’t provide PCIe lanes. That is why they had to be taken from the M.2 NVMe slot, which is not something a regular user or commercial product would expect.

Yeah that was a joke lol. 

Interesting to see it can be done though - I believed it to be more locked down.

[Quackers101]

kind of what I wanted to see, but also makes less of a point.

How docking it to become a hybrid of all systems, desktop - handheld etc.

 

but still kind of beaten by laptop + nintendo. I guess besides the price.

[ryao]

1 minute ago, brwainer said:

Never, because the Type-C port is USB3, not USB4 or Thunderbolt. It doesn’t provide PCIe lanes. That is why they had to be taken from the M.2 NVMe slot, which is not something a regular user or commercial product would expect.

I had said that too, but upon seeing your NVMe slot remark, I thought it *might* be possible with a bridge chip:

 

https://www.jmicron.com/products/list/13
 

Those should give PCI-E over USB 3, provided that the OS has driver support for them.

[ryao]

1 minute ago, Quackers101 said:

kind of what I wanted to see, but also makes less of a point.

How docking it to become a hybrid of all systems, desktop - handheld etc.

 

but still kind of beaten by laptop + nintendo. I guess besides the price.

Very few games would need a stronger CPU than what the steam deck has. ETA Prime picked the outliers.

[Zodiark1593]

7 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Yeah that was a joke lol. 

Interesting to see it can be done though - I believed it to be more locked down.

A long time ago, crazy folk have attached dGPUs to laptops through the miniPCIe slot that’s usually used for the wireless cards. 
 

M.2 is just a form factor for PCIe, so no surprise someone got it working. 
 

Unfortunately, unless you wish to sacrifice some bandwidth, and pull together a bunch of driver trickery, you must use an external display. Otherwise, an M.2 dGPU would be a pretty neat idea. Won’t be stuffing on RTX 3090 in such a form factor (especially considering heat), but for devices with iGPUs, could provide a nice bump for productivity and gaming if you’re willing to lose nvme (assuming you can boot elsewhere). 

[TrigrH]

1 hour ago, Zodiark1593 said:

A long time ago, crazy folk have attached dGPUs to laptops through the miniPCIe slot that’s usually used for the wireless cards. 
 

M.2 is just a form factor for PCIe, so no surprise someone got it working. 
 

Unfortunately, unless you wish to sacrifice some bandwidth, and pull together a bunch of driver trickery, you must use an external display. Otherwise, an M.2 dGPU would be a pretty neat idea. Won’t be stuffing on RTX 3090 in such a form factor (especially considering heat), but for devices with iGPUs, could provide a nice bump for productivity and gaming if you’re willing to lose nvme (assuming you can boot elsewhere). 

Give it a few more years and M.2 will be PCIE 5.0x4 which would actually be enough bandwidth if you installed a future 5.0 card.

[DANK_AS_gay]

2 hours ago, ryao said:

Also, Xbox <whatever it is called> and PS5, eat your hearts out. The steam deck can be given a discrete GPU, while they cannot get GPU upgrades without replacing the entire console

For the cost of two more of the same console, for bottlenecking any graphics card with the 4 PCIe lanes M.2 has. That isn't including a power supply, since the eGPU will need that, or the adapter, which is 60-100$, etc. After the $300 Steamdeck (same as an Xbox series S, for less performance), the $300 minimum GPU, $100 Adapter, 60-100$ PSU, I could have the Xbox Series X AND the 2 TB crazy fast expansion card, and have a better product. That, and the Steam Deck will have lost the only thing it has, portability.

This is cool to see in a video, but impractical for the real world, the claim that this somehow makes the Steam Deck better is laughable to say the least.

[ryao]

2 hours ago, TrigrH said:

Give it a few more years and M.2 will be PCIE 5.0x4 which would actually be enough bandwidth if you installed a future 5.0 card.

PCI-E 3.0 still does not matter for games. A 4x PCI-E 4.0 would be equivalent to a 16x PCI-E 2.0. I am not sure if the steam deck supports PCI-E 4.0, but even if it does not, the bandwidth requirements once things are loaded into VRAM are small.

[ryao]

1 hour ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

For the cost of two more of the same console, for bottlenecking any graphics card with the 4 PCIe lanes M.2 has. That isn't including a power supply, since the eGPU will need that, or the adapter, which is 60-100$, etc. After the $300 Steamdeck (same as an Xbox series S, for less performance), the $300 minimum GPU, $100 Adapter, 60-100$ PSU, I could have the Xbox Series X AND the 2 TB crazy fast expansion card, and have a better product. That, and the Steam Deck will have lost the only thing it has, portability.

This is cool to see in a video, but impractical for the real world, the claim that this somehow makes the Steam Deck better is laughable to say the least.

The graphics cards are not being bottlenecked by fewer PCI-E lanes. Level load times might be higher, but that is it. Once things are loaded into VRAM, the bandwidth requirements are negligible.

[TrigrH]

13 minutes ago, ryao said:

PCI-E 3.0 still does not matter for games. A 4x PCI-E 4.0 would be equivalent to a 16x PCI-E 2.0. I am not sure if the steam deck supports PCI-E 4.0, but even if it does not, the bandwidth requirements once things are loaded into VRAM are small.

16x PCI-E 2.0 or 4x PCI-E 4.0 has been proven to slow down faster gpus, some games more than others and the faster the GPU the bigger the limit:

 

 

5% faster going from "4.0x4" to "5.0x4"

[wamred]

6 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

When will we see a Steam Deck dock with a dedicated GPU? 

Ooooo that sounds fun.

[suicidalfranco]

Take note VALVE, next iteration: USB4

[wamred]

I hope Linus makes a video about this to be honest.

[Doobeedoo]

Next, booted with desktop.

[darknessblade]

Why do I want Linus to do this as well using A PCI-E X16 M.2 splitter card to add 3+ M.2 SSD's and a Powerfull GPU. making sure everything is still portable aftewards.

[Rauten]

31 minutes ago, darknessblade said:

Why do I want Linus to do this as well using A PCI-E X16 M.2 splitter card to add 3+ M.2 SSD's and a Powerfull GPU. making sure everything is still portable aftewards.

I don't think that's possible. Isn't the slot only 4 lanes at 3.0?

[TetraSky]

12 hours ago, brwainer said:

Never, because the Type-C port is USB3, not USB4 or Thunderbolt. It doesn’t provide PCIe lanes. That is why they had to be taken from the M.2 NVMe slot, which is not something a regular user or commercial product would expect.

So, maybe the next iteration of the Steam Deck in a handful of years if we're lucky.

[darknessblade]

25 minutes ago, Rauten said:

I don't think that's possible. Isn't the slot only 4 lanes at 3.0?

He could use something like he did in this video

 

Wit

[Salv8 (sam)]

21 hours ago, ryao said:

He should have booted SteamOS 3.0

i am unable to tell is this is sarcasm or genuine.

 

[ryao]

On 4/11/2022 at 11:30 PM, TrigrH said:

16x PCI-E 2.0 or 4x PCI-E 4.0 has been proven to slow down faster gpus, some games more than others and the faster the GPU the bigger the limit:

 

 

5% faster going from "4.0x4" to "5.0x4"

There is something wrong with the game if it is sending data over the PCI-E bus after level loads.

[Mark Kaine]

Would it have been possible to give the Steamdeck a better CPU or is that the "thermal power" limit?