The owner of Steam Deck managed to run games on the console in 4K and 60 FPS using an external video card

The owner of Steam Deck was able to successfully connect the portable console with an external graphics card. So he solved the problem with running games in 4K resolution at a frequency of 60 frames per second.

YouTuber ETA Prime published a 10-minute video in which he showed all the work step by step, but admitted that the practicality of such a decision is questionable, and the whole experiment was done just to check whether it is possible.

In order to connect the Steam Deck with an external graphics card, the enthusiast had to open the case, take out the SSD and use the adapter to connect the Radeon RX 6900 XT drive to the place. At the same time, since the M.2 slot was occupied, the device was started using a copy of Windows 11 saved on a microSD, and an external solid-state drive with a USB-C connection was used to store games.

When things finally worked, ETA Prime tested the resulting "Frankenstein" in a number of games. For example, The Witcher 3 in 4K resolution at ultra-settings gave about 108 frames per second, and Grand Theft Auto V in 4K with a very high graphics preset went at a speed of about 70 frames per second.

However, according to the experimenter, the bottleneck in all this is the Steam Deck processor, so in newer games the frame rate will be limited, no matter how powerful the connected GPU is.

To demonstrate this, he showed elden Ring running at maximum settings at 1080p resolution, but even with an external Radeon RX 6900 XT, the game showed only 46 FPS, while in Cyberpunk 2077 the frame rate unstably jumped around 40-80 FPS.