Steam Deck Is Capable of 4K Gaming With External Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU, New Video Confirms

Francesco De Meo
Steam Deck

The Steam Deck console is capable of 4K gaming with an external GPU connected to the console via the M.2 slot, a new video has confirmed.

ETA PRIMA shared on their YouTube channel a new video that shows how it is possible to connect an external GPU to the console via the M.2 slot. No NVIDIA GPU seems to work as of now, however, so a Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU has been connected instead.

Related Story Valve Steam Machine Benchmarks Show Near Twice The Uplift Over Steam Deck & Comparable To Ryzen 5 5600X at 30W

While the Steam Deck's CPU obviously bottlenecked the powerful RX 6900 XT GPU, the results were still impressive in gaming, as the console is able to run games like The Witcher 3 and Grant Theft Auto V at 4K resolution and decent performance above 60 FPS. More recent games like Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077 run decently as well, but only at 1080p resolution, which is still quite impressive, considering not only the console's CPU but the M.2 connection.

 

We attached an external GPU to the steam deck and it works! In this video, we see how the steam deck performs with an external M.2 Video card. The Radeon RX 6900 XT is overkill for the steam deck but I could not get any Nvidia Graphics card working yet so the 3080 and 3090 were out of the question for now. So can we game at 4K on the steam deck with an external Video card attached? Let's find out. By the way we did have to use WIndows 11 on The Deck for this to work right now

The Steam Deck is Valve's handheld console which has been released this year. More information on the system can be found on its official website.

Francesco De Meo Photo

About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.

Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.

Button