​

A small but quite important update got released for the Steam Deck's operating system, SteamOS, just yesterday March 13th, 2023. This update adds a couple of bugfixes to games like Wo Long: Fallen Dinasty and Forza Horizon 5, but it also fixes a weird graphical bug that occurred in the Resident Evil 4 Remake which got released just a few days ago, where the user would encounter some black artifacting around objects and some 3D models.

(Left image by @Justice98405 from Twitter, right image by SteamDeckHQ)

This update also brings another QoL graphical update, specifically to Doom Eternal, adding ray tracing into the game. While the raytracing update does give the game a hit to performance, it seems like with a few tweaks, players can get a stable 30fps out of Doom Eternal with the raytacing on, so they can at least experience it with the best graphics on a stable framerate, and on the go.

The latest updates are thanks to an update to the video driver version focused on Vulkan, Mesa, which had this current update previously on the Preview branch of the SteamOS for testing (more or less an alpha testing branch). Based on some reports, the Mesa driver version that focuses on OpenGL hasn't been touched.

This is what the 3.4.6 changelog by Steam says:

SteamOS 3.4.6 has just been released to the Stable channel as an update to all Deck users. The update contains the following changes:

• Fixed a focus issue with Forza Horizon 5
• Updated the graphics driver to Mesa 23.1, containing many functional and performance fixes:
  • Fixed graphical corruption issues with Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty
  • Ray-Tracing is now available in DOOM Eternal
  • Fixed graphical corruption in Resident Evil 4

Source

 

[dh3lix-pooch]

Raytracing on a "Handheld" .. What a time to be alive.

 

[Ryab]

Raytracing on a "Handheld" .. What a time to be alive.

It doesnt run extremely well for obvious reasons. But the fact that it exists at all is crazy.

 

[dh3lix-pooch]

It doesnt run extremely well for obvious reasons. But the fact that it exists at all is crazy.

Well said!

 

[ShadowOne333]

It doesnt run extremely well for obvious reasons. But the fact that it exists at all is crazy.

I read that some people did get it to run at a stable 30fps with raytracing turned on, what fps are you getting?

 

[Ryab]

I read that some people did get it to run at a stable 30fps with raytracing turned on, what fps are you getting?

Doom is like the only game that is going to do a decent job. Doom is an extremely well optimized game.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Doom is like the only game that is going to do a decent job. Doom is an extremely well optimized game.

Ah yes, in that you are correct.
Very few, if not a handful, of current AAA titles are this well optimized like what id has done with both Doom games.

 

[HarveyHouston]

Next - raytracing for Portal and Portal 2 (and no, not the RTX edition released recently).

 

[RedoLane]

Kudos to id software for once again proving how super optimized DOOM Eternal is.
Only a matter of time until that type of hardware will do all the above but with 60fps.

 

[HideoKojima]

Never seen a "console" release an update just to fix performance issues of a specific game.

 

[Moon164]

Woah, Steam Deck supports ray-tracing?, this is so impressive for a handheld, even Series S struggles with that.

 

[pustal]

Raytracing on a "Handheld" .. What a time to be alive.

Woah, Steam Deck supports ray-tracing?, this is so impressive for a handheld, even Series S struggles with that.

You could already use it if you installed Windows, Steam OS was what didn't have support. Steam deck has RDNA 2 too, so it has hardware support for it. It will struggle with it as well, supporting doesn't mean it runs smoothly, ray tracing is still very taxing.

 

[Xzi]

Never seen a "console" release an update just to fix performance issues of a specific game.

It's like a GPU driver update, the fixes are targeted at specific games but the result is they improve performance and stability in a number of other games not listed too.

 

[HideoKojima]

It's like a GPU driver update, the fixes are targeted at specific games but the result is they improve performance and stability in a number of other games not listed too.

Good to know

 

[NakedFaerie]

Its not just that one game. Quake II RTX also works on SteamOS now. It was limited to Windows.
Im getting 30fps with rtx and all turned on and high.

In windows it was about 5fps. Just turn on the amd fidelity setting (i forget the name of it) and it jumps to 30fps.

Im looking for other rtx games to try out. None using proton work yet, i heard thats in a furure update.

 

[CloudStrife190100]

According to comments ive seen all over Facebook this update has made other playable games unable to run rendering them broken 😂

 

[gaga941021]

Raytracing on a "Handheld" .. What a time to be alive.

It's like technology advances or something. Idk.

 

[dh3lix-pooch]

It's like technology advances or something. Idk.

I call it wizzardary!!!!!

 

[64bitmodels]

It's like technology advances or something. Idk.

its advancing too fast i feel like a caveman
we wouldnt have thought of this tech back in even 2019

 

[subcon959]

For anyone not in the group, if you're thinking about buying a Steam Deck it's 10% off for a week to celebrate its 1st birthday.