TECH NEWS – Valve’s GitHub page has revealed that SteamOS will receive support for the DeckHD screen update without the need to install third-party patches.

Valve is working on bringing 1200p Steam Deck screen support to SteamOS. This means you won’t need to install third-party patches yourself to make it work. The screen in question is the DeckHD, which was initially released as a replacement for Steam’s Deck screen in 2023. This increases the resolution to a much sharper 1,920 x 1,200 while reducing glare and improving colour accuracy.

Since then, Valve has released the best handheld gaming PC at the moment, the Steam Deck in OLED form. While this device’s screen dramatically improves image quality over the Steam Deck’s standard screen, it’s stuck at the same 1,200 x 800 resolution.

However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. As written when DeckHD was first released, the Zen 2-based CPU used in Steam Deck is challenged by many games even at 1,200 x 800 resolution, let alone at 1,920 x 1200 resolution. Its GPU has only 512 stream processors based on the ageing RDNA 2 architecture. This makes it much less potent than any desktop GPU.

Even with the frame generation technology used in AMD FSR 3.1, achieving decent frame rates for most of the latest games at 1200p will be difficult with Steam Deck’s standard spec. Replacing the Steam Deck screen is also not an easy task, and you risk voiding your warranty if you do it yourself.

However, DeckHD has other advantages.

One is the anti-reflective coating. This feature was only introduced on the 512GB version of the standard Steam Deck. So, if you have a 256GB or 64GB deck with a glossy, reflective screen, there’s an advantage to swapping. DeckHD also offers excellent colour accuracy, achieving 95% sRGB coverage, according to the manufacturer, compared to 67% of the standard Steam Deck screen.

DeckHD display support in SteamOS was spotted by Tom’s Hardware on Valve’s official GitHub page. There is a task called “Rebase DeckHD patches on latest gamescope code”. This is set up by balika011 to merge 3rd party DeckHD patches into a SteamOS build. These fixes allow Steam Deck to recognize the display in SteamOS and also set the correct resolution and refresh rate.

Source: Tom’s Hardware, GitHub