Steam

An update to the Steam Deck client has added a very welcome feature: letting owners of the handheld to set game-specific performance settings. The update also has several bug fixes.(Image credit: Valve)The per-game performance settings, which means you can set performance options in Steam OS rather than having to fiddle around in individual titles’ settings pages. System-wide performance settings will still apply by default, but players can decide whether to change this for a custom profile. Hopefully, this will be…

The coolest feature of the Steam Deck — bar none, if you ask me — is how the portable gaming PC lets you get the absolute most from its AMD RDNA 2 graphics and 40 watt-hour battery. As of the last update, you could lower the screen’s refresh rate to increase your framerate and latency, and you’ve been able to throttle the CPU, GPU and frame limiter since launch. The catch: even if you figured out a great combination that gave you the battery life and/or performance you crave, the Steam Deck wouldn’t save those settings…

The majority of humanity's electricity comes from heat – burning coal or natural gas, nuclear fission, concentrating solar – that's used to boil water and spin steam turbines. This method of power generation has been around since Charles Parsons first hooked a steam turbine up to a dynamo in 1884, and licensed the patent to George Westinghouse. Over the last century and a half, it's become ubiquitous all over the world as a mature and well-optimized technology with known strengths and limitations. One of those limitations…

Valve has published its latest Steam user survey data, covering April of 2022. Picking through the data, there are a few interesting observations. First of all, we see that the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6600 XT, and RX 6600 have entered the chart for the first time. Elsewhere, quad-core CPUs have regained the lead they lost to hexa-cores in the previous month (but we are sure the trend is against them). Lastly, nearly 40% of Steam Gamers on Mac are now using computers featuring Apple Silicon processors.Graphics Card…

I recently went on a trip, which brought up a question I face every time I spend a few nights away from my gaming PC: How am I going to play games? For nearly five years now, my answer has been to pack my Nintendo Switch. This time, however, packing up my Switch felt like a compromise I didn’t want to make. Like a lot of folks, I’m eagerly awaiting for Valve to get around to my Steam Deck reservation. With the clock ticking in the back of my head, I realized the major shortcoming of the Nintendo Switch: Cross-save…

Far from being a beneficial function to balance performance and battery life, the framerate limiter inside the Steam Deck reportedly increases the input latency substantially. A Redditor accidentally stumbled upon the framerate limiter's malfunction while testing the latency between his wireless PlayStation 5 controller and docked Steam Deck. Other Redditors have pitched in on the testing and confirmed the issue.The amount of input latency scales linearly according to the frame rate and refresh rate cap. For reference,…

Steam Deck is one of the gaming platforms that has generated the most hype lately. Not for nothing, it is a portable console with direct access to Steam and incredible technical features. It has the ability to connect to our TV through almost any dock. It is also presented as a portable gaming computer with the ability to run almost any game on the market, as long as it is available on the Valve platform and/or is compatible. It has support for Xbox Game Pass, supports the installation of mods, and can be used as…

Forza Horizon 5 opts for that old adage: if it's not broken, don't fix it. England-based game developer Playground Games, which has made every entry of the ever-improving Forza Horizon racing franchise since its inception more than nine years ago, doesn't mess with the formula that it delivered upon and honed over time on its predecessor. Forza Horizon 5 is a lot like Forza Horizon 4, which is not a bad thing. The series' fifth chapter — available November 5 to premium customers, and November 9 for everyone else — is an…

Battlefield 2042 is a first-person shooter that doesn't have a campaign mode. Battlefield, developed by Electronic Arts and DICE, has long been known for its single-player campaigns as well as its 64-player lobbies. The latest iteration of the popular first person shooter franchise ditches these two factors that made it popular, entirely. Battlefield 2042, as the name suggests, is set 100 years in the future from the original game — Battlefield 1942 — that made the franchise a blockbuster. Has Battlefield found a new…

Halo Infinite brings back Xbox's most iconic game after six years. The Halo franchise began in 2001 — as a launch title for the OG Xbox — and ever since, people have gone bonkers playing some of these titles. Halo Infinite had a surprise launch for its free-to-play multiplayer mode on November 15, alongside the 20th anniversary of Xbox. But the Halo Infinite single-player campaign only releases later this week — Tuesday, December 8 to be specific — and we've had the pleasure of spending some time with it ahead of…