The Linux Experiment
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00:00 Intro
00:31 Sponsor: Stay safe and private wit this free extension
01:38 MinisForum UM700
04:04 Included Software
05:16 Benchmarks
05:35 Portal 2
06:13 Hades
06:35 Resident Evil 2
07:36 Shadow of the Tomb Raider
08:07 Deep Rock Galactic
08:45 Cyberpunk 2077
09:18 Conclusion: can the Steam Deck perform?
This is the MINISFORUM DeskMini UM700. It’s a mini PC that’s currently sold for less than 500$ US.
It uses a Ryzen 7 3750H , 4 Cores/8 Threads, with a Base Clock of 2.3 GHz , up to 4.0 GHz.. It’s paired with a Radeon RX Vega 10 graphics chip.
Valve says that this little PC is weaker in the GPU department than the deck, but its CPU is slightly more powerful. This results in a device that’s just under the Steam Deck in terms of performance, which also means that it’s the perfect testbench for developers.
My test unit has 16GB of RAM, and a 500GB SSD, but it’s easy to upgrade that yourself.
In terms of I/O, it’s a real PC, so you have 1 ethernet jack, a USB 3.0 port, 3 USB 3.1, 1 USB C, 1 HDMI, one Displayport, and an audio jack.
Since this is an unofficial testbench, even though Valve clearly recommends it, it doesn’t run any pre-release version of Steam OS 3.
Instead, it runs Manjaro KDE, slightly tweaked. It has a little bit of MiniS Forum branding on the wallpaper and the main menu button of KDE, and it embarks CrossOver as well as Steam preinstalled. It even lets you boot directly into a Steam session, which will basically be your Steam big picture mode, out of the box, but you’re going to have to login to your steam account first, of course.
Let’s begin with Portal 2, one of the games Valve authorized reviewers to give performance numbers for.
At 720p, at maximum settings, it got 60 FPS, super smooth, no hiccups, it just ran like a dream.
It ran super smoothly, no dropped frames, no problems at all, really.
Running the game at 1080p netted some almost perfect results as well, with the max settings getting 60 FPS as well, although there were a few dips to 55 and 56 FPS when there were lots of physics objects moving around. When using portals, there also were some significant dips to the 40s, but the game felt really playable.
Moving on to Hades, which is the game I’m probably going to play the most once I get my own Steam Deck. At 720p, it got 60 FPS, running through Proton. At 1080p, It also got 60 FPS without a hitch.
I then tried something more demanding: Resident Evil 2. At 720p, at low settings, I could get a very stable 30 FPS, and the game generally ran at around 40. At 1080P low settings, the game was completely unplayable.
With FSR enabled at 1080p, on low settings, the stutters were gone, and the framerate was more around 25 to 28FPS.
Lowering the game down to 720p, but ramping up the settings to medium, with FSR enabled, the game reached 30 to 40 FPS, very rarely lowering down to less than 30.
I also ran the Shadow of the Tomb raider benchmark. At 720p, at mid settings, it only managed 20 to 22 FPS.
At low settings and 720p, the benchmark managed to stay at around 30FPS, with occasional dips down to 22.
I also got a look at Deep Rock Galactic. At 720P, mid settings, it hovered around 60FPS, with occasional dips to the 50s. At 1080P mid settings, without FSR, it could manage 30FPS, sometimes going up to 40 or 45.
Cyberpunk 2077: At 720p, it only gets around 20 FPS at the lowest settings with FSR enabled in the game’s settings. If I try to push it to 1080p, even with FSR, it can barely manage 10 to 15 FPS.