The Steam Deck system has become today an even more impressive piece of tech, as it is now capable of handling ray tracing in some form, thanks to a new OS Beta update that is now live.
The Steam Deck OS 3.4.6 Beta, as confirmed by the official update notes, updates the graphics driver to Mesa 23.1, which brings a variety of performance fixes as well as new features, such as a fix for Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty’s graphical corruption issues as well as GPU crashes for several upcoming titles. The update also introduces ray tracing support for DOOM Eternal, which is rather impressive.
Following the new Steam Deck OS Beta update going live, developer Pierre-Loup Griffais shared a screenshot of the game developed by id Software running on the console with ray tracing on. This was made possible thanks to the Vulkan API, which is supported by DOOM Eternal, but it has been confirmed that DXR is also in the pipe. Performance obviously takes a hit with ray tracing enabled, but this still doesn’t make it any less impressive.
— Pierre-Loup Griffais (@Plagman2) March 3, 2023
DXR is also in the pipe, just not quite ready yet.
— Pierre-Loup Griffais (@Plagman2) March 3, 2023
More information on the Steam Deck can be found on its official website. You can also learn more about the handheld gaming device by Valve by checking out Kai’s review.
