A software update that Valve is finalizing must free up more space to store games on Steam Deck soon. As confirmed by the company to the PC Gamer website, the update prepared by it should reduce the size of shader caches by up to 60% used by the device.
The modification will come along with the Mesa 23.1 controller, which serves as the basis for the graphics system present on the console. Built with contributions from companies like AMD, Intel, and Microsoft, the update promises to significantly change the way games built on the Vulkan API behave.
Initially, Valve decided to offer a large cache space for Steam Deck titles as a way of ensure stable performance for them. On the other hand, this means that they can occupy a generous storage area of the laptop, reaching several GB in games with a size considered large.
The update will affect individual games
As systems engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais explains, the effects that the driver update will have should affect each game individually. This means that while caches will be reduced by 60% at best, the trend is for these gains to be smaller more generally.
Griffais explains that this happens because the new system “will not reduce anything related to transcoded video repositories”, which are also marked as belonging to the shader cache by the Steam Deck interface. The Mesa 23.1 update is already in the final stages of testing and should roll out stably to all users in early May.
Valve is also preparing to release SteamOS 3.5 for a similar date, and the two updates may end up coinciding. Since the laptop launched, the company has continued to make performance tweaks to it, even demonstrating that it’s possible to use it to play games with ray tracing effects enabled in titles like Doom Eternal.
Microsoft is not optimizing the Windows 11 experience on Steam Deck
The project manager claims that Microsoft is not involved and their work on the Steam Deck is being done in parallel with Hackathon 2022.
Source: PC Gamer
Source: Adren Aline
I have over 10 years of experience in the news industry, working for various news websites. I am also an author at Esports Chimp, where I cover gaming news. I have a deep passion for video games and esports, and my goal is to provide accurate and up-to-date coverage of the gaming world.