When we first saw the Steam Deck last week, IGN played a number of different games including Portal 2, Death Stranding, Hades, Satisfactory, and Dying Light. Each seemed to play just fine, proving that Valve didn't make too many sacrifices in terms of performance in order to make its handheld PC gaming platform.
However, there was still some concern about the Deck's storage limits. The Deck comes in three varieties, including a 64GB, 256GB or 512GB internal storage drive, but every Deck also comes with a microSD expansion slot to increase its storage.
The internal drives are all solid-state (with the 256 and 512GB drives the faster NVMe variety), so loading times and gameplay aren't likely to be too bad for games that are installed internally, but what about games installed on that microSD card?
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Well, worry not. Apparently, we've already seen how well games will perform when installed to that microSD card. Valve UX and product designer Lawrence Yang recently answered a fan's question about how well games will perform when run from the Deck's microSD slot.
"Yep, games will load faster off internal storage, but games still play great off an SD card," Yang replied. "When IGN came by, all the games they tried (and shot footage of) were played off a microSD card."
The best performance is still likely to come from the NVMe drives on the 256 and 512GB versions of the Deck, but it’s good to know that you can use the microSD card if you run out of space.
And as it turns out, we might even be able to upgrade the Deck's internal drives. Valve has confirmed that every Deck's SSD is upgradeable, although they're “not intended for end-user replacement.”
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