Steam Deck modders run Elden Ring, God of War, and The Witcher 3 at max settings with external GPU

The Steam Deck runs PC games just fine, but understandably, the portable device doesn’t run everything at the highest possible setting. The YouTubers at ETA PRIME wanted to change that.

The channel sought to build “the most powerful Steam Deck so far,” as a new video title says. To accomplish this, the modders attached a Radeon RX 6900 XT in a bit of a Frankenstein process that you can see in the video’s thumbnail. Once seated, the GPU was tested with several games: Elden Ring, God of War, The Witcher 3, Grand Theft Auto V, and Cyberpunk 2077 — the latter of which is a game with a native Steam Deck setting that just doesn’t work. Over the course of the 10-minute video, ETA Prime tries those five games at both 1080p and 4K resolution. You can see the results for yourself below:

Videos like this are impressive, but they’re also prime examples of why Valve recommends you go to a pro for Steam Deck hardware repairs — building an external GPU Frankenstein setup isn’t something an amateur should ever attempt. In the meantime, there’s plenty of official software support for customizing your Steam Deck. The Windows 10 driver is out now, with Windows 11 support in the works. Here’s how to run Windows on Steam Deck if you want to try it for yourself.