He steam deck it has something of a stranglehold on the laptop scene, with its more affordable price point putting competing options to shame. However, a new challenger is coming, after modders have worked their magic to transform the Nintendo Switch into a portable PC of sorts.
YouTubers Geekerwan have modified a Nintendo Switch to run Linux, opening up the device to the ability to play PC games. In addition to this, they also managed to overclock the console to improve performance.
Natively, the Switch CPU runs at 1GHz, but Geekerwan was able to more than double the clock speed to 2.3GHz. The Nvidia Tegra X1 GPU also received similar attention, jumping from 460MHz to 2.0GHz.
After successfully installing Steam on the device, Geekerwan ran into ‘Large Picture Mode’, transforming it into a sort of Nintendo Steam Deck. Sure, you’re not running SteamOS, but this is certainly close enough.
While the idea of ​​playing PC games on the Nintendo Switch is undeniably cool, in practice it’s less than impressive. Games were understandably having a hard time running on the device, but games like Grand Theft Auto 5 seemed unplayable due to the constant frame rate drops Geekerwan was experiencing.
While it’s amazing to see what the modding community can make the handheld console do, I’m pretty cool with keeping mine on the standard setting. In fact, I recently upgraded to the Nintendo Switch OLED, and while it’s still not as strong a pixel pusher as Steam Deck, it’s an undeniably beautiful console. We expect Steam Deck 2 to follow suit with a display upgrade and perhaps some limited edition models.
Check out our list of the best Steam Deck games to find out what you should be playing next. Don’t forget our list of the best Steam Deck accessories, so you can get the most out of your favorite PC gaming device.