Latest Steam Deck update brings many new features

Valve is rolling out SteamOS 3.5.5 to the Steam Deck LCD and the Steam Deck OLED. The new over-the-air (OTA) software update for the two handheld gaming devices brings new features, performance improvements, and bug fixes.

New display settings

Starting with new features, Valve has added two new options in display settings: Adjust Colour Vibrance and Adjust Color Temperature. As the names of these settings suggest, the first option allows you to change the color vibrancy, and the second option lets you change the color temperature. Plus, Valve has adjusted the default color rendering for Steam Deck LCD to emulate the sRGB color gamut, which, according to the company, results in a “slightly warmer and more vibrant color appearance.” Valve has also added support for HDR and VRR for external display, which could be very useful for many people.

Starfield should now perform better on Steam Deck

Coming to performance improvements, Valve has updated the graphics drivers with “many performance and functionality improvements.” According to the company, these changes result in improved performance for Starfield. Plus, Valve has added voltage offset settings, which should allow people to tinker with the performance. The new firmware also mounts external storage devices automatically when connected to Steam Deck.

As for bug fixes, the changes that the company made to graphics drivers, fix “viewmodel corruption in Amnesia: The Bunker and launch failures for Immortals of Aveum and Kaiju-A-GoGo.” Valve says that it has also fixed an issue where “certain workloads would exhibit severe CPU performance issues unless SMT was manually disabled.” So that should not only result in enhanced performance but also increased battery backup.

Steam Deck Dock now supports VRR

Valve has also updated the Arch Linux base, which, according to the company “pulls in newer performance, security and stability fixes for the underlying packages that are the foundation for SteamOS.” Lastly, the company has updated Steam Deck Dock to Firmware 121, which offers support for VRR (for external displays), fixes issues with 6bpc color modes, and “improves the detection of HDMI cable hot-plug events.” You can check out the rest of the changes in the official changelog.