Want to tweak more on your Steam Deck? You need some PowerTools. A new plugin for the Steam Deck Plugin Loader.
I was hoping to see something like this come along, but fair warning on this — anything you use like PowerTools is at your own risk, so if you screw up your device Valve likely won't help you out. I say this, because there's quite a few advanced tricks it can do and for most normal users, it won't really be needed.
Anyway, some of what PowerTools includes:
- Enable and Disable CPU threads
- Enable & Disable CPU boost
- Set CPU frequency
- Set GPU Power
- Set Fan speed
- Probably more I missed
How can someone create this? Pretty simple if you know a bit of programming and where to look, since the Steam Deck uses Linux (SteamOS) and so the majority of it is open source (apart from the Steam client).
One of the way I know some of this will be useful is for emulation especially. Some old games and systems can act a little funny with the immense (relatively speaking) power and core count compared with what old games are expecting. Just one small example.
See more on the GitHub page.
It does. Currently don't have time, but in a week of two, I'll see if I could create a plugin to view, post and potentially discuss configurations of currently running/viewed games. Not sure if plugin manager can already access info about running games, among other details, yet something like this seems so necessary to me. Still hope Valve will come up with a system for that :/
Last edited by const on 3 May 2022 at 6:59 pm UTC
!an image of text and buttons for a plugin-loader plugin
Last edited by TrainDoc on 4 May 2022 at 12:11 am UTC
So I think it is not useful.
Why? 99% of the time you want your gpu or cpu to do things in little time, so that they can go to sleep faster and save power, it is commonly called "race to idle".
From what i see, this does the opposite.
Probably i'm not the kind of user this tool would target.
Last edited by kokoko3k on 4 May 2022 at 5:35 am UTC
As The Phawx showed Parking cores can benefit Steam Games like Control too as the Deck is constrained in it's allocation of power.
P.S. I am the one who sent you email about about PowerTools, thanks for getting back to me and doing the article.
WerWolv and Marios are the real ones to be congratulated. They got plugin loader up and running for us and have setup https://plugins.deckbrew.xyz and https://deckbrew.xyz and vital resources for plugin developers and users.
Peep the PluginLoader GitHub!
Anyway, pretty cool. I'm planning to do something similar, yet with a community approach. Your code should be very very helpful in that regard (If I ever find time :()
Not sure if you're joking, power toys is still a thing
Have you seen sharedeck.games? There is also a reddit thread about the site. Integration between Performance Presets and sharedeck.games would be awesome.
Last edited by bonaparte on 10 May 2022 at 11:29 pm UTC