Steam Deck house owners who wish to set up Windows 11 on the moveable, moderately than operating with SteamOS, will likely be happy to listen to that Valve has mounted one of many main issues with going this route – particularly the audio facet of the equation.
As we’ve seen with many complaints from of us adopting Microsoft’s OS on Valve’s compact gaming PC, there was a difficulty with sound drivers which signifies that with Windows 11, you don’t get audio – not until you utilize Bluetooth audio system (or a USB-C headset).However now, Valve has offered Windows audio drivers (two of them) which remedy the issue, so that you’ll now get sound by way of the Deck’s built-in audio system (or you should use headphones with the audio jack, moderately than counting on a Bluetooth pair).
Directions are offered together with the drivers on Valve’s Windows resources page, and word that there’s an APU driver here which you have to set up first to get audio assist working.
Evaluation: A step in the proper route – nevertheless it is only one step
It’s clearly good to see that Valve isn't just pushing ahead with work on the Steam Deck as-is – doing loads of tinkering so as to add helpful options just like the just lately carried out per-game efficiency settings – but in addition contemplating those that would possibly wish to take another route like putting in Windows 11 on the hand-held (and even Windows 10 for that matter). That mentioned, should you’re mulling over sticking Windows on the Steam Deck, even with one of many rougher edges now smoothed out within the type of audio drivers, it’s nonetheless a moderately suspect proposition to put in Microsoft’s OS on the moveable gaming PC. Why? For starters, it’s nonetheless within the very early phases of improvement, with Windows assist solely having formally arrived for the Steam Deck a couple of weeks in the past – so there'll likely nonetheless be driver and different technical points floating round (certainly, it’s attainable that these newly launched audio drivers may nonetheless be glitchy for some). Plus as we’ve identified earlier than, SteamOS is purpose-built for a slick and streamlined expertise with the Deck, however should you enterprise into Windows territory, that’ll be a really totally different matter. Moreover, putting in Windows on the Steam Deck just isn't a trivial train for the much less tech-savvy – however should you do wish to give it a whirl, we’ve obtained a full information on easy methods to set up Windows 10 and 11 on a Steam Deck.By way of Tom’s Hardware
