The stars are aligning for the perfect handheld – but one thing is missing

At CES 2025, I noticed among the most enjoyable developments on the planet of handheld gaming PCs that I’ve ever seen, however Nvidia was fully absent from the dialog. It is a world dominated by AMD with its semi-custom fashions like the brand new Ryzen Z2 vary, and one which Intel is slowly working its means into with units just like the MSI Claw 8 AI+. Staff Inexperienced, by comparability, does not appear .

An Nvidia handheld would not be inherently higher than the crop of AMD-powered units we have now proper now, from the Steam Deck OLED to the brand new Lenovo Legion Go S, however Nvidia already has options and {hardware} that match completely with the ethics of handheld units. However even with a lot going for Nvidia in handhelds, it stays a troublesome nut to crack.

All the things is coming collectively

I would like to repeat first. This 12 months at CES, I noticed some new handheld units. There’s the aforementioned Lenovo Legion Go S, in fact, but additionally units like the huge 11-inch Acer Nitro Blaze 11. Nonetheless, these units did not steal the present for handheld fans; as a substitute it was a seemingly minor announcement made by Valve.

Together with revealing that the Lenovo Legion Go S could be the primary formally licensed to make use of Steam Deck’s unique SteamOS, Valve revealed that it might be increasing assist for SteamOS in April. Then, Valve says, you can set up and use SteamOS on any system you need, albeit with some points that Valve cannot account for with out official licensing. And as our senior video games editor Giovanni Colantonio will inform you, opening the SteamOS port is a very huge deal.

Till now, you’ve got needed to make some type of one-handed compromise. You’ll be able to go together with a Steam Deck and get the just about seamless expertise of SteamOS, however solely with an older and fewer highly effective AMD chip. Or you possibly can up your energy with one thing just like the ROG Ally X, however you will should accept the split-hand expertise that Home windows 11 affords. SteamOS forks like Bazzite try to shut that hole, however not with no few wrinkles. small.

SteamOS in the present day is considerably extra mature than it was just a few years in the past. Proton has continued to enhance its compatibility, and the overwhelming majority of Home windows video games play nicely on Linux-based SteamOS. One of many largest hindrances for SteamOS, the anti-cheat software program, has additionally turn out to be much less of a difficulty. Though there are nonetheless video games with anti-cheats that merely will not work on SteamOS, together with Destiny 2 AND Apex Legends, The state of affairs with instruments like Simple Anti-Cheat and BattlEye is a lot better than it was just a few years in the past. And newer video games corresponding to Marvel’s Rivals, are searching for different anti-cheat options as a way to convey the sport to Linux.

The celebs are aligning. Proton is best, anti-cheat is not as huge of a difficulty because it was once, there is a bunch of recent {hardware}, and SteamOS will probably be out there to the plenty in just a few months. However Nvidia is lacking the boat.

Why Nvidia?

AMD has achieved unimaginable work with {hardware} just like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally, and Intel has improved considerably from the unique MSI Claw to the Claw 8 AI+. However Nvidia has rather a lot so as to add to handheld gaming PCs with DLSS. It is no secret that DLSS has been an enormous driving pressure behind the recognition of Nvidia graphics playing cards over the previous few generations, and it is a function that may fully rework the gaming expertise on a handheld system.

AMD’s FSR and Intel’s XeSS are strong alternate options to DLSS, however Nvidia’s AI-assisted upscaling and body era nonetheless take the cake in terms of general high quality and efficiency. Upscaling is already a serious a part of gaming on a handheld, a lot in order that Steam Deck supported system-wide FSR upscaling from day one. And framerate era is turning into much more vital, with FSR 3 enabling playable efficiency in video games like Ghost of Tsushima, and AMD’s Fluid Movement Frames 2 that unlock playable efficiency in hundreds of video games with ROG Ally X.

I need not justify the truth that handhelds would profit from DLSS, particularly with the current announcement of multi-frame era in DLSS 4. This might not solely assist enhance efficiency on handhelds with restricted entry to computing energy, however may additionally enhance battery life. In any case, if you do not have to manually render each pixel and each body, it can save you a number of vitality.

All of that is true for FSR and XeSS as nicely. The place DLSS makes a distinction is assist. XeSS 2 body era is just out there in a single sport on the time of writing, and though FSR 3 is now out there in over 75 titles, DLSS 3 is obtainable in roughly 150 video games. And DLSS Tremendous Decision is obtainable in over 500 video games. Nearly as good as the hand-held expertise is in the present day between AMD {hardware} and wider SteamOS assist, I battle to imagine that the expertise with an Nvidia GPU could be worse. There is a cause that, regardless of being the middle of a lot criticism, Nvidia continues to carry a market share of over 80% for desktop graphics playing cards. It makes a great product, pure and easy.

It looks like the proper time to unlock this potential. SteamOS has matured to the purpose the place it is nearly seamless to make use of, and DLSS has some very sensible purposes on handheld gaming PCs. However there is a cause we have not seen a handheld Nvidia bundle SteamOS up so far, and why we’d not see one for fairly a while.

Nvidia’s blind spot

You have most likely seen this video of Linus Torvalds, the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel, giving Nvidia a really public center finger for the shortage of driver assist on Linux. There is a lengthy historical past right here, however Nvidia has maintained a closed-source driver for Linux for a few years, whereas AMD has caught with open-source, Mesa-based drivers. Ask any Linux gamer whether or not Nvidia or AMD is best, and so they’ll inform you AMD each time. You do not have to take my phrase for it.

I caught up with Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais at CES and needed to understand how lengthy it might take earlier than I may run SteamOS on any pc. Earlier than I may end the query, he requested, “what {hardware} are you utilizing?” He was fishing to see if I used to be utilizing an Nvidia graphics card – I’m – and for good cause. Though the state of affairs with Nvidia {hardware} on Linux has improved considerably over the previous two years because the firm switched to an open supply code base, this variation has primarily served to repair main bugs and failures that would seem with Nvidia GPUs on Linux up to now. Griffais made it clear that the expertise in the present day with SteamOS and Nvidia units wouldn’t be nice.

If you happen to want extra proof of this, you possibly can look over to Bazzite, who says that “Nvidia GPUs are presently in beta with huge warnings.” That braveness is Bazzite, not me. Or you possibly can hearken to NerdNest, who simply two weeks in the past tried to put in Bazzite on an Nvidia laptop computer and located that it did not work after just a few days. If that is not sufficient, this is Linus Tech Suggestions displaying how SteamOS would fail to even boot with an RTX 3060 GPU, and this video was launched just some days in the past.

Griffais tells me that Valve has a devoted crew of engineers working with Nvidia to enhance driver assist, and has for years. In truth, Valve has been working with Nvidia on SteamOS drivers for over a decade, however I believe many of the progress has come within the final couple of years with the success of Steam Deck and elevated curiosity in SteamOS.

Here’s a traditional rooster and egg downside. Nvidia’s Linux assist is not fairly the place it ought to be in comparison with AMD and Intel but, so it hasn’t constructed the {hardware} for a Linux-based gaming rig. However as a result of that {hardware} does not exist, and since Linux represents such a small a part of the PC gaming crowd, there’s not a lot of a rush to get Nvidia GPUs to work flawlessly with SteamOS. and therefore, Linux.

There are apparent purposes of options like DLSS on a handheld, particularly now with multi-frame era in DLSS 4, however exterior of that mannequin, there are a lot greater implications for correct Linux assist from Nvidia. Because the dominant provider of desktop graphics playing cards, there are many choices for SteamOS or forks like Bazzite to ship console-like gaming experiences to any PC. Nonetheless, we can’t see that future till the state of affairs with Nvidia and Linux improves.