Can the Steam Deck run CS2? YES. But how well can it run it? This video investigates.
0:00 – CS2 VS Steam Deck
0:34 – External mouse, keyboard and monitor
1:34 – Graphics performance
2:44 – How it feels
4:16 – Improvements since start of year
5:10 – Conclusion
7:05 – Improvements going forward
38 Comments
steamdeck 1 probably wont run it well enough regardless because of the hardware, but the CS2 linux port in general is just not that good. I've had better performance running the windows version through proton than using their native client.
New c4 just dropped.
2:00 potato?
Building a gaming PC is cheaper than it ever has been. Building a SERIOUSLY FUTURE PROOFED GAMING PC FOR THE NEXT 10 YEARS IS JUST AS EXPENSIVE AS IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN.
Come on Phil. Don't lie in the opener.
For the record, Vulkan has not had at all the best performance compared to it's directx counterpart on counter-strike 2 and other valve games. Last time I played counter-strike 2 on Linux, the game suffered from a noticable drop in performence on the same hardware, memory leaks and more. Next time try running the game with steam play / proton.
Valve fix cs2 pls
cs2 on linux has a huge memory leak btw
love this guys vids, nice to see an upload from time to time
This is about how you could expect the game to run on a Core 2 Quad so I'd say the power limit is a big problem. This game can run on HD2500 graphics. An R7 250 will handle the game just fine at 1080p. An overclocked C2Q and Dell R7 250 is what I used when I first tried CS2 because I wanted to see if they were really sticking to the potato gaming premise. Not the best way to play the game but I didn't have any input lag issues or bugs.
So, from this perspective, the Steam Deck looks like a really overpriced proposition for a cheap CS2 gaming rig.
Good video! Thank you 😊
I believe for the Steam Deck OLED there is a BIOS that allows you to increase the TDP to 20W
cs2 on linux is still not very good.
I love you Phil
Nah, cs2s code is just shit. I’ve seen so many lower tier setups where cs2 is just unplayable. They handle AAA titles but not counterstrike, it has to be a cs problem.
It's annoying because cs go on the deck was awesome with the flick stick option and now it's basically pointless
Ngl, i dont really watch you for cs content, i dont know why i do, but this video was pretty good.
This issue with the mouse acceleration on the Linux version was one of the first things reported on the Linux Issue tracker on github and has not been fixed…
Next: overclock the deck, you can run at 25w with -40 CO.
barrier to entry has gotten extremely low compared to back in the day though i believe pc gaming is cheaper than ever.
20 years ago you needed to upgrade every 2 to 3 years, but also you wanted to because how massive of a difference it gave you.
most popular games are playable on 10 year old hardware even triple A games are playable on 7 year old hardware which is insane.
If anyone wants a budget PC the steam deck is the way to go. Not only do you get a great handheld you can connect a keyboard, mouse and monitor and have a decently performing desktop experience.
i dont know about CS2 but in normal source games you can type cl_wpn_sway_interp 1 (default is 0.2) to have the guns flail like this. if that was the actual problem id be SUPER confused though… maybe more likely to be some kind of cpu priority thing where code for weapon swaying/other less useful things is super low on the totem poll???
Steam deck OLED will probably perform well here. With the LCD steam deck, you really need to use the cryoutilities to adjust the performance of the steam deck
Linux CS2 is just screwed in general, the performance is always about a flat 20% worse than on windows, you get graphical bugs and that annoying as hell weapon flailing around the screen
i got 4 kills in premier on steam deck controls
The viewmodel going crazy when you move the mouse was a Linux exclusive bug, it got fixed on May 30th's update
I just bought a steam deck OLED and the thing is sweet. Emulated games, steam games, desktop, it's ALL great. I'm still disappointed by CS2 like everyone else, but the Deck rules.
I've had good luck using OBS for screen recording
CS2 is just horrible on Linux. That's the problem. It's way more playable on Windows on a Steamdeck 🙁
I used to play CS2 on my steam deck but I never had any of those issues with the keyboard / mouse / transferring screen to a monitor issues you had. I do believe those may have been from the type of dongle you were using to access those features. I also have one but it’s more of a stand like the actual one made by Valve (which they charge far too much for). But from my experience I never had any of the visual glitches, poor mouse translation to game or any of those issues you had. TBF I don’t know what my input latency was so those could be similar results to your testing. Overall steam deck CS2 is “playable” but a dedicated pc is miles ahead of course.
Worst game of this generation is CS2, awful awful awful. Fake player numbers and gambling tendencies, by an already shady company, keep me away from this heap.
GPD has a small portable external GPU that seems like a great option if you want to dock. Should bridge gap to good playable frame rates
Just play cs:go. Ho no valve remove it from steam. Fuck you gabe ultra pièce of shit
my god its the fart master
CS2 really is just kinda broken on Linux at the moment. It might be more compatible with external displays under Proton but I had the exact same non-aligning of resolution and weird mouse behavior on an actual computer running Arch, which is the base for SteamOS. By the way, I think MangoHud has a tool to record framerates and output them as spreadsheets, you can find more info about it on its GitHub page.
The state of DPI scaling in Steam and also every other program based on Chromium on Linux is pretty bad.
Been watching you since at least 2020. You really have a perfect niche. I love your content and streaming personality and will never stop supporting your content. Thanks man.
I believe launching a game from the desktop runs in Xorg instead of wayland which decreases the performance a bit.
valve/nvidia just broke the ingame monitor refreshrate compatibility my 170hz monitor is limited to 120hz on 16:9