Valve: Impact of PCIe 3.0 x2 SSD instead of x4 SSD for Steam Deck is minor

According to Valve, users will hardly notice the use of a PCIe 3.0 x2 SSD instead of a PCIe 3.0 x4 variant for the Steam Deck. That comment follows the observation that the company uses two different SSDs for the handheld.

Internal testing of the Steam Deck with the two different SSDs revealed that no noticeable difference in performance† That is what the designer of the handheld at Valve, Lawrence Yang, claims against PCGamer. Only in extremely special cases could the differences in read and write speeds have an impact on transfer speeds. “But OS performance, load times, game performance, and game responsiveness are identical between the x2 and x4 drives,” Yang tries to reassure.

The designer’s statement follows Hardwareluxx’s statement that buyers of the Steam Deck since the end of May can look forward to different variants† Valve appears to supply models with PCIe 3.0 x2 SSD and PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs, both in the 256GB and 512GB variant.

Originally, Valve announced that the Steam Deck would ship with a PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD, but the company tweaked this on the product site to reflect the changes. Buyers do not know in advance which version they will get. The reason the company now offers models with a PCIe 3.0 x2 SSD is probably to ensure the supply of sufficient SSDs and increase production. At the beginning of this week, the company announced that it would be able to deliver twice as many Steam Decks starting this week.