Can Steam Deck Run Windows 11?

Valve's portable gaming PC, the Steam Deck, has been sold to the gaming community as a full-fledged personal computer. Accordingly, while the device was built to work with Windows 10, many are curious if the Steam Deck will work with Windows 11.

Will the Steam Deck Support Windows 11?

Credit: Microsoft

The short answer is yes, but when this will come, and how, isn't certain. Valve has gone on record saying they don't foresee any major issues with Windows 11 compatibility on Steam Deck, and they've mentioned they're working with the TPM on Deck (a key minimum requirement for Windows 11), so everything looks good for Windows 11 compatibility at launch.

However, the world doesn't yet know how exactly Windows 11 will launch and if it will be an easy process installing Windows 11 on all devices that meet the minimum system requirements. So, while it's very likely Windows 11 will run on the Steam Deck, how well it will run or how easy a process it will be to get it running remains to be seen.

Although, there are already workarounds for running Windows 11 on computers that don't support TPM 2.0, so it's also possible even if official Windows 11 support doesn't come immediately to Deck that you could get the OS running on Deck anyways.

You won't need Windows 11 to run emulators on Deck, which you can use to bring Nintendo games to Deck. Though, if you want to play Nintendo's mobile offerings on Deck, then Windows 11's native Android app support would come in handy.

Is Windows 11 Worth Running on Steam Deck?

Credit: Valve

Before benchmarks are released for Microsoft's new operating system's launch version, nobody can say for sure if the Steam Deck would majorly benefit from running Windows 11 over Windows 10. Though, all the evidence beforehand suggests that benefits to performance will be slight, so there isn't a major need for Steam Deck to actually run Windows 11.

In terms of Windows 10 itself, while Steam Deck supports the OS, it also remains to be seen how well the device will run it. Windows is a much more resource-intensive system than Valve's Linux setup for the Steam Deck.

So, while you'll likely get better performance in a game running it natively on Windows than on Linux with Steam Deck, you'll probably be getting worse performance running Windows as opposed to Linux, as the relatively lightweight Steam Deck doesn't have a lot of power to spare to dedicate to the underlying operating system.

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