Valve continues to improve the Steam Deck with arguably the most exciting part of the latest update being per-game performance profiles.

As far as features go this is one is pretty much what it says on the tin: Steam Deck owners can set unique system settings depending on the game, instead of using the same universal settings for each title.

As this is a mobile device we can see this being very useful to juggle performance versus battery life, giving users the ability to choose when to use less juice and take a performance hit to squeeze out more battery.

As we covered in a review of a game like Death Loop a while back, some games can simply be run with less details while still looking great thanks to a strong art style.

For Steam Deck owners the steps to use this new feature are available below:

• Players can now set game-specific performance settings. This feature is accessed in Quick Access Menu > Performance > Advanced View
• By default games will use the system performance settings
• If per game settings are toggled on, a profile for the currently running title is created. Any edits will be saved and automatically applied when the game is launched
• You can always toggle this off to go back to system default settings, or reset to system default settings at any time

Aside from per-game performance profiles and the usually expect bug fixes and improvements, there are some other new features in this update.

The way connecting to the Steam Deck to an external display works, for example, has been changed.

“When connected to an external display, Steam Deck interface is now scaled to virtual 1280×800 resolution (more work on this feature and functionality is underway),” the update reads.

We have to wonder if this continued work is linked to the official dock for the device, which is still in the offing.

The last part of this update that stuck out to us is that the Steam hardware survey will now pop up on the Steam Deck. On desktops and notebooks the survey is used to reveal what hardware users are running on Steam and in their games. Because the PC market is so wide with a staggering amount of combinations possible, it makes sense that this feature exists.

We’re not entirely sure what adding the survey to Steam Deck will help given that only slight variations of this device exist right now. Maybe this is a feature that will bear fruit in the future when more versions exist.

This is just some of what was included in the latest update with the rest of the patch notes available here.