DeckSight info and updates

Specs: (As currently working in the Steam Deck)

Display Technology: AMOLED

  1. Size: 7” diagonal (slightly shorter and wider than stock)

  2. Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (up from 1280 x 800)

  3. Color Depth: 10-bit, 1.07 billion colors (up from 8-bit, 16.7 million colors)

  4. Brightness: 800 nits

  5. Surface Options:

    • Matte: Anti-glare and anti-fingerprint etched glass (similar to highest end stock LCD)

    • Gloss: Anti-fingerprint coating

  6. Refresh Rate: 60hz/75hz

  7. Contrast Ratio: > 1,000,000:1

  8. HDR: (Technically working but SteamOS has configuration issues)

Panel Capabillities (Not supported or not yet working on the Steam Deck

  • Refresh Rate: 144hz

  • Internal Upscaler:

    • Technically capable of supporting several lower, hardware scaled resolutions, like 720P

2/25/25 Updates

Refresh Rates

DeckSight is now capable of 75hz at 1080P, with 10bit color enabled. This is about the max stable refresh rate given the bandwidth limit of the MIPI interface on the Steam Deck. The EDID in the DeckSight BIOS will include 60hz and 75hz refresh rates. 10bit color is required for actual HDR support, however the panel will run fine at 8bit (typical color depth for SDR displays). At 8bit color, 80hz is stable. DeckSight will only be supplied with a BIOS that supports 10bit color. Technically, one could use a custom EDID and get a slightly higher refresh rate going. That’s not supported, just not saying it can’t be done.

Resolution

I’ve gotten some questions about using different resolutions. To clarify, DeckSight can only be run at 1080P, which is the native resolution. I think the confusion comes from monitors that have several different resolutions that can be selected in the OS. All panels only have a single, native resolution, external monitors generally have extra scaling circuitry so they can take a 720P input and scale it up to the panel’s native 1080P. Embedded displays rarely work like that, there’s rarely room inside a device or reason to add the extra circuitry. However DeckSight actually has an upscaler embedded in the panel’s display controller. This currently is not enabled, see below for info.

Color

I mentioned in one of the Crowd Supply updates that an ICC profile will be available for DeckSight and it’s easy to install. It will still be available but I was a bit mistaken about how easy it is to install. I use ICC profiles on my desktop which also runs KDE Plasma like the Steam Deck, but it runs on Wayland. Wayland has support for color management built in. The Deck Runs an older version of KDE Plasma but it runs on X11. I did install the ICC profile on my test Deck but I didn’t realize I already had out of channel packages installed like colord. So you can still install the ICC profile but you have to install colord. The problem is you have to enable other package repos to get it and they can be wiped out with SteamOS updates. SteamOS is kind of a mess for doing mods so it’s hard to recommend people do things that are a pain to deal with.

The reason the ICC profile is supplied is that X11 does not have support for 10bit displays or wide color gamut and that results in colors that are a bit oversaturated when using a non color managed environment with a wide gamut display. When using KDE Plasma over Wayland you don’t even need to use the ICC profile, you can just enable wide color gamut as it’s supported. I’m not really sure how the Steam Deck OLED deals with this at the moment since it should have the same issue but probably has some work around. I’ve been reluctant to test Bazzite since most people are likely using SteamOS but I know Bazzite runs Wayland so I think I’ll be testing it soon because I’d suspect this stuff just works since it’s probably not nearly as crippled as SteamOS

I don’t want to give the impression that color is bad on DeckSight, even without doing anything special. Without some color management or wide gammut support some colors just tend to be more bold than they ought to. It’s mostly noticeable with oranges. This is actually pretty typical when using a wide gamut display on what is essentially an outdated OS that doesn’t have support.

HDR

HDR actually is working in DeckSight, but there are a couple of issues with the Steam Deck though. The gist is that the Steam Deck’s firmware can’t easily be modified to use a larger EDID like what an EDID with the HDR extension uses. There are some workarounds, like using an external EDID but because of the strange setup SteamOS uses it’s not useful in the desktop since X11 doesn’t support HDR at all and Gamescope seems to not care about an external EDID. I have verified that when we use DeckSight on the development setups as an external monitor via USB-C alt mode, the Game Mode UI picks up HDR from the EDID and enables controls in the UI. From what I understand It’s Gamescope that deals with this. If that’s correct it’s really just a matter of Gamescope configuration or modification. Unfortunately we aren’t very familiar with how Gamescope works, but if someone involved with Gamescope has an answer, we’ll certainly try it. We don’t really test with alternative operating systems, but it’s possible that HDR may just work with Bazzite so there’s another reason why I’ll need to start testing

To be honest, it probably doesn’t make that much of a difference. HDR is one of those trigger words that makes people happy. In reality the way a decent OLED handles the difference between bright and dark areas, it basically makes up like 75% of the difference without actual HDR metadata. Everytime I play Doom Eternal I swear HDR is working when it’s actually not.

Limitations

It’s hard to talk about the bonus stuff that DeckSight has going on without people taking it as a promise that it’s going to work sooner or later. In reality the bonus stuff may never work in the Steam Deck, so you should only buy one for what it currently does. There’s a bunch of things that are possible hardware wise but the Steam Deck is not open hardware or firmware. Getting all the neat extra things working are a matter of how well we can break the EC firmware in the BIOS down and modify it.

That said, the fore mentioned bandwidth limitation on the Deck’s MIPI interface isn’t actually the end of the line. There’s a chip on the Steam Deck’s motherboard called a “MIPI bridge” The APU outputs embedded DisplayPort (eDP), the MIPI bridge turns the eDP input into MIPI lanes for the display. This MIPI bridge supports “Display Stream Compression” (DSC) on the output. It can’t use compressed data on the eDP side, but it can take uncompressed DP data and compress it internally before sending it over the MIPI interface. DeckSight also supports DSC. That means technically alot more data can be shoved down the MIPI interface with DSC than with uncompressed data. The Steam Deck does not have DSC enabled as the LCD at it’s best is well below the bandwidth limit of the MIPI interface. 90hz at 1080P easily done with DSC, unfortunately DSC is not simple to make work in the Steam Deck and documentation on the MIPI bridge is pretty hard to come by.

The upscaler mentioned above is a similar situation as DSC. It supports several scaling ratios, including x1.5 which would be 720P. In that case it would be similar to an external monitor where you can just select 720P in the display settings. Unfortunately this is no easier to get working than DSC. With DSC and the upscaler running at 720P, 144hz would easily be possible over the MIPI interface.

The plus side to all of the above is it’s pretty much all done through modifications of the firmware section in the BIOS. So if something does get implemented in the future, there’s nothing else to buy or modify, it’s just a new BIOS to flash.