I have a gaming pc with a 4090 in the other room. I never really stream to the deck, but I’m wondering if that’s how I should be playing the games all the time?
Would it make a big difference with the 90hz OLED steam deck?
I live in a small studio apartment with 2 Amazon Eero mesh routers at a 500mbps download speed.
Streaming with Moonlight off my 3060ti desktop is absolutely incredible. I cannot perceive any latency and only have to deal with very rare hitches. I tested RDR2, Control, and FO76 over the weekend with this setup and I’m shocked at how well it works. The games run at 90fps/high settings with 1440p downscaled to 720p on the Deck. Looks and runs beautiful, especially for RDR2.
The input latency improvements due to the new OLED display are a massive improvement over the LCD and this translates very well for streaming.
I also got Moonlight to talk to Playnite so I can launch Playnite from my Deck and have every single installed game on my desktop PC from any storefront ready to stream within 15 seconds. It also works for streaming emulated games.
My 2 cents, if your internet is good and you are using the Deck at home there is absolutely no reason to not play pretty much everything streamed.
Minor correction: if your intranet is good. Your internet speeds don’t mean anything other than for downloading the games.
Poor networking knowledge here. I have the tplink ax3000 mesh system set up as APs. Is this good enough intranet lol
I’m actually only very surface level knowledgeable with networking. I will say that you have a Wifi 6 router so I’d be surprised if it wasn’t pretty decent.
If you are waiting on a Deck, try the Steam Link app on your phone and just see how it is from PC. If it works great for the phone, bet it works great for the deck!
internet too. i take my steam deck to my friends house and stream my home pc to the deck on a tv stream at 4k 60.
I stream most games just to save battery.
I think it’s a case by case situation. For example, I loved streaming Death Stranding from my PC (3080Ti) to the deck far more than playing it natively. But it’s a slower paced title where streaming lag wasn’t an issue.
My OLED SD arrives on Wednesday. I plan to stream Grim Dawn to the deck not cause the deck can’t run it. More so Item Assistant can store my items. I’ll probably use moonlight to gain easier access to my PC and item assistant to deliver those items to my stash.
I don’t have a PC in the other room, can I stream from yours?
Depends. It’s a decent brand of adult diapers.
Depends if you pay the electricity bill :)
My PC is on ethernet, my steam deck wifi.
If i’m playing at home, i’m streaming from my PC using Moonlight. There’s no reason not to IMO. No latency, better graphics, less heat, less battery usage.
This all depends on your connection of course. I have gigabit which helps.
I agree, although I think there are valid reasons not to sometimes.
-
Power consumption, the deck might not use a lot of current but the 4090 will for sure haha
-
Slightly less straightforward, you need to care about streaming resolution, active display, hdr (deactivating it usually) and stuff like that
-
Some games might not have cloud saves and that means you’ll have to choose between local or streaming (or setup some kind of sync yourself)
imo it’s worth it but I also enjoy the process so I’m biased. I always find it magical to be able to do that.
-
Best reason not to is you can’t suspend/resume when streaming. And also streaming can be really finicky.
Except for HDR !
All I want for Christmas is moonlight to support HDR on the OLED deck
Agree, I pretty much exclusively stream if I’m at home. I leave my PC on 24/7 for jellyfin anyways so connecting to moonlight is perfect for me 100% of the time. It’s incredible how much better moonlight feels than steam remote play on my network. It’s like magic
The value of the use case depends, in theory it should be better and any 5-25ms delay is justifiable if the game looks nicer, runs at 90fps, and is not making your battery die in 80 minutes. I havent tried moonlight before but Steam streaming and also PS5 remote play work decently well. PS5 remote play is not something that I use because of a lack of native linux support, its hard to get a high quality low latency set up even with a good connection
I’m planning on streaming when home, and using the synced cloud saves for my commute.
It’s a win win.
I only do for game that actually make a difference, but even using steam link i haven’t really gotten that much lag.
I do this OP. I personally find that moonlight / sunshine work significantly better than steam remote play but this could be purely anecdotal. I also have barely noticable latency.
I work from home and sometimes I just don’t wanna sit at my desk any longer after sitting there all day. I’m in an apartment so I don’t have the luxury yet of having an office that I can decouple from my gaming setup.
I will say tho, if you can play a game native on your deck do it. But when you wanna crank things to the max, go for the remote play.
Ive been playing cyberpunk maxed out on a 7950x3d / 4090 streaming to my deck oled and I couldn’t be happier.
I will say tho, if you can play a game native on your deck do it. But when you wanna crank things to the max, go for the remote play.
This is basically my thought process as well. If the game can run well on deck, indie, and platformer games, I’ll run from the deck. If the game is large, 80+gb, or very demanding, AAA, then ill stream it.
How’s the audio through moonlight?
No complaints. Maybe the occasional hiccup where its a little bit distorted for a second but its not that common
I want to do this, why do you have to run sunshine and moonlight combo?
I bought the deck for the primary reason of streaming from my rig, but since I travel, having games that run on the deck is great. Also, I get a lot of games through game pass which streams well. Visually, it will look better as you can run the game on the rig on ultra, configure moonlight to stream at 1080p, and it will look awesome on the oled screen. Maybe not 90hz, but good enough for something that small.
I’ve been holding off on Moonlight for my OLED for now, mostly out of laziness. But I’m curious, have they added the ability to stream in HDR for the OLED decks yet?
Not yet, devs have confirmed they’re looking into it though
If you’re going to stream from your 4090 to your deck and dock it to the TV, why would you not just plug the 4090 rig into the TV? You’re just adding latency.
This also. My rig is in the room above the home theater, so hdmi directly to it. Other TVs use the moonlight app, and the deck is used to stream when TVs are not available or I am watching TV and gaming at the same time.
Not always, but youd be a fool not to for tripple a games. Be a bit silly to stream stardew valley for example imo.
The latency is surprisingly good compared to what I expected.