Valve has loosened AMD’s handheld grip by giving SteamOS some early support for Intel Arc graphics.
According to HotHardware Valve appears to have noticed that dependence on a single supplier is not a good idea and started widening SteamOS beyond AMD-powered handhelds.
The latest move adds some support for Intel Arc GPUs to Valve’s customised Arch Linux distribution. After first mention, Chipzilla’s graphics now seem to have at least a foot in the SteamOS door.
The evidence comes from Reddit users installing SteamOS on desktops with discrete Arc GPUs, plus ETA Prime testing the MSI Claw 8 AI+ Lunar Lake handheld.
Reddit user SaperPL tested 12 games on an Arc B580, with mixed results. Cyberpunk 2077 and Spider-Man Remastered reportedly ran well, but other titles delivered about half the expected performance.
Other users in the thread reported similar weirdness. Some suggested using a modified version of Proton or waiting for SteamOS to move to a newer Linux kernel.
Valve’s SteamOS 3.8.7 beta patch notes mention MSI Claw support, which is a useful hint about where this is heading. Chipzilla’s Xe driver has been one of the busier bits of Linux kernel work lately. SteamOS 3.8.7 beta is based on Linux 6.16, while Linux 6.17 should bring more graphics improvements.
Those changes include continued Battlemage work, virtualisation features and refinements to variable refresh rate handling. Recent kernels have added Shared Virtual Memory support, better telemetry, expanded DisplayPort features and plenty of stability fixes for newer Arc and integrated Xe graphics.
Given how quickly Chipzilla’s Linux graphics stack is changing, SteamOS teething trouble is hardly shocking.
ETA Prime found the same sort of thing after installing SteamOS 3.8.7 beta on the MSI Claw 8 AI+. That handheld uses an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V with Arc 140V graphics. The hardware has improved on Windows since early reviews, but SteamOS is not yet fully cooked on the device.
The left-hand menu button does not open the Steam interface. SteamOS cannot natively control the Intel chip’s power targets either, so users need third-party plugins such as Simple Decky TDP. That means manually managing wattage and toggling turbo boost. Gaming performance was inconsistent, partly because of wonky power management. The Witcher 3 ran much worse on SteamOS than it did on Windows.
Still, this is early support rather than a finished platform. Chipzilla’s Windows graphics drivers were a bit of a clown car when the Arc A770 launched less than four years ago, but they have improved quickly. If that progress carries into Linux, Arc G3 handhelds running SteamOS could stop looking like a science project before the year is out.
