PC gaming with SteamOS on Android: Nubia RedMagic 11 Pro tested with DroidDeck

Thanks to DroidDeck, you can now run full-fledged SteamOS on Android. The app, which is still in active development, allows users to install Steam games as well as PC apps like the RPCS3 PS3 emulator on Android-based systems powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs. 

ETA Prime has now tested how well SteamOS and PC game emulation works on a flagship Android smartphone. The YouTuber ran DroidDeck on the Nubia RedMagic 11 Pro. Powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, 16 GB of RAM, and water cooling, the Nubia RedMagic 11 Pro is a pretty good test device for DroidDeck.

Looking at the performance on offer, ETA Prime measured an average of 60 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 running at 720p with medium settings. While the performance is not completely stable, this does show that the latest flagship Android SoCs have enough horsepower to emulate PC games with good performance.

The same was true for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition. The Nubia RedMagic 11 Pro with SteamOS can run the game at 60 FPS at 720p resolution and medium settings. Left4Dead 2, a game released in 2009, played much better and reportedly ran at 120 FPS at 720p resolution with high settings.

ETA Prime also showed the Nubia RedMagic 11 Pro running Ghost of Tsushima at an average of 48 FPS at 720p with medium settings. This is quite impressive, as, unlike Skyrim and Left4Dead 2, Ghost of Tsushima is a modern AAA game. FSR Frame Gen pushed the framerate to 60 FPS.

As expected, not every game runs perfectly using DroidDeck on Android. Hogwarts Legacy, for instance, is quite demanding and couldn’t even hold a steady 30 FPS on the RedMagic 11 Pro at 720p/medium. We suspect the game might reach a playable FPS on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, since the latest Adreno iGPUs promise huge performance gains.

All in all, it is quite exciting to see projects like DroidDeck. Modern Android devices have enough horsepower to do some serious gaming.

Fawad Murtaza - Senior Tech Writer - 1750 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2021

I am Fawad, a fellow tech nerd. As a tech junkie, my relationship with technology goes back to my childhood years. Getting my first Intel Pentium 4 PC was the start of journey that would eventually bring me to Notebookcheck. Finally, I have been writing for tech media since 2018. From small no-name projects to industry leaders, I have worked with a number of tech publications.