this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2025
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~~MicroSD cards are crazy slow compared to all other storage, this doesnt seem like a good idea~~
I had a chance to test Watch Dogs Legion on my fastest SD card (Samsung, v30, 170MB/s read, 130MB/s write) and it was perfectly playable, even cranked to ultra. So I take back my assertion.
I guess my camera software must just be crazy slow, because im more used to real world 20MB/s read.
I will still assert that you need a good high speed card reader, I have seen some cheapo ones that are garbage, but given Valve has full control of that, shouldn't be a problem.
Manufacturers have wildly oversold you on how much speed you need to run a game. I use my SD card for almost all of my games on my steam deck none of them have any problems loading none of them load slowly.
Games are very good about preloading assets before they're needed
Microsoft is at least partly responsibile for this. Modern Windows loves to dominate your hard drive with background tasks that you didn't ask for, to the point of leaving foreground tasks starved for I/O.
I find Linux to be superior in this area, and I often run modern games from a slow mechanical hard drive with no trouble at all. It's unsurprising that your Steam Deck does just fine with an SD card.
Yeah, I have Steam installed on an SSD in my Kubuntu machine, but it's kinda small, so I have the library pointing to an internal 2Gb HDD. It runs RDR2 flawlessly.