Alex Ling

Valve published native ARM64 Steam in roughly April
2026.
 
The Steam Frame launched September 14th.
 
I built a client that installs the Steam Frame ARM64 Steam client on my RK3588 board.
 
It launches Big Picture mode and firstboot makes you get past the VR Joystick screen. You can run it as desktop mode thereafter. The CLIENT and GAME run natively, naturally on ARM*. No box64 etc workarounds. Why not try to share if I can? *panvk and vulkan are required.

This Contains:
Vulkan feature layer for Direct3D translation layer Remote Play decode settings for GPU with no Vulkan Video, Private Mesa GLX copy for multi threaded OpenGL, Controller access rules for 243 pads Memory map limit for Proton  
Only tested on my H96 Max V58, RK3588 with Mali-G610 GPU. Armbian with an open grapics stack:
 
Tested device answers: `panthor` loaded, renderer `Mali-G610 MC4 (Panfrost)`, Vulkandriver `panvk`, `ubuntu`, `4096`. 
 
**Rock 5B, Orange Pi 5 and other RK3588 boards on Armbian.** Same Mali-G610 as tested device.
Pick Ubuntu based image.
 
`current` and `edge` kernel branches are mainline and carry Panthor<--Should be fine.
 
`vendor` branch:
check `lsmod`:  If `vulkaninfo` lists no `panvk` device, stock Mesa predates PanVK in use here :-( , `kisak-mesa` PPA is where  the test device sources from.
 
 
I may be under-educated but this might be able to run on a snapdragon chip or other ARM chip in a laptop or a mac. I have no idea. I do not own those things.
I reached out to the Armbian Forums first since that is how this came about in the first place 
 
I NEED FEEDBACK!!
Get it Here:
https://github.com/Scrumpper/Steam-ARM/releases
 
This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Valve Corporation. Steam,
Proton, Steam Deck and Steam Frame are trademarks of Valve Corporation.

@KhanhDTP, I used Mangohud and it showed the GPU did go up to 1GHz in most of the time (though not all the time) and the GPU usage is ~100%. Maybe I need to test more games  
 
I did see a ~7% boost for vkmark score to ~4400

@KhanhDTP, I've tried the 1GHz GPU patch but so far I do not see much performance boost with it. I tested Silk Song, Hitman: Absolution, Mario Kart 8  

@Alex Ling dxvk-stripped 3.0.0 https://github.com/khanh-it/dxvk/actions/runs/28276103625

@KhanhDTP, thanks for the info. Great news! I'll try it. Have you tried the new dxvk 3.0 release?

@chaitan3 @Alex Ling Enable 1 GHz frequency for Panthor on mainline patch 
https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/10035

In addition, there's a develop branch for the VK_EXT_transform_feedback extension. It is another important requirement for DXVK.

@KhanhDTP There's no pull request yet but they do have a preparation PR https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/41654
 
For DQ 11S, it's about 15 fps@1080p. The FPS varies depending on the gaming scenes. You can check out my video https://b23.tv/xvsMPqD

@KhanhDTP now panvk has a in-develop geometry shader feature branch. I've tried it and some dx11 games like Dragon Quest 11S and Octopath Traveler can run.

Armbian 26.2.1 Noble XFCE (BSP Kernel: 6.1.115)
+ PanVk - 26.2.0~git2605212123.7b286abe336 (https://launchpad.net/~ernstp/+archive/ubuntu/mesaaco)
+ Box64 arm64 v0.4.3 42ae8b818 (https://ryanfortner.github.io/box64-debs/)
+ wine-proton-11.0-beta1-amd64-wow64 (https://github.com/Kron4ek/Wine-Builds/releases/download/proton-11.0-beta1/wine-proton-11.0-beta1-amd64-wow64.tar.xz)
+ DXVK-stripped v1.7.3
~40fps@1536x864
 
Borderlands
 

 

Armbian 26.05.0 Noble KDE-Plasma (Kernel: 7.1.0-rc7-bleedingedge-rockchip64)
+ PanVk - Mesa 26.2.0-devel (git-a0859b31b0)
+ Box64 arm64 v0.4.3 e694f2ca8 (https://ryanfortner.github.io/box64-debs/)
+ wine-11.9-staging-tkg-amd64-wow64 (https://github.com/Kron4ek/Wine-Builds/releases/)
+ DXVK-stripped v2.7.1
~30fps@1080p
 
Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut Edition

Tomb Raider (2013)
Armbian 26.05-trunk (Linux kernel 7.0.10-edge-rockchip64)
+ Panvk: Mesa 26.2.0-devel (git-3df406633e)
+ DXVK 2.7.1-stripped (https://github.com/khanh-it/dxvk/releases)
+ Wine: wine-11.9-staging-tkg-amd64-wow64 (https://github.com/Kron4ek/Wine-Builds/releases)
+ box64: box64-rk3588_0.4.3+20260529.5b7308f-1 (https://github.com/ryanfortner/box64-debs/)
 
~30fps@720p (default settings)
 

@KhanhDTP are you using esync of wine? NTsync is available on 6.18+ rk3588 kernels. I think that may give a performance improvement.

@KhanhDTP, that's great news! Thank you very much for the testing!

Native Steam Client For ARM Linux
https://interfacinglinux.com/community/sbcsoftware/native-steam-client-for-arm-linux/
 
I have tested: the Steam client works (+ Proton11-ARM64 works).
The memory usage was much reduced.
 

 
 
Non-Steam games also work
 

 

 

@chaitan3
It depends on the games; I have to try around to find what is best. I usually try 1.7.3, 1.10.3, 1.6.1 then 2.x versions.

@KhanhDTP gpu clock is still limited to 850mhz with 7.0. I tried to port rockchip vendor kernel clock settings but no success yet.
 
@chaitan3 The gpu can clock up to 1Ghz by hardware design but it is limited to 850mhz with mainline kernel.

@Alex Ling yeah, I have noticed it too. With Mesa (PanVk) recent updates, DX9 games can be played with Dxvk without dgVoodoo2 wrapper.

@KhanhDTP Now Call of Duty 2 can be launched with dxvk 2.7.1 + mesaaco ppa.

 

https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64/issues/3146#issuecomment-3630691360
 
Optimize is on the way, just wait!

Armbian 25.8.1 Noble XFCE (BSD Kernel: 6.1.115)
 + PanVk - mesa 25.3 (https://launchpad.net/~kisak/+archive/ubuntu/kisak-mesa)
 + box64 3.9 (https://ryanfortner.github.io/box64-debs/)
 + wine-10.19-staging-tkg-amd64-wow64 (https://github.com/Kron4ek/Wine-Builds/releases/tag/10.19)
 + DXVK-sarek-stripped v1.11.0 (https://github.com/pythonlover02/DXVK-Sarek/actions)
~60fps@1080p 
 
Cat Quest II

Armbian 25.11.1 Noble XFCE (BSD Kernel: 6.1.115)
+ Stable mesa 25.0.7
Using a native vulkan game:
Serious Sam Classics VK: https://github.com/tx00100xt/SeriousSamClassic-VK
~60fps@1080p
 

I tried Dragon Quest 11S with stripped dxvk 1.11. It failed because the panvk driver does not support Geometry Shader. There's an on-going MR https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/38401 to support it.

Thank you very much! Very useful information.