There’s a brand new SteamOS Beta on the town. The brand new 3.9.6 Beta comes with some much-appreciated upgrades, to not point out everybody’s favourite “Safety and stability updates”. In the event you’re sticking to the Secure channel, you’ll have to attend for a follow-up Secure patch, however you may all the time change to the Beta in Settings > System > System Replace Channel in case you want to expertise the marginally extra bleeding-edge model.
The stand-out change is an enchancment to border timing, with or with out Variable Refresh Price (VRR). It’s vital to say that the Steam Deck doesn’t help VRR on both of its (LCD or OLED) fashions, however it’s supported in SteamOS so long as you’ve got an exterior monitor with the characteristic. Valve describes a selected state of affairs that might trigger a sport working at 30 FPS to drop to 24 FPS when the body limiter was turned on and set to 60 FPS whereas utilizing a 120Hz show. This type of challenge is now fastened thanks to border timing enhancements.
Within the case of fastened refresh charges, Valve has additionally pushed a repair that may scale back the variety of dropped frames attributable to “gradual wakeups from deep CPU idle states”. Different fixes embody higher help for 240Hz or higher displays, a repair to deal with black display points in RPG Maker video games, and inexperienced display points on Steam Distant Play with Nvidia GPUs. For the total 3.9.6 Beta patch notes, see under.
Newest tech offers.
Costs right as of November fifth, 2026.
SteamOS 3.9.6 Beta patch notes
Normal
- Safety and stability updates.
- Improved body timing when utilizing the framerate limiter with VRR.
- Improved body timing when utilizing the framerate limiter with out VRR. A capped sport whose framerate is a a number of of the restrict now not drops under it, e.g. a 30 FPS sport with a 60 FPS restrict at 120 Hz working at 24 FPS.
- Lowered missed frames on fastened refresh brought on by gradual wakeups from deep CPU idle states.
- Mounted a black display in RPG Maker video games utilizing Fullscreen++, comparable to Waste Walkers.
- Mounted video games working under the refresh price on 240 Hz and better shows.
- Mounted Steam Distant Play exhibiting a inexperienced display on NVIDIA GPUs.
- Mounted left click on getting caught after a two-finger faucet on the touchscreen.
- Mounted SDR content material trying oversaturated on HDR10 output on shows that aren’t huge gamut.
- Mounted gamemode and different LD_PRELOAD libraries breaking when launched by means of gamescope.
- Mounted a number of uncommon crashes and reminiscence errors on shutdown and when purchasers exit.
Desktop Mode
- Mounted a regression the place scripts couldn’t be added utilizing “Add to Steam”
SteamOS 3.9.6 Beta patch notes, through Steam
