TLDR: Does anyone know what hardware is necessary to force Sunshine to stream to a Steam Deck at 1280 x 800 @ 90FPS? Can any monitor be forced to support this if it supports higher resolutions and FPS or will a dummy HDMI dongle work?

So I’ve been trying to get Sunshine and Moonlight streaming working on my Deck. I’ve got them working at 60 FPS, but what I’ve seen indicates 90FPS will be harder and is a deck specific use case. I’m posting here as I imagine this will be a common question in a couple of days even though it primarily focuses on Sunshine/monitor hardware as opposed to the Steam Deck itself.

I’ve worked through Sunshine’s Documentation on my Desktop and can get it to change the resolution when streaming to my laptop to QHD+, but the issue I ran into is that my TV (CX Oled) doesn’t show 1280 x 800 @ 90FPS as a supported output resolution.

Does anyone know if there is a way to force any generic TV to support that resolution for streaming, will it depend on the monitor, or if I’m missing something obvious with this setup that makes special monitor configuration not necessary?

I’ve also been looking at getting an HDMI dummy receiver and configuring Sunshine to use that as I’v read that they can be configured to any output, but I haven’t tried one myself yet and none of the listing indicate that functionality which I would imagine they would if they could. Does anyone know if that is possible?

  • Low_Buddy_7773@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Would like to know too, for some reason mine is at like a odd 68 fps, lmao but it is legion go with my host with a hdmi dongle but at a 2560x1600. So I am hoping I can get 90hz on 1280x800 with steamdeck. Not sure what would be stopping it

  • Nequit@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I am also interested in this, maybe someone can recommend a HDMI dummy plug for streaming 800P@90Hz HDR content.

  • yubario@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    If you are unable to get your display to support 90hz you really only have two options.

    1. Order an HDMI dummy plug that supports at minimum HDMI 2.0 spec, that way you can add 120hz to it (as long as it advertises 4k 60fps, you can add up to 4k 120hz at 4:2:0 which is what Sunshine and GFE encodes at anyway)
    2. Disable V-Sync and apply a frame limiter at 90fps, this works in nearly all modern games thanks to the new swap chain API which basically allows borderless windowed mode to work like fullscreen mode.
      1. Older games may not allow you to turn off Vsync without first going into fullscreen though
        1. If you have Windows 11 22H2, there is a new feature that allows old games to run on the new swap chain API I believe it is called optimize windowed mode for games.
        2. If you don’t have Windows 11, you can use a third party tool called SpecialK, but it is not very userfriendly and is considered a hack tool, so don’t use against games with anticheat.

    Disabling VSYNC works because the way Sunshine and GFE both capture the screen is through the **framebuffer**, not exactly the display itself. So as long as the game is running at 90 frames, you can stream at 90hz on your client without troubles.

    There are also several scripts you can install to automate swapping resolutions and screens (if using a dummy plug) here: https://github.com/nonary