Steam Remote Play Pyrowave Codec: Beta Setup, Bandwidth Needs and Latency Trade-Offs

What Valve actually shipped​

Valve added an experimental video codec called Pyrowave to Steam Remote Play, shipping it in the Steam Client Preview/Beta channel on September 21, 2026. Hans-Kristian Arntzen created it, and Valve describes it as a high bandwidth, low latency codec. It is switched off by default. You turn it on in the Remote Play advanced client settings.

On the platform side:

• It is available in the Steam beta on Windows and macOS. Linux needs the experimental SteamRT3 client, which you enable in System Settings.
• Valve's pinned post was later edited to say the Steam Link app beta for Apple and Android devices now has it too.
• A Valve developer clarified that it is for flat-screen Remote Play streaming only, not Steam Link VR.
• Both the host and the client need to be on the beta. The XDA author says both devices must be enrolled to use the codec.

The trade-off: bandwidth for consistency​

Conventional streaming codecs such as H.264, HEVC and AV1 squeeze bitrate by predicting motion between frames. Pyrowave doesn't. It processes each frame independently and skips motion prediction and conventional DCT-based compression.

The cost is bandwidth. Valve says Pyrowave uses 5-10 times the bandwidth of other streaming codecs, so you should connect your computers directly to your router with at least Gigabit Ethernet.

The benefits are consistency and speed. Tom's Hardware says quality is very consistent from frame to frame, and error resilience is excellent. It adds that the codec runs on the GPU's shader array rather than the video engine, which gives very low latency. That matches the XDA author's main complaint about older codecs: smearing when the whole screen changes at once, like a fast pan across foliage.

This is not a free lunch, and Tom's Hardware doesn't claim it is. It notes the codec performs worse on most quality-per-bit efficiency metrics than conventional codecs. At a high enough bitrate, though, the differences stop mattering. That's why the XDA author concedes that HEVC is still the more efficient codec bit for bit and still prefers Pyrowave on a wired network.

The author's setup and results​

These are one person's impressions, not lab results. Ty Sherback at XDA Developers reports:

• A desktop with an RTX 5080 streaming 4K at 120 Hz with the bitrate set to 500 Mbps.
• Clients were a wired couch PC and laptops on 5 GHz Wi-Fi.
• Controller games felt especially good from the couch. He names Rocket League, GTA V and EA Sports FC 27.
• Streaming Escape From Tarkov and Battlefield 6 to a mini PC still showed 10 to 20 ms of latency. He says Pyrowave helps, but you can still tell the image is streamed.
• Moonlight and Parsec remain useful for thin clients that can't run Steam properly or can't handle the bandwidth.

He also points out that Moonlight can match most of these settings on paper, including HDR, 4:4:4 chroma and bitrates up to 500 Mbps. So the case for Pyrowave isn't that those features are missing elsewhere. The argument is about how the picture holds up in motion on a large display, and that is subjective.

Independent corroboration​

Tom's Hardware ran a short test streaming Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis from a desktop to a Lenovo Legion Go S. It measured Pyrowave at about 210 megabits per second on default settings. It found the stream noticeably more responsive than the usual Remote Play, with excellent image quality, especially with 4:4:4 turned on. The test had limits. The host was an RTX 5070 Ti with streaming capped at 120 FPS, and the outlet couldn't tell whether GPU overhead was a problem.

Tom's Hardware also noted that user reports in the Steam discussions say it works fine on a solid Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 connection. That fits the XDA author's wireless experience, though Valve's official recommendation is still wired Gigabit.

The 500 Mbps figure is already out of date​

The author's 500 Mbps setting matches the range in Valve's original announcement. With automatic bitrate turned off, Valve said you could set a specific bitrate between 100 and 500 Mbit/s. A later beta changed that. According to Valve's October 1 beta notes on the Steam Deck announcements page:

• The manual Pyrowave bitrate can now go up to 1 Gbit/s, with a note that more bandwidth increases latency.
• The Pyrowave bitrate was reset to the automatic default.
• A bug that gradually increased video latency on slow network links was fixed.
• Audio dropouts with Pyrowave were reduced.
• Automatic bitrate calculation was improved for quality.

Later beta builds also made Remote Play changes. These include a fix for dropping to a very low bitrate when hardware decoding is disabled, an automatic fallback to H.264 if HEVC isn't available, and a fix for crashes when using a controller in streaming dialogs.

How to try it​

1. Put both the host PC and the client on the Steam beta. For Linux, enable the experimental SteamRT3 client first.
2. Connect both machines to your router over Gigabit Ethernet if you can.
3. Open the Remote Play advanced client settings and enable Pyrowave.
4. Leave automatic bitrate on to start. Valve says the stream normally targets visual quality, and a quality slider affects bandwidth directly.
5. Turn on the performance graph in Remote Play settings while streaming. Valve defines total latency as encode plus network plus decode plus display, so the graph shows where your time is going.
6. Enable YUV 4:4:4 only if you need it. Valve says it costs slightly more bandwidth and processing time, and suggests it for desktop streaming or reading text on a 4K display. HDR is selected automatically if both ends support it.

If it doesn't help, that's an expected outcome. Valve itself says your setup may or may not benefit, because total latency is codec time plus network time.

Caveats​

• Local network only. Tom's Hardware stresses that Pyrowave is strictly intended for your local network, not the internet. It also warns that heavy streaming could disrupt other people on a busy LAN.
• Still beta. Valve calls it experimental, and the changelog since launch shows active fixes.
• More bandwidth isn't automatically better. Valve's own note says higher manual bitrates increase latency.
• Streaming is still streaming. The XDA author's 10 to 20 ms in competitive shooters is his own measurement on his own gear. Treat it as an anecdote, not a benchmark.

Bottom line​

Pyrowave is a sensible bet for home networks. Gigabit is common, and codec efficiency matters less than predictable image quality and fast encoding. If your games are in Steam, both ends can run the beta, and you have a wired or very solid wireless link, it's worth a try. If you rely on non-Steam clients, thin hardware or constrained networks, Moonlight and Parsec still earn their place. And if you do switch, check the performance graph rather than trusting anyone's feel for it, including mine.