Steam Deck Troubleshooting help for severe stuttering and 'scratchy' sound playback

[Silvercourage]

I am having severe game stuttering and 'scratchy' sound playback. My steam software update says "up to date". I have tried a number of green dot games but get same results.

My youtube name is CamoflagedTumbleweed and I upload some videos to show the problems. I can tell when it is going to start lagging or freeze entirely when I hear a 'scratchy' sound. I have examples from two green dot games, Ascent (which won't open at all,) and Stick of Truth which will play fine for awhile and then starts a stuttering lag/scratchy volume.

I am not downloading in the background and I show my settings in my video: Steam Deck Troubleshooting 02

Steam Deck Troubleshooting 01: https://youtu.be/4ThYxSdzKFMv
Steam Deck Troubleshooting 02: https://youtu.be/cR84QIDU12o
Steam Deck Troubleshooting 03: https://youtube.com/shorts/0ITPle2ZxdU?feature=share

Thank you in advance for anyone having any tips, settings, ideas, or things I should check. Thanks in advance!

[Silvercourage]

P.s. the point at which it happens in games is random. Sometimes a game will run fine for about 5-10 minutes, and then start stuttering/lag and scratchy volume sounds. Usually it happens in the first 2-3 minutes. I have checked my steam software, tried limiting frames to 30, and also tried power on/off, sleep, and full reset too. Problem remains. Thanks again for any ideas.

[Xedhadeaus]

I have no clue. I think for me, whatever stuttering I have had with the deck was solved with putting the GPU speed at 700. I needed that for Megaman 11 to work smoothly. I think a game I have to get my head around not working is dragon quest builders 2. I played it a few minutes and it was chop city.

[ugafan]

I don't know about this game, but I've heard that installing Proton Ge will eliminate stuttering in some games.

[tekchip]

I hate to be that guy, but someone has to. Have you tried turning it off and back on again? Like a full shutdown and then a full power back up?

The only time I've seen/heard that kind of thing, in general not on steamdeck per say, is often when some resource is constrained. Have you installed or changed anything in desktop mode? Apparently stuff persists between desktop mode. Saw someone the other day who didn't have sound and all because things were muted in desktop mode and stayed over back to game mode. So if you installed some apps or something before the problem started maybe try removing those.

[Skidmoore]

Hi Silvercourage,

same problem here on a brand new and fully updated Steam Deck. Have you found a fix for it by any chance?

[DAKO]

Hi. Same problem here. Brand new Deck 512gb version.

Worked fine for few days. Then suddenly started experiencing severe stuttering and 'scratchy' sound in game. Then even the Steam UI started being stuttering all the time. Even when no game is running.

Tried restarting the game, the Steam, the full Deck restart, to vain. Reset all Steam settings didn't help. Stuttering is persistent. Have no clue what happened.

The only option I didn't try is Factory reset. Any help is appreciated ☺️👍

[DAKO]

Found a fix on Reddit over here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/v0gwiq/cpu_throttling_to_400mhz_and_not_resolving/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Basically the CPU get stuck at 400mhz which is really slow. Follow the instructions in the link to unlock it. And use only the original power supply.