XCOM-2 performance and thoughts on performance in general.

[zBeeble]

With a portable machine, I find myself optimising for different goals. XCOM-2 is a fine study for this. By defualt, the game is very hungry. On my big desktop, it draws almost as much power as a modern FPS --- Horizon Zero Dawn, for instance. Clearly, much of this is wasted, but it's pretty none-the-less.

On the Deck, XCom-2 draws between 18 and 25 watts... giving the battery a 1.5 hour ... or a bit less ... life. Nothing compared to the 450 watts my desktop eats --- but again: different goals.

Now... I already limited the framerate to 30fps. I'm unsure of the refresh setting ... as I assumed the screen only refreshed with new rendered frames. I'm somewhat reticent to lower that to 15fps --- as I enjoy the fluid animation in the game. Both the deadpool and the yatzee voice packs are continuously amusing me. I'd hate to damage that.

My ask: what types of settings give the most "bang" for the battery "buck?" ... are lower textures a power saver? Various types of AA? I know that every game is an island, but has anyone noticed any commonalities in battery optimization?

[@R+5]

i dont own a deck, but my guess is you are right about "lower textures = more battery", which also be true of lower polys, and anything that would need the gpu. im not sure if there a simple way to also limit cpu in the deck, but how fast it needs to go should relate to how much power it "eats".

as side note, if some modders could create a collection of mods to decrease the quality of image in xcom2, even at the risk of making it look really ugly, those with low spec machines (and also the deck) would be able to improve performance (and battery life). rather than replacing models with more simplified ones, maybe theres a way to force lower rendering quality, without "going too far" (still that option could be useful for the deck, if the levels and everything else can allow to play without "all the bells and whistles")

i do have xcom 2, and have played it with a 2gb ddr3 gpu in linux. it runs ok, as long as i dont use the highest settings (i like to play with many mods).