Severe Stutter on Low Battery / Reboot to Fix

[shaunbudhram]

I’m having an issue where, when the battery drops somewhere below 20%, the Steam Deck will eventually start stuttering (audio & video) and the FPS will drop to around 10. I turned on the performance monitor and it looks like what’s happening is that the GPU MHz gets locked to 200, and the all the CPU MHz get locked to 399. I’m guessing this is for battery saving? Can I turn this off? I want my deck to be smooth and fluid until the moment it dies.

Here are some images/videos. The first 3 are stats right when it starts happening. Even after quitting the game, the interface lags terribly. If I plug in and reboot, it behaves fine (the last screenshot is plugged in, after a reboot).

Note that I'm only seeing this when playing Nioh, but the fact that the symptom persists even after quitting the game lead me to believe it's a system problem.

I have the best version of the deck, and am on the latest stable software (3.4.8, build 20230508.1)

https://share.icloud.com/photos/085JMFxAnFAyMaaaVgk3KQtFQ

[-Roldi-]

Got the same Problem, just below 25% battery level

[Ronin_Matt]

I have the same problem too, any progress with a fix?

[Kosmo零]

Some peoples telling that the only way to fix it is RMA. That's hardware problem.

[Mystic2196]

I've also started to experience this when playing elden ring in particular and the only partial solution I've found is holding the power button for 10 seconds and turning back on but when the battery gets low again it still will lag and play at 10 fps

[kudos72]

Same. Is it really an RMA issue?

[just4fun]

Same here ...

[kudos72]

Some extra feedback on this. I've been chatting with Steam support and they asked if it was every game and how frequently.
I can reproduce it reliably with Baldurs Gate 3 but the only other game I play that really hammers the Deck is Cyberpunk which I can't reproduce it with.
I've managed to work around the problem by setting the max power draw to 11 and been ramping up to see if what the highest setting is.

Seems to be a pretty common problem though:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/vik07g/steam_deck_suddenly_super_slow/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/v0gwiq/cpu_throttling_to_400mhz_and_not_resolving/

100% not the cable in my situation as it's not even plugged in,

[just4fun]

Hmmm for sure in Divinity Original Sin 2, Witecher 3, Days Gone.

[RedBaronK™]

Any resolution to this or updates? Is it always 25 percent for everyone or different numbers it starts? If it's 25 for everyone involved, I'm gonna guess some sort of a throttling mechanism kicks in to conserve battery?

[kudos72]

Originally posted by RedBaronK™:

Any resolution to this or updates? Is it always 25 percent for everyone or different numbers it starts? If it's 25 for everyone involved, I'm gonna guess some sort of a throttling mechanism kicks in to conserve battery?

No resolution my end.

My latest theory is it's a max power draw but for CPU heavy games.

Some people online are saying it's a firmware bug where the fan switches off if one of the sensors hits a certain temperature which is more likely when the battery, CPU and GPU have been getting hammered for a while.

[just4fun]

Today i try to wake up steam deck after starting sleeping mode on 1% battery https://youtu.be/zapXCUY0xpY?si=MuUj2P0IREfgmY1o
I have to restart steam deck...

[kudos72]

Originally posted by just4fun:

Today i try to wake up steam deck after starting sleeping mode on 1% battery https://youtu.be/zapXCUY0xpY?si=MuUj2P0IREfgmY1o
I have to restart steam deck...

Exactly what I see in bg3.

[Mystic2196]

Since the latest update, I had it again in elden ring where it slowed down when the battery got to 10% however after a couple of seconds it recovered again and played normal which hasn't happened before.

[LtValle]

I had this issue when I got my deck and it happened on 25% battery. Now it's worse, I can't play it unplugged on full battery because it'll start throttling in like 5 mins of gameplay. That's even playing Skyrim. I notice the fan speed lowers during this. Hope a solution comes up.

[Kacpa Shade | Salt King]

Fromy my side i tried everything options wise, reset bios, factory default, recommended setting only RMA helped no issues at all after new one.