Best steam deck settings?

[YS - _ _ _]

This game is listed as verified, but.... Maybe I'm just using wrong settings? Performance is horrible. The only way of playing this game smoothly is turning every possible setting down to lowest option possible.

[Katitoff]

Performance is horrible on high end pcs as well.
Default settings are workable on deck for me, but, to a surprise of no one - the game was not optimized.

They wanted to optimized in beta and they skipped beta.

[YS - _ _ _]

So, some dude was "testing" this, and then he was all like - "Hey! This game works super well with no problems at all! Smoothest fps and no stuttering!". This is like damn Dead Space remake, but I think the performance is much worse there, yet they still marked it as verified. It's like people are getting paid to just simply mark these games as playable...
A good example of a truly verified game would be Cyberpunk. They even did a graphic preset named as "Steam Deck"

[TheChoccoBiccy09]

I can’t vouch for anyone but myself, but if anything the games performance has gotten BETTER for me on release.
Albeit, the graphics aren’t anything to swoon over, but I’ll take that if that means +30 fps compared to my previous A20 save.
I’m also running it on a 5/6 year old mid tier pc, so I think it’s really just down to fiddling with the settings to see what works best.

[minisithe]

It is theshadows settings that is the worst offender imo. Turn shadows down. It plays with minimal hitching on the Deck. I leave mine plugged in with TDP at max power setting.

[minisithe]

AA off, Texture Quality half, texture filter Ultra+, shadows distance low, particles 100%, view distance high, LOD distance 100%, terrain quality ultra, water quality low, grass distance low (might be able to raise this), object quality ultra, and every setting not mentioned is turned off.

[minisithe]

I even have dynamic mesh enabled at 2000 distance. It runs from 35 to 60 fps. Could be tuned further but im happy with this so far.

[FT]

I've heard some Linux/macOS folks mentioning the Vulcan version being a lot nicer than it used to be, and it's typically been more performant than OpenGL (I'm assuming the usual DX11 isn't an option on SteamDeck unless you're booting Windows?).

[Finiquitao]

DX11 on linux: A few days ago, a hidden update broken something in latest EXP, but before with proton, over a Debian 12, it was working very nice (with full fps limitations to avoid overheating problems, it set vsync to half barely warms up, even though it doesn't seem to do anything, it still runs at 60fps instead of the 30fps it should, no idea haha). But it will depend on the drivers and graphics card, on the Steam Deck you would have to test if it also works and keep what works best.

[YS - _ _ _]

Originally posted by minisithe:

AA off, Texture Quality half, texture filter Ultra+, shadows distance low, particles 100%, view distance high, LOD distance 100%, terrain quality ultra, water quality low, grass distance low (might be able to raise this), object quality ultra, and every setting not mentioned is turned off.

That worked, Thanks!

[FT]

Originally posted by YS - _ _ _:

Originally posted by minisithe:

AA off, Texture Quality half, texture filter Ultra+, shadows distance low, particles 100%, view distance high, LOD distance 100%, terrain quality ultra, water quality low, grass distance low (might be able to raise this), object quality ultra, and every setting not mentioned is turned off.

That worked, Thanks!

If that works, then you should be able to adjust a few things to get it nicer-looking at similar performance:

In the MainMenu (NOT while paused in-game) set
-ViewDistance MEDIUM
-TerrainQuality MEDIUM
-Occlusion ON

The rest of these can be adjusted from menu or paused in-game and still get full effects:
-AA-FSR LOW (with sharpness 100%)
-TextureFilter HIGH
-ReflectionQuality LOW
-ReflectedShadows ON
-ShadowDistance MEDIUM
-WaterQuality HIGH
-GrassDistance HIGH
-ObjectQuality HIGH (helps city performance a lot compared to ULTRA)
-SSAO ON (helps the buildings look less flat/2D, especially indoors)

After applying all that, see if
-ShadowQuality LOW
hits performance too hard or if you still get enough FPS....might need to leave it OFF.


My weaker/older Intel laptop iGPU can handle all this at ~35fps@800x1280res and the SteamDeck is almost 2X faster in 15w mode so it should be able to hold 60fps unless there's something else slowing it down.