A guide to Black Ops 3 Zombies on Steam Deck

Please note that only the base 14 zombies mode maps were tested for this guide.

Having trouble finding the sweet spot for performance/battery life? Tired of the constant frame stutter? This guide has you covered! After playing zombies off the Deck for 5 months, here are the best settings I have found to date to not only squeeze out a consistent performance on every map but also optimise battery life. (2hrs 40mins)

This guide is intended to increase battery life for when mobile, if playing docked or plugged remove the tdp, gpu and fps cap!

Game Steam Properties

Game Resolution: 1024x640 (This will be upscaled using FSR, allowing the visuals to stay crisp at the cost of a slightly blurrier UI and some minor geometry pop-in, most noticeable on maps with high levels of foliage such as Shang and Zet)
Set resolution for internal and external display ON

Force use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool: GE-Proton7-55 (If unavailable Experimental)

Performance Quick Settings

Framerate Limit: Off
Refresh Rate: 40
Allow Tearing: On
Half Rate Shading: Off (While improving battery life significantly, this option makes all in-game text unreadable. Not recommended under any circumstances)
TDP Limit: 6
GPU Clock Frequency: 800
Scaling Filter: FSR 5

In-Game Settings

Video: Fullscreen
Screen Resolution: 960x600
Refresh Rate: 60.000hz
Field of View: Optional
Max Frames Per Second: 45
Sync Every Frame: On
Texture Quality: Extra
Texture Filtering: Medium
Mesh Quality: Medium
Shadow Map Quality: Medium
Dynamic Shadows: Off
Subsurface Scattering: Off
Order Independent Transparency: Medium
Volumetric Lighting: Medium
Anti-Aliasing: Filmic SMAA T2x (This is necessary to mask upscaling blur)
Ambient Occlusion: Medium
Motion Blur: Optional (I found this option on did help smoothen out the experience but at the cost of visual cleaness, seemingly confusing FSR)

Additional Information

Overall these settings should leave you with around 2hrs and 40mins of game time from 100% charge (mileage may vary).

Using any settings while connected to WIFI will result in a consistent 2-5fps drop every few seconds (and even worse frametime issues), this apparently has something to do with the game trying to verify DLC information. It can be fixed by installing all game content, but none of us want to have our games take up an additional 60gb of space now, do we? My easy solution is what was shown in the above settings; by having your fps uncapped but setting your refresh rate to 40 this will only effect the frames which aren't even visible through your refresh rate, countering the problem entirely. This does of course come at the cost of 60fps, but this does also help improve battery life significantly so you win some you lose some. Personally I'd say 40 is the bare minimum at which this game is playable, with 30 making me feel motion sick. But the aforementioned settings SHOULD allow for 45-50fps if needed (with minor tinkering to TDP of course) but I personally don't see the hit to battery life as a worth sacrifice.

Thank you for reading this guide, I hope something here has proved useful! This is my first ever steam guide so if you have any feedback or suggestions please leave a comment and I will get back to you. Be sure to favourite this guide and check back every so often as I will be updating it later down the line for the best custom zombies settings also!

Loading screen crash fix (25/10/23)

As of the 25th Black Ops 3 will crash upon launching any map regardless of version, steamos version, dlc contents, or internet connection. It is currently unclear as to why this is happening however the game is still playable (arguably in a better state than before) with use of the BOII client. Additional features on top of fixing the loading crash include: The ability to rank up on custom matches, all megas available for free, a safe-to-use healthy server list with many public matches, main menu sitter fix, and the ability to use ‘online mode’ offline to continue to log your stats progress. This will also protect you from any security flaws mentioned previously within older versions of this guide. Enjoy!

[Little_Timmy093]

@ menembeck On certain maps like motd nuke town or town it seems like it’s a lot more choppy, anything you would suggest u noticed that turning down some of the graphics settings seems to help but you sound like you know what your doing and I figured I’d ask.

[Little_Timmy093]

Did you ever find the best settings for custom maps ?

[Blek]

@MrAtomyk Yes. As long as you select offline mode.

[MrAtomyk]

I'm sorry in advance if the question is silly, I don't speak English too well, I use DeepL to translate the guide, but actually if you only want to play solo, it's okay to disable the wifi, the custom maps are still there aren't they? And you can play at 60 fps without a bug without wifi, right?

[menembeck]

Backup link for YouTube tutorial: https://youtu.be/AxDttxwpcmc?si=-KCNDRvKCy3xmMZc

[gonebloodypsycho]

NOTE, if you are willing to use windows on the deck. i have gotten a massive pefomance boost, max low setting, native resolutin and texetrs on max, looks amazing, runs at 60fps, and the fan almost never kicks in, i can play for 2 hours plus

[menembeck]

@Meowm Just glad I could help out :)

[Blek]

@menembeck that's actually very helpful, thank you. It's fucking buttery smooth. Whereas before it was slightly choppy. I feel like an idiot, but It's worth it if I learn something.

[menembeck]

@menembeck Sorry let me explain a little better. With most games your steam deck by default is using two separate instances of v sync, one built directly into the Deck software and one provided by the games you play, having two instances running at once is what causes the delay because it’s doing the same thing twice. For some reason the game itself has higher priority so if you keep v sync on in game but turn it off via the performance quick menu it will not cause screen tare UNLESS the game you’re running doesn’t natively include v sync implementation. That’s why the steam decks frame cap by default makes games feel super sluggish.

[Blek]

@menembeck while I appreciate the suggestion, I hate screen tear. It can be incredibly jarring to play with. I can only tolerate screen tear on games like stellaris.

With any fps games, it makes playing awful. I only wish turning off vsync was enough but unfortunately it isn't. I guess in this case I'm SOL.