TheSteam Deckis already a powerhouse right out of the box, but it can struggle to hit decent framerates for certain games (especially newer triple-A titles). But what you might not know is that a stock Steam Deck is nowhere near its full potential, performance-wise, and can be pushed even further beyond.
Persona 3 Reload: Steam Deck Optimization
We’ve compiled a comprehensive guide to optimize your experience, guaranteeing higher FPS and seamless performance on your portable console.
This comes in the way of plugins and hardware tweaks, but mostly small performance tweaks that don’t take a lot of effort and might only take you upwards of 30 minutes. These won’t give you double the performance output or anything, but they can make games that struggle to hit 30 run at a smooth 60 FPS.
Take care with any plugins you choose to install and ensure you research them carefully.
10Buy An OLED
Technically, A Performance Boost
Alright, I personally don’t agree with this one, but objectively, the OLED will provide a performance boost over the base model due to a better Wi-Fi card, 90hz screen, better battery, and faster RAM.
It’s just that it costs around $200 more than the LCD model, so that’s a bummer.
I’ll be writing the rest of this guide with support for both the LCD and OLED models, but if you want a performance boost with less effort and have the money to spare, buy an OLED. Unfortunately, Valve does not provide an upgrade path from LCD to OLED, so it’s at full price regardless.
9Limit FPS
Why Waste Power?
This one is more for conserving battery life if a game isn’t hitting 60 FPS constantly anyway, but it can also help to make your framerate more consistent if you limit the Steam Deck’s refresh rate down to something like50, 40, or 30, depending on how well the game is performing.
This can easily be done in the quick menu, under battery options and performance settings. Just be sure it says refresh rate and not frame rate, because when it’s limiting framerate it isn’t helping much and looks incredibly janky. Either way, though, this can help your battery performance, and 40 still looks pretty smooth.
Faster Speeds, Harder Process.
This is the only hardware modification on this list, but it’s not incredibly expensive or difficult and could give you way quicker load times. There are official tutorials on how to replace the SSD in your Steam Deck, and making this internal storage larger will lead to everything loading faster than a MicroSD card.
Unleashing the Power of Path Tracing on Steam Deck
Contrary to initial assumptions, the Steam Deck has proven itself capable of handling path tracing, thanks to some ingenious tricks.
You could also use this to hot-swap out the SSD for a Windows installation instead, but that is a significant amount of effort, and Windows typically runs worse on Deck than SteamOS, so I’d only recommend itif youREALLYwant to play Fortnite. Otherwise, upgrade your storage, and have fun.
7Clear Shader Caches And Compatibility Files
Unnecessary Bloat
If you’re finding your system bloated, especially if you’ve only got 64 GB of internal storage,clearing your shader caches and compatibility data should be a regular thing. This is made incredibly easy usingthe Decky plugin Storage Cleaner, which does this at the press of a button instead of making it a whole process.
These can help clear up your main drive, which is necessary for Steam to fill up with more shader caches and compatibility files so the games you’re playing can run better. It’s also just nice to clear off 30+ GB of junk data that wasn’t doing anything, because uninstalling games doesn’t delete these, for some reason.
Upscaling That Doesn’t Look Awful
If you’re playing a graphically intensive game, and setting all the graphics settings to low hasn’t helped much, you might want to slide into the display settings, set the resolution lower, then try out FSR in the quickbar menu. This is an upscaling setting that actually looks decent, sometimes.
It’s not always great, especially if you’re upscaling from 720p to 1080p where it’ll tend to leave white outlines on everything and no upscaling at all would look better, but from 480p to 720p looks decent. This performs better than running at 720p natively, but should only be used if necessary.
5Switch Between Desktop And Gaming Modes
Weird Differences
One odd thing that you should give a shot if nothing else has worked is switching modes. Most games run better in gaming mode, but a few will run better on Desktop, especially if you’re playing with a keyboard and mouse. This is especially true for games like Portal, which run perfectly, but only allow 1080p in desktop.
It should be noted that if you’re playing in Desktop mode, you should be closing all tabs other than the game for the best performance, as web browsers tend to eat your RAM This applies to every computer, though.
Overall, just give it a shot if you want to see which runs better.
4Use PowerTools
An Important Plugin.
Another tool you can use with Decky Loader is PowerTools, a plugin that gives you much finer control over your Steam Deck’s performance on the fly. It allows you to change the number of CPU threads, limit your clock speed, cap your battery charge rate, and more.
This one is especially for the nerds, but I’ve found messing with SMT and CPU frequencies on a per-game basis has made some games go from unplayable to decent. It’s not always a huge boost, but for some games that are particular about these things, it can be a big help.
3Try Proton GE
Usually Effective, Always Worth Trying
If you’re finding most of the games that aren’t running well are ones without a native Linux port, you should give Proton GE a shot. You can easily download or manage these custom Proton versions using ProtonUp-Qt, which you can get off Discover in desktop mode.
Steam Deck Accessories Coming via Dbrand’s Project Killswitch
Once you have it downloaded, go to the game on Steam, and in settings, set the compatibility layer to the Proton GE version you downloaded. This typically makes games much more performant, or can completely solve bugs or issues in games that don’t run perfectly on Deck, it’s great.
2Use CryoUtilities
Quick, One-Click Performance Boost
If you want a one-stop shop to make your Deck run better where you have to do almost none of the work yourself,CryoUtilities is your best bet.It makes your swap file larger, essentially downloading more RAM, Defragments your drive, and helps clear up those Shader Caches and Compatibility Data.
It does much more than this, all of which contribute to a pretty decent performance boost that will make both your hard drive and games run better.
It should be noted that the main change (the swap file) requires a decently large internal drive to work well. If you’re on the 64GB model, it won’t make too big a difference.
1Increase VRAM
Should Be On By Default
The easiest change you can make for massive performance gains that I’m baffled isn’t on by default is increasing your VRAM. You can do this by following these steps:
The only exception to this is Red Dead Redemption 2, where it will stutter a lot more, but for everything else, this is an incredibly easy change that’s worth doing.
Steam Deck
10 Underrated JRPGs You Can Play On Steam Right Now
We’ve all heard of Pokemon and Persona, so let’s dig deeper for some gems!
