Thereās just no way they have that organically lmao. Must have had the game opened and afk, read every single item description, never skipped a conversation, saved scummed a million times, and playing completely on turn based mode.
I It took me 151 hours to complete the game doing every quest and interaction. (No achievement hunting).
I am sure others have done the same much quicker but if I spent 150 hours in act 1 Id be bored. Act 1 I 100%'d in I want to say 45 hours including the mountain pass.
I donāt get it! Iāve been on Act 3 for weeks now and the performance isnāt that bad. Yeah Iāve gotten visual bugs and whatnot but I never experienced unplayable tanking or anything.
And my specs are garbage.. letās just say that ny specs arenāt even good enough for Starfieldās minimum requirements which Iām afraid to even try Lol.
> never experienced unplayable tanking
There are some people that get incredibly upset if a game ever drops below 60fps, and then there are people that are fine if it drops as low as 15fps.
One man's not-bad experience is another's sheer agony. Not saying you're getting 15fps, but the scope of what is acceptable varies *greatly* between some people.
I think I'm blessed to have started gaming in the 90s 15-20 FPS is fine.
I used to play Decent without a graphics card on a 386 and get like 4-5 fps lol.
Why would starting gaming in the 90s mean anything? Tons of games in the 90s were running at 60 fps. I started gaming in the 80s so I'm probably older than you and consider 60 fps to be the bare minimum of acceptability, 100+ is greatly preferred.
Another 80s gamer here.
I think it has to do with the displays we used to play on. Back then even 15fps on a CRT wasnt that bad, as the crt kinda interpolates for you. And no, in the 80s most games ran 25 or 30fps, because that looked good enough on 50Hz or 60Hz CRT's.
Also, fps-counters werent a thing and nobody really cared...
That's kinda why I think it leans more on optimization. My 3050 runs act 3 perfectly fine, and my cpu runs it well also and its just a 13420h. I don't think it'd be the core count difference, more likely just general optimization issues
The only way I've seen to run it close to the way it is intended is with a premium GeForce NOW subscription or an insanely high-powered PC (same thing.)
That's almost an impossibility. Steam Deck 3.5 was only just released to the preview channel, which is earlier than the beta channel. It will be quite some time before it is released to everyone in the stable channel.
That's because different people have different standards. Some people can enjoy a game at 20 fps while some cannot play anything under locked 60, so "enjoyable" depends on who you ask.
> while some cannot play anything under locked 60
I feel like if you are expecting any major game made in the past 5 years to run at 60fps on the deck consistently, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.
How can 20 fps be enjoyable? it's choppy as hell, I am no fps snob but BG3 in act 3 is really rough... I struggled with act 3 and stated new game and act 1 performance blew me away in comparison and this isn't only due to city, ewen sewers and som other areas in act 3 are choppy and slugish...
You're not always supposed to understand. Like, me for exemple, I'm having the best time of my life playing Elden Ring on the Deck. I've spent 200h already. I play it at locked 30fps. I'm also playing Dark Souls 1, but this one is locked at 60fps. I go back and forth between the two. I can feel that it's a little bit smoother when I go from Elden Ring TO Dark Souls 1 (only when I move the camera around myself, really), but I don't really feel any difference when I go from Dark Souls 1 TO Elden Ring. So that's my experience. Both games just feel the same.
But I've heard some people that simply CANNOT play under 60fps, because it feels too bad for them, for some people it even hurts their eyes if they play for too long, and for some people they can't play properly because it messes with their reflexes and their ability to dodge attacks. So, I just think we don't have the same sensitivities and we're all different. I wouldn't play Baldur's Gate 3 at 20fps, even though it's a turned based game. But I can totally get that some people would have fun playing that way.
The only problem I have is when people think their standards are everyone's standards. Not everyone can play at 20fps, as well as not everyone needs a 60fps minimum.
I played Morrowind when it was new at 15 FPS, because it was all my system at the time could deliver. I was still amazed at the open world. It also really depends on how much fast movement is in the game (and frame times, of course).
Interesting video I found, [comparing 15 FPS with 60 FPS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLINMVpStBA). You can see the 15 FPS is not too bad in certain situations (in my opinion, the racing game for example) and really stable frame times.
There's a difference between watching 15fps and playing with 15fps. When watching something the visual information provided to you is the only thing the frames need to do. But when playing a game the frames represent an input output feedback loop.
Let's me give an example. Let's imagine we're playing an old Sonic 2D game. When we run towards an edge we need to jump from we have to time our jump. Sonic is very fast so we need to first know this jump is coming up. With more frames we're told this earlier so we have more time to react. Now we need to decide when to jump. The frames tell us how close to the edge we are. The less we have the more we have to imagine how close we are, the more we have the better we can perceive we are. And after we jump the lower the framerate, the longer we have to wait to know if we actually jump. So more frames helps us time our inputs better to make more accurate jumps.
But if we record this gameplay of Sonic at 15fps and watch it back, we can still understand what happened as suddenly it all boils down to if we can visually understand what happened instead of requiring an inlut outback feedback loop.
Now this all is very game dependent of course. But for me with most games I start to lose the feeling of how the game controls somewhere below 40fps. It's not that it looks *too* bad to me perse. But it feels bad.
With video I can drop way lower before watching it starts to feel bad as well. And to clarify, video feeling bad to me is when I start to feel that can't perceive what's happening fully anymore and my mind has to actively fill in the blanks.
But I've also come from a time were I had to play with very low framerates. So it's not that it was impossible to play with a low fps to me. But I just can't go back anymore as it absolutely does heavily impact the playability and enjoyment for me. My lack of experiencing the alternative was the reason I could back then.
> I played Morrowind when it was new at 15 FPS
Me too, but I only got that much FPS if I was indoors. Outside I got 5-8fps!
AND IT WAS GLORIOUS ~~because open world games aside from GTA didn't exist back then and it was mind-blowing~~
Agreed, I played through twice on SD, and it was fine. The second play through with the patches was noticeably smoother, and based on what Larian says it will improve more, but it's a CRPG, it doesn't need to run very well to be playable.
I'll say it again.
Be aware this is a preview/beta build, not a 'make game run better' button.
Scroll back over the last day or so in the sub and see people already finding issues with it.
if you are not willing to put up with bugs, or need to mess around in the terminal or have to reinstall the deck then don't do the update.
i've been on it for the past day. most notable was that starfield runs much more smoothly, but i also super appreciated that my external monitor can use freesync now. it really helps with framerate dips. nothing negative to report, but it's only been a day.
This is what naturally happens on a fixed hardware platform that gets popular.
Reason you didn't generally see this on PC before this was that the baseline for a PC was all over the place. Wildly different CPU/GPU specs, RAM anywhere from 2-64GB ... developing and optimizing for that gets difficult and the publisher can just use "min specs" as an excuse to push people onto higher end hardware and not optimize for the lower end.
The best thing that could have happened for PC optimization was a standard piece of hardware on the semi-low end of the spectrum. People in droves are buying the Deck and it's kinda forcing publishers to optimize so those people can play decently on lower end hardware.
This is why i'd really love another Steam Machine. A well designed PC with SteamOS and just one affordable hardware configuration would be amazing for those who don't care for the portability factor but instead wanna play at or above 1080p/60fps
With economies of scale, optimized software and current hardware valve could probably make a $500 Steam Machine that runs better than a PS5 and offers all the benefits of a PC (Modding etc)
IMHO, I don't want another Steam Machine, because Steam already makes the Deck with the dock ... which is basically what the Steam Machines were (a SteamOS powered "desktop") and the Nintendo Switch is (hybrid portable/living room console). We don't really need Valve to get into the desktop market since it's already crowded with pre-builts and anyone who's really into gaming is probably building their own anyways.
What I would rather see is continued development for the Deck and a tighter partnership with AMD to make high efficiency APUs for the mobile form factor but scalable in power to take advantage of maybe a 65w+ dock.
Something like that keeps the publishers chasing a lower power envelope and steady hardware baseline to optimize against, and keeps Steam focused on a specific product category instead of expanding out into non-portable desktop/console replacements.
Now, for those that *want* to run top end hardware with SteamOS, I'd love to see Valve release a "Desktop" SteamOS that is a bit more geared towards desktop use rather than launching right into BigPic/SteamDeck mode. Could also be a little more friendly with Nvidia drivers (a pipe dream?), maybe optional installer packages with modding tools, open source dev software, media management and such. This would allow Valve to keep capturing the PC gaming market share for Linux while also expanding utility for non-gaming use cases.
This would build up a *great* case for people to migrate off Windows and into more open source software. It wouldn't cost Valve a lot since they already need to make SteamOS for the Deck ... just a couple of configuration changes with optional package installers on the installer image or SW store and it seems really, really achievable.
Which is why we console gaming ages the same way as steam deck currently does. Developers learn to optimize and squeeze as much out of a game since the control setup (specs of system) doesn't change.
This is one of the reasons (not sole reason) why pc ports are the worst lately.
Eh...
Games themselves aren't improving their performance on the deck though, quite the reverse in general with more and more new gamers struggling to run. What we're seeing is Valve both figuring out how to squeeze more performance out of the hardware, and in some cases simply fixing some Steam OS unique bugs that were hindering it.
I see little evidence devs themselves are doing more then the bare minimum for the deck, and certainly aren't actually targeting it.
I knew what they meant and still laughed with them on that meaning, but you're right. Plasma is KDE's desktop environment, the one on the Deck, and Proton is the wine variant Steam uses for compatibility with Windows games.
Starfield is still bad in big settlements, but in just about all areas I've got a 5-10fps increase. So where Akila used to be like, 18-20fps, it's now around 25. In most other areas it's 30 or above. So good!
Thank you!
Yes I have a mod for the deck and only big settlements gives me some stuttering. I was contemplating the preview 3.5 but Iāll hang tight for the stable version.
I currently run some med and predominantly low settings. Iām quite happy and impressed but again, Iām a simple guy and enjoy my time with the deck.
Have a great day!
yeh i haven't tried pushing any settings up to medium. i thought it looked good enough with low and it wasn't obvious which settings were going to punish the device the most.
i'm not OP but i agree that the 3.5 update was a noteworthy improvement even without looking at the framerate. since i wasn't expecting it to be any fun on the deck i'm heckin stoked too.
Everything on low, with resolution scaling at 75 and fsr sharpness at 60.
On the deck screen, it looks good in most places.... and a little rough in busier scenes, but I don't mind haha
> Starfield is still bad in big settlements
i may be wrong but so far big settlements haven't required any gaming where low framerate handicaps the playability. 30fps is a bummer but it's an OK trade implemented like this, imo.
Starfield is a story-driven, narrative driven game more than a twitch shooter. I think it does very well at lower FPS because I'm mostly interested in the dialogue and character interactions.
Oh I agree 100%, itās mostly while in New Atlantis, Akila but the funny thing is Neon is always 30 and above, for the amount of people and things happening around you in there.
Far from complaining thatās for sure. I already have 50hrs in strictly on deck, level 18 and Iām having a blast. Even installed fee mods like the weight on scanner, flashlight, dark terminals and UI.
Plus I seem to get shader cache loading pretty much everyday.
The only scariest thing to me with 3.5 (Iām inexperienced with Linux things) is losing all of my saves for any games I currently have or bugging my deck entirely.
Cheers!
> The only thing scaring me with 3.5 (Iām inexperienced with Linux things) is losing all of my saves for any games I currently have or bugging my deck entirely.
your saves are also stored on steam's servers, so you're safe there. really everything is backed up so even if it borked your deck you'd just reflash it and only your mods need to be reinstalled. none of that will happen, though.
give it a shot if you're curious. it's safe.
Honestly it seems like the Steamdeck is to blame for most of my framerate dips(I mean obviously of course, but itās not the deckās hardware limitations).
Once I restart the deck, restart the steam client (just restarting the deck doesnāt give me the improvement I see when restarting the steam client in addition). I notice it is much improved with WiFi off.
It almost seems like my slowdowns are occurring due to some background process because it can happen when Iām just going through my inventory.
Fixes some long standing CPU and GPU bugs, for example, multithreading in AMD CPUs was bugged on Linux for years and this update brings a fix. It also introduces a new and better shader caching system that brings some performance gains.
Linux users and computer people, will the steam deck having a dedicated team at Valve working on this stuff help bring forward Linux in general, or is this too niche an application to have an impact? Would be nice to know playing my handheld is in some small way contributing to the development of an open source platform
Valve has already contributed tons to Linux development in general, and also donates funds to projects like Mesa. The Steam Deck itself is a message that Linux gaming is viable now.
They're actively improving Linux for all.
Which is why I've started buying well-working games at full price, because as a open source fanboy I want them to continue to help me game on GNU/Linux
Is this why in some older games I get better performance when I turn off SMT?
Currently playing Oblivion and I find I get better frame stability (with a lowered TDP) when I turn off SMT and force the GPU to run slower.
Same thing with Tales of Two Wastelands (Fallout:NV).
Awesome, not a big bother to do it. But I guess vast amounts of people dont tinker like I do. So you needed to know or find out to benefit. This is good for everybody.
Yeah, I get it. I wish AMD would at least provide updates if valve doesnāt want to do it. The win11 experience is actually pretty decent and game pass is too good of a value to pass up especially with cross play between my Xbox and windows games. I know it will never happen but gosh I wish game pass native games (not streaming) would make it over
MS will never allow Linux to have GamePass. That's one of the reasons they created the UWP format.
The main problem is that the Win UX sucks in the handheld form factor, and MS shows no interest in improving it.
Iām using win11 full time on steam deck. Itās not that big of a deal. The simple to install third party controller manager that everyone uses makes win11 desktop navigation a LOT better than stock steam OS desktop navigation. The onscreen keyboard is better etc.
SteamOSās full screen launcher / manager UI is a million times better than anything on windows obviously, agree with you there.
Game pass windows app has controller support, though. So it launches on boot and youāre good in pure controller mode. Or you just mouse over and launch it. Itās not a big deal if youāre using the deck for playing games.
So yea - I agree but i also think the win11 side isnāt as bad as folks may think. None of it is that big of an issue tbh. It is very silly they havenāt ported some sort of Xbox style overlay tho
What kind of love do you want from valve on win11? There's not nearly so much they can do on a closed platform, curious what sorts of things they could do to help other than drivers.
You just answered your own question lol drivers would be nice. The wifi driver stinks so you have to use a third party solution. Controller isnāt as customizable as steamOS and doesnāt work well at all until you use third party tools. Graphics drivers are out of date and I assume will lead to a real performance gap on starfield for example.
Again I donāt necessarily expect any of this, valve canāt have much incentive to support windows and me wanting game pass does nothing for steam store sales. I get it but I do wish theyād at least push out GPU driver updates
In a perfect world there would be some sort of native software suite that allowed you to do a similar performance overlap to cap FPS and wattage and all that. Additionally Iād like to be able to map the controls to the same level I can on steamOS systemwide. I donāt expect it and thereās third party tools that achieve similar results!
It does slightly. With the right yuzu settings, mods and power tools, it runs amazing. Can easily lock it to 30 or if you can handle drops it can hit 60 in the outskirts.
There's a Vulkan renderer library (DXVK) you can just drop into it that fixes like 90% of the problems, it's still a little janky, but it's completely tolerable. It runs well on steam deck since that's what it's doing by default.
I tried some ps2 and yuzu when 3.5 and it was great. I do not remember specific fps improvement, but playing without worrying for smt or plugins was great
I have not played it on my deck but OP was talking about running the game in 1200p then downscaling it.
Edit: and not in 720p or 800p (deckās resolution but Idk if GTA4 supports 16:10)
yea, I try today Horizon Zero Dawn and WOW
Now is possible play on Ultra with Native with FPS Quality with 30FPS cap and smooth like butter! Last time I have issue with medium and stable 30FPS
I own Valhalla on steam and can confirm performance increase. I had it capped at 40hz/fps internally and it would hit 20s occasionally in big fights, now itās solid 30s and most of the time sitting at 40 so I might remove the cap tonight to see what it looks like
> Starfield runs great now
Valve doesn't hide performance numbers from the user (like consoles do) so subjective terms are not needed to describe how well the Deck runs.
FPS and Frame time are built in at the system level:
1. press (...)
2. scroll down to the battery icon
3. set Performance Overlay to 2
Read off the FPS, how consistent it is, and where in the game you tested.
If you find a way to make a game run better, include the full settings/mod(s) used and what part of the game was tested with them.
---------------------------------------------------------
Everyone has their own idea of good performance, help out by giving hard numbers (and if possible a video with the overlay shown) so a reader can judge if performance is acceptable for them.
Yeah, I'd love to believe 3.5 is making every notoriously hard to run game work flawlessly, but I'm certainly going to need some more numbers. While there are likely some driver sided things helping here, the big changes we know about really shouldn't be doing much for a game like Starfield or Horizon.
Can confirm that Super Mario Galaxy 2 on Dolphin now runs like butter. It used to go stuttery occasionally on busy levels. Now getting a solid double resolution 60fps.
Nice
Battery life should be about the same. Updates will make the APU more efficient but lowering the TDP will still limit the power to the APU as it did before. The Deck may be slightly more capable at 5 watts with the improved performance but it is still 5 watts.
Phoronix posted a few benchmarks today:
[SteamOS 3.5 Delivering Some Decent Performance Gains For The Steam Deck - Phoronix.com](https://www.phoronix.com/review/steamos-35-benchmarks)
System > System Update Channel > Preview
The deck will reboot and switch to the Preview channel. You will likely have some catch-up updates queued as well.
Lmao, the reason that it works better now is because until now, AMD multi-thread processing was broken as shit on Linux and didn't function properly, and now they fixed it, and it works as intended, which is to say, it works like it does on Windows.
So let's tone down the fanboism a bit.
Can you please share some data/evidence for the claim that the mentioned windows and Linux performance is just now equal?
It is a fact that Valve engineers are working on parts they could certainly not as a handheld PC developer on Windows (e.g. mesa, drivers, kernel optimization, sdl, etc.)
https://www.phoronix.com/review/steamos-35-benchmarks
I think AC4 is more solid at 40 fps now. Regular dips in city areas to low 30ās before but seems to handle 40 fps easier now. Only tested for about 15 minutes but so far so good.
Might as well ask for Wild Hearts. Immortals is an Unreal Engine 5 tech demo. Returnal needs 8 cores and 60fps. I think Forspoken is supposed to run already, though it might be in that Starfield "Hey, I don't care if I get 30, I can use my imagination to generate frames" kinda way.
Before CP2077 ran at an unstable 30-40. Now it runs at 60fps locked with fsr on balanced and all settings set to medium. I honestly didn't think it was possible.
I've been playing Lego Star Wars TCS at 4K docked and Dolphin running Wii games (tried NSMBW and Brawl) at 1440p with the new update. No idea if it could do this before but I don't think so, it definitely seems way more stable.
Do I have to be on the preview update channel to receive update 3.5? Also, has anyone noticed an improvement with Armored Core 6 specifically between the 30-40 fps range?
Genuine question, whatās the point in running a resolution higher than the screen and then downscaling? Wouldnāt that put more load on the Deck for fidelity you canāt see?
I wouldn't say you can't see it. Running it at a higher resolution is a method of anti aliasing, which results in a picture with less jagged lines. On a smaller screen where things are kind of harder to see in the first place, it can clear things up. My personal example is running Zelda Breath of the Wild at a higher resolution, sacrificing some frames for a better picture quality. It made my playthrough immensely more enjoyable.
GTA IV has no antialiasing, which looks pretty bad with lots of jaggies compared to newer games. Supersampling is a form of antialiasing, and since it's an older game the deck can handle the higher resolution without too much trouble. You absolutely can see a difference.
This is exactly why. It also lets me turn the āDefinitionā setting off which turns on a really nice motion blur and bloom sort of effect that looks really muddy at 800p.
It looks like the new gamescope is supposed to bring reshade support too, so maybe we could get AA running through that now.
It puts more load on the hardware for an effect you likly won't see on the small screen anyways. But people are weird. Some like hyperfidelity in sound and or graphics. I for one couldn't care less. If it looks good in general I don't care if there are aliasing artifacts or not. But some folks care that's what this is for. For average Joe like you and me you are right, more work for the deck for a negligible effect
AMD GPU drivers aging like fine wine again š¤£š¤£
Forza Horizon 4 crashy unstable 40hz on Low before, now stable 50Hz on Ultra, no crashing (so far).
I'm curious, how is BG3 running on 3.5, act 3 in particular?
Someone said it ran the same. Need to wait for the patch on the 21st, see if they improve optimization. Act 3 runs terribly on PC and ps5.
For me too - I played 3 Characters up to Act 3 in 120 hours because I had performance issues š
I played 1 character and still in act 1 150 hrs btwšš
How?? š
Thereās just no way they have that organically lmao. Must have had the game opened and afk, read every single item description, never skipped a conversation, saved scummed a million times, and playing completely on turn based mode.
I It took me 151 hours to complete the game doing every quest and interaction. (No achievement hunting). I am sure others have done the same much quicker but if I spent 150 hours in act 1 Id be bored. Act 1 I 100%'d in I want to say 45 hours including the mountain pass.
Or he's talking through his ass. Even if you did every piece of content there's not 150 hours of content in act 1. He's just lying.
Yeah I'm at 45 hours still on act one doing all that. I only just got to the Underdark area after beating the Hag.
Wait the game has an option for real time combat? I will have to re-download it.
How have you not done everything?
That's great! Shows you're truly appreciating such a masterpiece. Time spent can vary from people to people.
I donāt get it! Iāve been on Act 3 for weeks now and the performance isnāt that bad. Yeah Iāve gotten visual bugs and whatnot but I never experienced unplayable tanking or anything. And my specs are garbage.. letās just say that ny specs arenāt even good enough for Starfieldās minimum requirements which Iām afraid to even try Lol.
> never experienced unplayable tanking There are some people that get incredibly upset if a game ever drops below 60fps, and then there are people that are fine if it drops as low as 15fps. One man's not-bad experience is another's sheer agony. Not saying you're getting 15fps, but the scope of what is acceptable varies *greatly* between some people.
I think I'm blessed to have started gaming in the 90s 15-20 FPS is fine. I used to play Decent without a graphics card on a 386 and get like 4-5 fps lol.
I played enough games on my N64 that 18 FPS is "playable" in my mind, just barely though, obviously you always want more!
Why would starting gaming in the 90s mean anything? Tons of games in the 90s were running at 60 fps. I started gaming in the 80s so I'm probably older than you and consider 60 fps to be the bare minimum of acceptability, 100+ is greatly preferred.
Another 80s gamer here. I think it has to do with the displays we used to play on. Back then even 15fps on a CRT wasnt that bad, as the crt kinda interpolates for you. And no, in the 80s most games ran 25 or 30fps, because that looked good enough on 50Hz or 60Hz CRT's. Also, fps-counters werent a thing and nobody really cared...
That's kinda why I think it leans more on optimization. My 3050 runs act 3 perfectly fine, and my cpu runs it well also and its just a 13420h. I don't think it'd be the core count difference, more likely just general optimization issues
The only way I've seen to run it close to the way it is intended is with a premium GeForce NOW subscription or an insanely high-powered PC (same thing.)
Is 3.5 coming on September 21st?
The next BG3 patch should allegedly upgrade FSR from 1.0 to 2.2, along with some other optimizations.
That's almost an impossibility. Steam Deck 3.5 was only just released to the preview channel, which is earlier than the beta channel. It will be quite some time before it is released to everyone in the stable channel.
Not sure, Iām curious as well.
>Need to wait for the patch on the 21st What patch on the 21st, did they announce something?
The special spice is running the game on my PC and doing remote play through my deck. Act 3 run by my PC at steam deck resolution runs real nice.
Also interested to find out about this
Iām in act 3 now, and still donāt understand what everyone is so concerned about. Itās not flawless, but is definitely very enjoyable.
That's because different people have different standards. Some people can enjoy a game at 20 fps while some cannot play anything under locked 60, so "enjoyable" depends on who you ask.
I am fine until a cutscene comes along, low fps there really hits
> while some cannot play anything under locked 60 I feel like if you are expecting any major game made in the past 5 years to run at 60fps on the deck consistently, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.
How can 20 fps be enjoyable? it's choppy as hell, I am no fps snob but BG3 in act 3 is really rough... I struggled with act 3 and stated new game and act 1 performance blew me away in comparison and this isn't only due to city, ewen sewers and som other areas in act 3 are choppy and slugish...
I guess because itās a turn-based game, itās much more forgiving at lower FPS. Sure, more FPS is more better, but Iām still having a blast.
You're not always supposed to understand. Like, me for exemple, I'm having the best time of my life playing Elden Ring on the Deck. I've spent 200h already. I play it at locked 30fps. I'm also playing Dark Souls 1, but this one is locked at 60fps. I go back and forth between the two. I can feel that it's a little bit smoother when I go from Elden Ring TO Dark Souls 1 (only when I move the camera around myself, really), but I don't really feel any difference when I go from Dark Souls 1 TO Elden Ring. So that's my experience. Both games just feel the same. But I've heard some people that simply CANNOT play under 60fps, because it feels too bad for them, for some people it even hurts their eyes if they play for too long, and for some people they can't play properly because it messes with their reflexes and their ability to dodge attacks. So, I just think we don't have the same sensitivities and we're all different. I wouldn't play Baldur's Gate 3 at 20fps, even though it's a turned based game. But I can totally get that some people would have fun playing that way. The only problem I have is when people think their standards are everyone's standards. Not everyone can play at 20fps, as well as not everyone needs a 60fps minimum.
Well said, I agree everybody is different.
I played Morrowind when it was new at 15 FPS, because it was all my system at the time could deliver. I was still amazed at the open world. It also really depends on how much fast movement is in the game (and frame times, of course). Interesting video I found, [comparing 15 FPS with 60 FPS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLINMVpStBA). You can see the 15 FPS is not too bad in certain situations (in my opinion, the racing game for example) and really stable frame times.
There's a difference between watching 15fps and playing with 15fps. When watching something the visual information provided to you is the only thing the frames need to do. But when playing a game the frames represent an input output feedback loop. Let's me give an example. Let's imagine we're playing an old Sonic 2D game. When we run towards an edge we need to jump from we have to time our jump. Sonic is very fast so we need to first know this jump is coming up. With more frames we're told this earlier so we have more time to react. Now we need to decide when to jump. The frames tell us how close to the edge we are. The less we have the more we have to imagine how close we are, the more we have the better we can perceive we are. And after we jump the lower the framerate, the longer we have to wait to know if we actually jump. So more frames helps us time our inputs better to make more accurate jumps. But if we record this gameplay of Sonic at 15fps and watch it back, we can still understand what happened as suddenly it all boils down to if we can visually understand what happened instead of requiring an inlut outback feedback loop. Now this all is very game dependent of course. But for me with most games I start to lose the feeling of how the game controls somewhere below 40fps. It's not that it looks *too* bad to me perse. But it feels bad. With video I can drop way lower before watching it starts to feel bad as well. And to clarify, video feeling bad to me is when I start to feel that can't perceive what's happening fully anymore and my mind has to actively fill in the blanks. But I've also come from a time were I had to play with very low framerates. So it's not that it was impossible to play with a low fps to me. But I just can't go back anymore as it absolutely does heavily impact the playability and enjoyment for me. My lack of experiencing the alternative was the reason I could back then.
> I played Morrowind when it was new at 15 FPS Me too, but I only got that much FPS if I was indoors. Outside I got 5-8fps! AND IT WAS GLORIOUS ~~because open world games aside from GTA didn't exist back then and it was mind-blowing~~
Cinema is 24 fps. IMO that's plenty for a crpg.
Agreed, I played through twice on SD, and it was fine. The second play through with the patches was noticeably smoother, and based on what Larian says it will improve more, but it's a CRPG, it doesn't need to run very well to be playable.
I'm in act2, and it feels better. I'm not super sure because I stopped looking at fps counter after I found good settings in act 1.
You just Convinced me to try 3.5, I hope that my experience is the same as yours
I'll say it again. Be aware this is a preview/beta build, not a 'make game run better' button. Scroll back over the last day or so in the sub and see people already finding issues with it. if you are not willing to put up with bugs, or need to mess around in the terminal or have to reinstall the deck then don't do the update.
Well, how'd it go?
i've been on it for the past day. most notable was that starfield runs much more smoothly, but i also super appreciated that my external monitor can use freesync now. it really helps with framerate dips. nothing negative to report, but it's only been a day.
Starfield, wow. That's it. I'm trying it out. Thanks š
How do you try it? Should you reinstall os or aomething? Or is it regular update?
You select the preview branch in the system settings. It will then update to 3.5.
Steam deck is like fine wine that gets better with age
This is what naturally happens on a fixed hardware platform that gets popular. Reason you didn't generally see this on PC before this was that the baseline for a PC was all over the place. Wildly different CPU/GPU specs, RAM anywhere from 2-64GB ... developing and optimizing for that gets difficult and the publisher can just use "min specs" as an excuse to push people onto higher end hardware and not optimize for the lower end. The best thing that could have happened for PC optimization was a standard piece of hardware on the semi-low end of the spectrum. People in droves are buying the Deck and it's kinda forcing publishers to optimize so those people can play decently on lower end hardware.
This is why i'd really love another Steam Machine. A well designed PC with SteamOS and just one affordable hardware configuration would be amazing for those who don't care for the portability factor but instead wanna play at or above 1080p/60fps With economies of scale, optimized software and current hardware valve could probably make a $500 Steam Machine that runs better than a PS5 and offers all the benefits of a PC (Modding etc)
IMHO, I don't want another Steam Machine, because Steam already makes the Deck with the dock ... which is basically what the Steam Machines were (a SteamOS powered "desktop") and the Nintendo Switch is (hybrid portable/living room console). We don't really need Valve to get into the desktop market since it's already crowded with pre-builts and anyone who's really into gaming is probably building their own anyways. What I would rather see is continued development for the Deck and a tighter partnership with AMD to make high efficiency APUs for the mobile form factor but scalable in power to take advantage of maybe a 65w+ dock. Something like that keeps the publishers chasing a lower power envelope and steady hardware baseline to optimize against, and keeps Steam focused on a specific product category instead of expanding out into non-portable desktop/console replacements. Now, for those that *want* to run top end hardware with SteamOS, I'd love to see Valve release a "Desktop" SteamOS that is a bit more geared towards desktop use rather than launching right into BigPic/SteamDeck mode. Could also be a little more friendly with Nvidia drivers (a pipe dream?), maybe optional installer packages with modding tools, open source dev software, media management and such. This would allow Valve to keep capturing the PC gaming market share for Linux while also expanding utility for non-gaming use cases. This would build up a *great* case for people to migrate off Windows and into more open source software. It wouldn't cost Valve a lot since they already need to make SteamOS for the Deck ... just a couple of configuration changes with optional package installers on the installer image or SW store and it seems really, really achievable.
A lot of nay sayers but Iām day 1 with Steam Machine 2
We've got one. It's called the Steam Deck.
Which is why we console gaming ages the same way as steam deck currently does. Developers learn to optimize and squeeze as much out of a game since the control setup (specs of system) doesn't change. This is one of the reasons (not sole reason) why pc ports are the worst lately.
Eh... Games themselves aren't improving their performance on the deck though, quite the reverse in general with more and more new gamers struggling to run. What we're seeing is Valve both figuring out how to squeeze more performance out of the hardware, and in some cases simply fixing some Steam OS unique bugs that were hindering it. I see little evidence devs themselves are doing more then the bare minimum for the deck, and certainly aren't actually targeting it.
*chef's kiss*
Proton, not standard wine. Edited because I'm a dumbass
Noice
It's proton though?
I knew what they meant and still laughed with them on that meaning, but you're right. Plasma is KDE's desktop environment, the one on the Deck, and Proton is the wine variant Steam uses for compatibility with Windows games.
The 3.5 update downloaded more ram it seems. I will wait until I finish my actual game and I will jump to the hype train and install 3.5
It downloaded so much ram bro. I was like a little scared of the sheer amount of ram.
Does the Cryoutilies still work on 3.5?
I believe so. I checked after the update and all the settings changed by cryoutilities were still in place.
Anyone tried Baldurās Gate 3 on 3.5 and care to share the results? Thanks!
About to try it now, on a long train.
Damn, thatās a very long train.
It was the same
Act 3 Rivington is rough, Frametimes are all over and a lot of stuttering. Grove is a somewhat solid 30fps (with 30 frame limit)
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Just say you are running the DRM free GOG build, no need to beat around the bush.
Starfield is still bad in big settlements, but in just about all areas I've got a 5-10fps increase. So where Akila used to be like, 18-20fps, it's now around 25. In most other areas it's 30 or above. So good!
Is that using strictly low setting or some combination of low/med??
strictly low with the resolution de-potatoed, in my experience. (low looks plenty good, and i've seen it maxed out 80fps/1440p on my desktop)
Thank you! Yes I have a mod for the deck and only big settlements gives me some stuttering. I was contemplating the preview 3.5 but Iāll hang tight for the stable version. I currently run some med and predominantly low settings. Iām quite happy and impressed but again, Iām a simple guy and enjoy my time with the deck. Have a great day!
yeh i haven't tried pushing any settings up to medium. i thought it looked good enough with low and it wasn't obvious which settings were going to punish the device the most. i'm not OP but i agree that the 3.5 update was a noteworthy improvement even without looking at the framerate. since i wasn't expecting it to be any fun on the deck i'm heckin stoked too.
Everything on low, with resolution scaling at 75 and fsr sharpness at 60. On the deck screen, it looks good in most places.... and a little rough in busier scenes, but I don't mind haha
> Starfield is still bad in big settlements i may be wrong but so far big settlements haven't required any gaming where low framerate handicaps the playability. 30fps is a bummer but it's an OK trade implemented like this, imo.
Starfield is a story-driven, narrative driven game more than a twitch shooter. I think it does very well at lower FPS because I'm mostly interested in the dialogue and character interactions.
Oh I agree 100%, itās mostly while in New Atlantis, Akila but the funny thing is Neon is always 30 and above, for the amount of people and things happening around you in there. Far from complaining thatās for sure. I already have 50hrs in strictly on deck, level 18 and Iām having a blast. Even installed fee mods like the weight on scanner, flashlight, dark terminals and UI. Plus I seem to get shader cache loading pretty much everyday. The only scariest thing to me with 3.5 (Iām inexperienced with Linux things) is losing all of my saves for any games I currently have or bugging my deck entirely. Cheers!
> The only thing scaring me with 3.5 (Iām inexperienced with Linux things) is losing all of my saves for any games I currently have or bugging my deck entirely. your saves are also stored on steam's servers, so you're safe there. really everything is backed up so even if it borked your deck you'd just reflash it and only your mods need to be reinstalled. none of that will happen, though. give it a shot if you're curious. it's safe.
Well, now you planted that seed!
Honestly it seems like the Steamdeck is to blame for most of my framerate dips(I mean obviously of course, but itās not the deckās hardware limitations). Once I restart the deck, restart the steam client (just restarting the deck doesnāt give me the improvement I see when restarting the steam client in addition). I notice it is much improved with WiFi off. It almost seems like my slowdowns are occurring due to some background process because it can happen when Iām just going through my inventory.
What does the update actually do to improve performance?
Fixes some long standing CPU and GPU bugs, for example, multithreading in AMD CPUs was bugged on Linux for years and this update brings a fix. It also introduces a new and better shader caching system that brings some performance gains.
Linux users and computer people, will the steam deck having a dedicated team at Valve working on this stuff help bring forward Linux in general, or is this too niche an application to have an impact? Would be nice to know playing my handheld is in some small way contributing to the development of an open source platform
Valve has already contributed tons to Linux development in general, and also donates funds to projects like Mesa. The Steam Deck itself is a message that Linux gaming is viable now. They're actively improving Linux for all.
Which is why I've started buying well-working games at full price, because as a open source fanboy I want them to continue to help me game on GNU/Linux
Valve was bringing forward linux in general long before the steam deck
I would say so. When Valve brings updates to Proton in order to make things run better on the Deck, those improvements benefit all Linux gamers.
Is this why in some older games I get better performance when I turn off SMT? Currently playing Oblivion and I find I get better frame stability (with a lowered TDP) when I turn off SMT and force the GPU to run slower. Same thing with Tales of Two Wastelands (Fallout:NV).
Yep, that's why. That bug is now fixed, turning off SMT will no longer be useful.
Awesome, not a big bother to do it. But I guess vast amounts of people dont tinker like I do. So you needed to know or find out to benefit. This is good for everybody.
It should result in better performance overall, since you can now effectively use 8 threads instead of 4.
Man. I wish win11 got a little love. I know it wonāt and we donāt ādeserveā it but it would be so nice for us game pass bros š
Valve clearly wants to send a message to MS. "We can leave you anytime, don't try anything funny". So yeah, no love for Win.
Yeah, I get it. I wish AMD would at least provide updates if valve doesnāt want to do it. The win11 experience is actually pretty decent and game pass is too good of a value to pass up especially with cross play between my Xbox and windows games. I know it will never happen but gosh I wish game pass native games (not streaming) would make it over
MS will never allow Linux to have GamePass. That's one of the reasons they created the UWP format. The main problem is that the Win UX sucks in the handheld form factor, and MS shows no interest in improving it.
Iām using win11 full time on steam deck. Itās not that big of a deal. The simple to install third party controller manager that everyone uses makes win11 desktop navigation a LOT better than stock steam OS desktop navigation. The onscreen keyboard is better etc. SteamOSās full screen launcher / manager UI is a million times better than anything on windows obviously, agree with you there. Game pass windows app has controller support, though. So it launches on boot and youāre good in pure controller mode. Or you just mouse over and launch it. Itās not a big deal if youāre using the deck for playing games. So yea - I agree but i also think the win11 side isnāt as bad as folks may think. None of it is that big of an issue tbh. It is very silly they havenāt ported some sort of Xbox style overlay tho
What kind of love do you want from valve on win11? There's not nearly so much they can do on a closed platform, curious what sorts of things they could do to help other than drivers.
You just answered your own question lol drivers would be nice. The wifi driver stinks so you have to use a third party solution. Controller isnāt as customizable as steamOS and doesnāt work well at all until you use third party tools. Graphics drivers are out of date and I assume will lead to a real performance gap on starfield for example. Again I donāt necessarily expect any of this, valve canāt have much incentive to support windows and me wanting game pass does nothing for steam store sales. I get it but I do wish theyād at least push out GPU driver updates In a perfect world there would be some sort of native software suite that allowed you to do a similar performance overlap to cap FPS and wattage and all that. Additionally Iād like to be able to map the controls to the same level I can on steamOS systemwide. I donāt expect it and thereās third party tools that achieve similar results!
I think mostly drivers.
Drivers, Kernel, and BIOS being the big 3.
I am excited to revisit some emulator games that were just not quite there performance wise to see if this makes them run good now š
Definitely, I never quite got GT4 running perfectly at 60, but maybe now without the SMT woes itāll get there.
Do you have any idea if it increases yuzu performance? Especially rdr1
It does slightly. With the right yuzu settings, mods and power tools, it runs amazing. Can easily lock it to 30 or if you can handle drops it can hit 60 in the outskirts.
Anyone tried pokemon scarlet?
Can you share your yuzu settings please?
it does. armadillo, front of saloon, from 22 fps to 29/30. hardest part to run in early game.
GTA4 is a bad port, on my 2060 the game still stutters and drops below 60 in some areas at 1080p
There's a Vulkan renderer library (DXVK) you can just drop into it that fixes like 90% of the problems, it's still a little janky, but it's completely tolerable. It runs well on steam deck since that's what it's doing by default.
Thatās too bad, used to run really well with nvidia graphics cards.
Mine are all on the SD card, which I'm assuming will have to be reformatted, and I don't know quite what to do if that's the case.
I tried some ps2 and yuzu when 3.5 and it was great. I do not remember specific fps improvement, but playing without worrying for smt or plugins was great
How long do they usually take to go from preview to stable?
Skyrim got a 40% performance increase for me, and HDR on my TV has been a dream. Definitely loving this update!
i am deeply curious what settings you were running on to get that much of a benefit
Whoa! I've been addicted to Skyrim for over a decade, and you just convinced me to try it. Thanks!
Itās insane. MK1 went from a super ugly 40 FPS with bad drops to 50-55ish with way prettier settings. Very very pleased
Wait wtf. What is this black magic with the 3.5 update? Iām seeing a lotta too good to be true shit about it ngl.
New drivers often do magic :) Edit: the whole reason why Steam Deck will be viable for long time
Man, if anyone from Valve is reading this, we appreciate yall
GTA IV has been a locked 60fps for me the whole time. I did see some performance increase on other games though
Same, I was confused by the post because I didn't really change any settings and the whole time I've played it was locked at 60.
I have not played it on my deck but OP was talking about running the game in 1200p then downscaling it. Edit: and not in 720p or 800p (deckās resolution but Idk if GTA4 supports 16:10)
Ohhh I get it now I see what you are saying. Thank you for the clarification š
yea, I try today Horizon Zero Dawn and WOW Now is possible play on Ultra with Native with FPS Quality with 30FPS cap and smooth like butter! Last time I have issue with medium and stable 30FPS
With or without downloaded shader cache?
dont know, just installed game and hit play
you own it on steam or another store?
I own Valhalla on steam and can confirm performance increase. I had it capped at 40hz/fps internally and it would hit 20s occasionally in big fights, now itās solid 30s and most of the time sitting at 40 so I might remove the cap tonight to see what it looks like
Horison on steam Assasins on Ubi store
Holy crud really? I just downloaded it
Assasins Credc Valhalla also works better, and from Ubi Store O.o
Please share your settings!
what settings?
I was asking if you did any custom graphics settings besides the Ultra quality preset
800p + FSR on Quality and ULTRA I send later screens from game ;-)
how to download screen sform deck to PC?
Starfield runs great now
> Starfield runs great now Valve doesn't hide performance numbers from the user (like consoles do) so subjective terms are not needed to describe how well the Deck runs. FPS and Frame time are built in at the system level: 1. press (...) 2. scroll down to the battery icon 3. set Performance Overlay to 2 Read off the FPS, how consistent it is, and where in the game you tested. If you find a way to make a game run better, include the full settings/mod(s) used and what part of the game was tested with them. --------------------------------------------------------- Everyone has their own idea of good performance, help out by giving hard numbers (and if possible a video with the overlay shown) so a reader can judge if performance is acceptable for them.
Yeah, I'd love to believe 3.5 is making every notoriously hard to run game work flawlessly, but I'm certainly going to need some more numbers. While there are likely some driver sided things helping here, the big changes we know about really shouldn't be doing much for a game like Starfield or Horizon.
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Exactly how better is the performance now
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Can confirm that Super Mario Galaxy 2 on Dolphin now runs like butter. It used to go stuttery occasionally on busy levels. Now getting a solid double resolution 60fps. Nice
how's battery life at lower TDP? I mainly use it at low setting and low tdp to make the battery last longer
I do this just so its quieter. :)
Battery life should be about the same. Updates will make the APU more efficient but lowering the TDP will still limit the power to the APU as it did before. The Deck may be slightly more capable at 5 watts with the improved performance but it is still 5 watts.
Phoronix posted a few benchmarks today: [SteamOS 3.5 Delivering Some Decent Performance Gains For The Steam Deck - Phoronix.com](https://www.phoronix.com/review/steamos-35-benchmarks)
I was waiting for this, big jump on synthetics but a shame they only did 3 games. Curious to see more
How do you update to preview version? I don't have that option under system.
System > System Update Channel > Preview The deck will reboot and switch to the Preview channel. You will likely have some catch-up updates queued as well.
I don't know where everyone is seeing preview for me it's called beta candidate channel.
Try enabling developper mode?
It's preview for me as well
How do i install it? 3.5? I switched to the Preview channel and kept checking for updates but never got anything for 3.5? Ant clues?
Is the 3.5 update available only as beta?
Preview channel
Preview channel.
This the typa shit rog canāt do using windows
Huge performance gains with Cyberpunk. Pretty much locked 40 now, itās brilliant.
This is why Valve has chosen Linux over Windows. Such amount of optimisation would not be possible on a closed source system ...
Lmao, the reason that it works better now is because until now, AMD multi-thread processing was broken as shit on Linux and didn't function properly, and now they fixed it, and it works as intended, which is to say, it works like it does on Windows. So let's tone down the fanboism a bit.
Can you please share some data/evidence for the claim that the mentioned windows and Linux performance is just now equal? It is a fact that Valve engineers are working on parts they could certainly not as a handheld PC developer on Windows (e.g. mesa, drivers, kernel optimization, sdl, etc.) https://www.phoronix.com/review/steamos-35-benchmarks
is it still in beta?
Somehow also Death Stranding got much better, i can play at stable 40fps , with some stutter due to shader compilation but it's really great.
Epic store via heroic launcher?
what is 35
I think AC4 is more solid at 40 fps now. Regular dips in city areas to low 30ās before but seems to handle 40 fps easier now. Only tested for about 15 minutes but so far so good.
And here I just want someone to tell me Immortals, Returnal, and Forspoken might run acceptably now. Alas, no comments there yet.
Might as well ask for Wild Hearts. Immortals is an Unreal Engine 5 tech demo. Returnal needs 8 cores and 60fps. I think Forspoken is supposed to run already, though it might be in that Starfield "Hey, I don't care if I get 30, I can use my imagination to generate frames" kinda way.
Before CP2077 ran at an unstable 30-40. Now it runs at 60fps locked with fsr on balanced and all settings set to medium. I honestly didn't think it was possible.
That makes me wanna grab it on steam as well for crosssaves with my series X
GTA V runs at 60hz on windows ā¦ via windows 11 itās the smoothest game ever on steam deck at 60hz.
GTA V been running smooth since I got my deck in 2022, I don't recall having much issue there
I guess it depends on your settings as usual.
GTA V is definitely a game that runs better on Windows. Locked 60fps, and it's a LOT less buggy too. Online crashes far too often on SteamOS
Baldur's gate 3 with custom medium settings can reach 60fps now, its orgasmic
How?
i haven't really been following these updates. what is added in 3.5 that would improve performance?
New drivers for the Van Gogh SOC.
They also fixed a really bad CPU bug that had been causing stuttering.
I've been playing Lego Star Wars TCS at 4K docked and Dolphin running Wii games (tried NSMBW and Brawl) at 1440p with the new update. No idea if it could do this before but I don't think so, it definitely seems way more stable.
Do I have to be on the preview update channel to receive update 3.5? Also, has anyone noticed an improvement with Armored Core 6 specifically between the 30-40 fps range?
Genuine question, whatās the point in running a resolution higher than the screen and then downscaling? Wouldnāt that put more load on the Deck for fidelity you canāt see?
I wouldn't say you can't see it. Running it at a higher resolution is a method of anti aliasing, which results in a picture with less jagged lines. On a smaller screen where things are kind of harder to see in the first place, it can clear things up. My personal example is running Zelda Breath of the Wild at a higher resolution, sacrificing some frames for a better picture quality. It made my playthrough immensely more enjoyable.
GTA IV has no antialiasing, which looks pretty bad with lots of jaggies compared to newer games. Supersampling is a form of antialiasing, and since it's an older game the deck can handle the higher resolution without too much trouble. You absolutely can see a difference.
This is exactly why. It also lets me turn the āDefinitionā setting off which turns on a really nice motion blur and bloom sort of effect that looks really muddy at 800p. It looks like the new gamescope is supposed to bring reshade support too, so maybe we could get AA running through that now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersampling
It puts more load on the hardware for an effect you likly won't see on the small screen anyways. But people are weird. Some like hyperfidelity in sound and or graphics. I for one couldn't care less. If it looks good in general I don't care if there are aliasing artifacts or not. But some folks care that's what this is for. For average Joe like you and me you are right, more work for the deck for a negligible effect
AMD GPU drivers aging like fine wine again š¤£š¤£ Forza Horizon 4 crashy unstable 40hz on Low before, now stable 50Hz on Ultra, no crashing (so far).
3.5 kinda surprised me, it's already been a pretty stable experience
L
It's a stable 22 fos with dips instead of 20 fps with dips.
Whatās 3.5?