'Too Big' For Steam Deck? Remnant 2 + Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart Tested!

'Too Big' for Steam Deck is back! Remnant 2 pushes PC hardware to brutal limits thanks to Unreal Engine 5, Nanite and virtual shadow maps, while Ratchet and Clank's DirectStorage and heavy graphics requirements can also challenge a range of PC hardware. And yet both games are Steam Deck Verified... so just how well do they run on Valve's handheld? Oliver Mackenzie reports on a game of two halves.
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00:00 Overview
00:57 Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
07:39 Remnant 2
11:08 Analysis and conclusion

[@UberOcelot]

When the PSP came out I dreamed of a full portable R&C title. Sure Size Matters existed, but this is the realization of that dream two decades after the R&C series got it's start. I hope the rest of it's series sees remasters on x86 architecture with an eventual PC releases.

[@MrMooMoo89]

I still want a PS vita size system to make its return.

[@matsv201]

I want a swich size steam deck. Just the same hardware, but wirh new lithography... this would also let steam keep the promace of steam deck for yet a few years as prommised. Like a steam deck S and a L. The S with less battery ans smaller form factor, the L with larger screen and better running time (and possible a few ports)

[@Armataan]

It isn’t the same thing, but all 3 ps2 games runs at a locked 60 w/ all bells and whistles. The ps3 games run pretty well too.

[@cian.horgan]

To bring this full circle, I was a DS kid instead of PSP so I first played Size Matters on an emulator on the deck

[@TheVektast]

Ratchet and Clank PS Vita Trilogy/Collection is almost 10 years old.

[@willianjohnam7350]

I love the fact that the Deck is so popular these days that developers have to push the limits of optimization so it can run on it.

[@Titoir98]

yhea remnant 2 is not optimise at all (comment from the devs) that's insane that it can run at 30fps on steamdeck

[@steve833333]

yeah that's a good point, you see it sometimes on the Switch as well like with Witcher 3.

[@HorseheadNebula85]

That's the key, right? Sony is absolutely starting to factor this level of scalability into their triple-A releases on PC, and that's a huge reason why Nixxes was purchased.

[@ZackSNetwork]

The Steam Deck is not super popular. It’s still a niche product. Steam Deck is just being funded by Valve to get optimized games.

[@GameTimeWhy]

Remnant 2 was horribly optimized though. Devs are incredibly lazy.

[@existentialselkath1264]

Was talking to someone today that thought Nixxes ports had awful optimisation (they were trying to run at max). I think it's incredible how scalable their ports are while keeping cutting edge features at the high end.

[@SEMARPE]

Tried to max it out on a Steam Deck? 💀

[@existentialselkath1264]

@@SEMARPE no, no 😅. A 3090 and some modern i9. He was frustrated that his cpu couldn't hit 120fps at max settings when he's playing a ps4 game (spiderman) on much more powerful hardware. He was maxing out the raytraced object detail slider and then wondering why his CPU couldn't keep up, while effectively having it calculate the entire game world... Twice. (half the detail looks just as good and runs a lot better) Imo max settings should never be constrained to current hardware. I don't want to play a game a few years old just to have popin or low res effects at max settings with no solution, so the whole conversation was just obsurd to me.

[@spacechannelfiver]

Nixxes ports having awful optimisation is one of the worst takes I've heard in a while. Ask them what they think of Bluepoint remasters.

[@imo098765]

@@wizzenberry most arent dummies. The most vocal are dummies but that seems to be common for all platform fanboys. The louder they are the more likely they say random shit and make things up

[@adriantrusca1245]

​@@existentialselkath1264Yeah. I'm sooooo frustrated too. I can only play modern games in 8k at 300fps with full raytracing on. Totally unplayable!!!

[@GreggyAck]

I love the TBFSD series. Hopefully this goes on for some time.

[@readyforlol]

If you really want to play R&C:RA and own a 64GB Deck, don't forget you can upgrade the storage. I got a 1TB upgrade for 100$ off of Amazon and installed it myself. It took me half an hour following a video guide. All you need is a phillips screwdriver and some plastic prying tool. If for some reason you have to play it off of an SD card, don't forget the Deck supports up to 130Mbps read speed from the SD card slot, so get one that fast if possible. It's still gonna be slow, but not as slow as the 90Mbps card demonstrated in the video. Have fun !

[@oo--7714]

Tried to do that and I ended up stripping the screws. I don’t think your average person would be able to do it too well. The steam deck uses self tapering screws that are easy to strip.

[@richardhunter9779]

​@@oo--7714 I have done the upgrade without any damage. Indeed, the skillset for taking apart this kind of build is not common yet. For you, I offer a bit of advice - screws are not like bugs, you don't need to squish and kill them.

[@TheFyend]

@@oo--7714 I almost stripped the first screw and swapped to a tiny flat head screwdriver instead of Philips and it worked WAY better and that first screw and all the others came out without issue.

[@dannyroth218]

@@oo--7714Having the right size screwdrivers is pretty important. I have an iFixIt kit, and even with my limited hardware experience, was able to change the drive out mostly pain free.

[@Psevdonim123]

​@@oo--7714what are you people doing to end up like that? It's like, just don't put to much pressure on a screwdriver, if you need to - do it gradually and if you feel like it's gonna slip - stop and try again... It applies to any household equipment btw

[@technosurfer92]

I hope Valve considers implementing SD Express for the next iteration of the Steam Deck. SD Express is pretty rare in the consumer space, but if there is anything that will push adoption, it's getting games like R&C to run like a dream on portable machines like the Deck without relying on NVMe storage.

[@gwendolyn9695]

It looks like the Switch 2 will support SD Express so adoption should spike. I have no doubt Valve would explore SD Express for Deck 2 as well.

[@beauxors]

I’d love to see more Steam Deck content. Great video, thank you!

[@HorseheadNebula85]

I am absolutely loving Ratchet and Clank on the Deck. Medium settings and a (mostly) solid 30 fps combined with what feels like excellent input latency reduction. I'm honestly gobsmacked every night when I play through some of these levels. So much stuff is happening on screen, but it manages to stay fairly stable. Insomniac and Nixxes are top class for sure.

[@HorseheadNebula85]

@@wizzenberry What am I hyping? I'm telling you what my experience is like playing the game, so I'm very sorry if that runs counter to whatever narrative you've made up in your head. "Xbox 360 / PS3 stable" is a hilarious revisionist history take that fails to recall just how AWFUL some of those 7th gen titles played. If R&C was only managing 20-25 fps throughout the entirety of gameplay, you'd have a point. I've been playing games since the late-80's, so I'm well aware of what bad performance looks and feels like. Rift Apart is not a badly-performing game on Deck.

[@rometherevenant8749]

​@@HorseheadNebula85i wouldnt pay attention to that person. Always got somebody that has to shit on what the Steam Deck can do. Sure, its no powerhouse but it cant be understated what it has done for the industry.

[@ClosestNearUtopia]

“Medium settings” on 480p 😂

[@justintvinhd]

​@wizzenberry Ps4 equivialnt gpu is literally a cut down amd 7790 from 2013. Being 9 years older architecture makes it incapable of doing certain things the deck can even if it has a 25 percent uptick in raw computer throughput.

[@adriantrusca1245]

I am absolutely loving your mom. From behind.

[@a54]

Very interesting video as always, thanks Oliver. I am loving this series of vids you've got going on how the latest and greatest titles are faring on the Steam Deck. Given how popular this device class (and the Steam Deck specifically) has become, I genuinely think (or at least hope) it will lead to the return of greater scalability to PC gaming. It is also becoming increasingly obvious that Valve needs to do something to overhaul the "Steam Deck Verified" program - it either needs to promise less, or they need to do more to force devs to actually ensure the game ships in a state and with a default config that allows consistent performance at the targeted frame rate. In its current state, even fully Steam Deck Verified games often either can't hit a consistent performance target, or the end user has to put in way too much effort to figure out what cuts to make in order to get the needed performance.

[@originalityisdead.9513]

Hardware level optimisation for the Steam Deck would produce great results. Unfortunately the SD is rather weak and PC ports are always a mess so it will undoubtedly be useless in the near future.

[@manofsteel110]

They do hold games to high standards, just not games from big studios.

[@brorjace08]

And thats exactly why I will never get one. Plus what about the size of it? That thing has never been a portable, its too damn big

[@eagle_rb_mmoomin_418]

​@@brorjace08your loss. In a lot of these examples he's running at medium settings 😅😅😅🤦 you cap FPS to 30 or 40. You run everything at low settings. You turn textures to medium or high. You also take advantage of the built in FSR in SteamOS. The end.

[@brorjace08]

@@eagle_rb_mmoomin_418 I just dont understand the appeal of this thing dude. Why not get a PS5 instead? I mean if you travel a lot and shit I can see some use for it but besides that... emulation? How do you use it?

[@TheViralKontent]

As a deck user it's amazing how these latest next gen titles are still playable on that small portable device. Steam deck has revolutionized portable gaming. In my 30s I hardly get time to play on my PS5 or XSX but I can enjoy my AAA titles on the go anytime.

[@smittyvanjagermanjenson182]

As another 30yo gamer, I've found xbox series x remote play to be my go to. If you have a good network connection/data plan you can effectively play most places without issue. My job offers wifi 6 so on a 30minute break I'll fire up remote play occasionally and have a blast. Alls you need is a controller and a phone and you're set, though there are a few other peripherals that make it more comfortable

[@batsai]

Great video Oliver! Always good to see you on DF Weekly as well!

[@EricCarter12]

FANTASTIC VIDEO! Annoyingly most other Steam Deck videos just show the basic gameplay of Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart and don't shot what happens when the actual rifting happens. So thanks so much Digital Foundry for giving us speed tests with this. I wonder however how the Steam Deck would be able to load the portals with a Sabrent SSD. Those are supposed to be much faster than the built in Steam Deck SSD's. It would be interesting to know how well it performs in comparison.

[@Henrik_Holst]

I don't think a Sabrent would help here, AFAIK the Deck have only a PCIe3.0x4 interface for the SSD.

[@GraveUypo]

my steamdeck pushes 3500mb/s on my 2tb ssd, but i havent been through any of those rifts with the transition animation while playing in it yet (mostly playing in my deaktop). or maybr i have been and just didnt notice, in which case therr was no hitching

[@markojovanovic9651]

Its been shown that no ssd goes above 1000mb/s in these sequences so it wouldnt matter really, I compared my 970 evo plus 2tb to friends 980 pro 1tb it is the exact same(we have similar pc specs rx 6800 xt, I have an i5 12400 he has a ryzen 5 3600

[@Minmataro718]

So they should focus on like 1% of the game over full out gameplay? Also the loading isnt bad for a handheld.

[@Minmataro718]

@@GraveUypo You might as well have a desktop PC at that point. If people keep upgrading this and that on the deck whats the point of a cheap handheld? Once what you spent pushes $700+ you're a fool for not just having a nice desktop PC.

[@link99912]

At 3:38, I also found a weird dip in performance in that exact area. When moving, my FPS would nearly halve, even if I wasn't changing the view of the camera much (just running in circles with the camera facing the same direction). Stopping would see it climb 60 to 110 FPS. No idea what's going on there, but something's up with it.

[@phyxirian]

I do not see any problem with a portable solution playing with lower graphical settings. I think too big for.. as a title is misleading in capabilities and expectations of the device. The fact you are running a PS5 exclusive on your 15w handheld is mind blowing to me. It's proof that this engine is capable of scaling very well looking very decent. I think looking at the footage, when we get a upscaler like DLSS quality the portable space is going to get very very interesting

[@Blackenedification]

thanks it's always nice to have a detailed performance review on modern games using the steam deck. Keep it up :)

[@Mr_APeezy]

This was the review I was looking for (specifically for Rift Apart). I eventually will get RA, but I know for sure that I need to store it on my SSD because 10 seconds on a SD card ain’t gone be fun 😂 Great and informative testing and breakdown Oliver! Thanks!

[@Schnyger]

When watching these videos, it's always important to remember how much better this gameplay footages looks on the Steam Deck screen vs. being blown up for a large monitor or TV. I'm more and more tempted to get one of these guys.

[@TheUltimateBlooper]

As a Steam Deck and a powerful PC (got a 4090FE) owner - I prefer to play big games like Ratchet on PC, while leaving the deck to less demanding/older titles and emulation, where the experience is uncompromised and, in case of emulation, superb. I couldn't justify trying to enjoy a pixelated 30fps game just for the bragging rights of "I got this running on a Steam Deck" - that just kills the beautiful art of the game for me. Meanwhile something like Forza Horizon 4 and 5 at locked 50-60fps, native 800p and decent settings - THAT is enjoyable. I suppose some people don't mind the pixelated smeary games, but I personally think it's far better to pick the battles the Steam Deck can comfortably win, rather than trying to make it run stuff it isn't suited for. And yes - you can absolutely see the smearing and the low resolution in games when using FSR. It might be serviceable to some people, but after you play a few games at native res or even supersampled (Yakuza Kiwami runs at native 1440p maxed settings at locked 50/60 on my Deck!!! PSP emulation - 2880x1632 is no problem) and get used to what the screen is actually capable of - going down below native with FSR feels quite nasty.

[@bagelbomb1887]

​​@@TheUltimateBlooperI agree I tried it on Steam deck but it's a blurry mess and only runs at 30 fps. I usually play less demanding games on the deck and I found the downgrade running on the deck profound as it looks and plays so much better on PS5.

[@TonyJenn]

​@@bagelbomb1887blurry mess is a reach...

[@rabbitenjoyer6320]

Good stuff, thanks Oliver!!!

[@emeraldcoastgetaway]

Thank you for this comprehensive content! Steam Deck is my favorite way to game as a guy with small children that enjoys being horizontal.

[@andrenascimento9112]

The fact you can play this games on a portable device is insane to begin with

[@abhinavsaprey4291]

There is currently a fix going around that helps mid range GPUs on Ratchet and Clanks Direct storage implementation. If you delete the two dlls in the game directory with direct storage names, you can effectively free up GPU resource for rendering that would otherwise be busy doing decompression. It helped tremendously on my RTX 3070 laptop which could barely run the game on 1080p high settings above 40-50 FPS. As a side note an analysis of directstorage implementation and if dll removal does infact help, would be interesting.

[@EchevinDuGlitch]

There is no directstorage support in wine/proton/vkd3d-proton currently so the Steam Deck effectively doesn't use it at this point in time, making deleting those dlls irrelevant. But that could mean until there's a game that has a hard requirement on it with no fallback available, not having support for it is actually preferable.

[@abhinavsaprey4291]

@@EchevinDuGlitch Oh yes! Totally forgot that Steam Deck does not run on Windows! Yeah that makes DirectStorage dlls useless and hence further goes to show it's not at all required for this game to run.

[@JFlogerzi]

Can you share a link. I am willing to test on my deck.

[@foriegnuniter]

I love these videos! I would also love an update on your Last of Us or Jedi Survivor video

[@kipuki]

Excellent analysis and overview as always! You mentioned that the 64GB eMMC Steam Deck would also have somewhat compromised loading. That will not be a problem for those users because they aren't able to store the game to begin with :p

[@Saif0412]

😂 Your right. Would be interesting to see how Ratchet and Clank portal streaming fares with higher speed SSD than the stock internal one, such as Sabrent rocket which should achieve 3.5gb transfer speeds.

[@VariantAEC]

The game is 39.2 GB on PC. It might not be possible if they have other apps but are the file table, OS and pre-loaded apps really taking up 24GB on Steam Deck? If so... ouch.

[@kipuki]

@@VariantAEC is it? I checked on Steam and it said 75GB of available space

[@AlexTheStampede]

When I got mine, 22 q3, it had about 40gb free. Now, add shaders and I don't see speed being an issue.

[@AlexTheStampede]

Actually I have a picture from January, shows that at the time I had 6gb free out of 46.5

[@Booneface]

Excellent video... I would have liked to see you use the fastest micro sd card for Rachet though. I think the difference between a 90mb read speed and 130mb read speed would have been noticeable.

[@yuriloki64]

It won’t make any difference, since the Steam Deck has a UHS-I micro SD slot. Maximum speed for both write and read is 104MB/s (theoretical). In practice, it’s capped around 90 to 100MB/s.

[@orangeoffline]

dude at 3:03, imagine telling somebody in the PSP days that one was a console and one was a handheld, crazy times.

[@folyqa]

Appreciate the Deck content. Much love.

[@GamingRobioto]

It's really impressive how these games run on the Deck, even if they are pushing the limits. I would personally never play fast paced action packed games like these on mine though, that's what my PC is for. As a suggestion, it would be good if you added fan RPM and noise to these benchmarks/analyses, because personally I don't like playing games portably on the Deck when the fan is audible. I have a feeling Starfield won't be faring so well next month given how CPU intensive it's looking.

[@paul1979uk2000]

True, it's not the kind of games I would run on the Deck, but the idea that it can do it and do it quite well is remarkable, we are talking about games targeting this gen of consoles not the last gen after all, and it really does bold well for a Steam Deck 2 and 3, which by then, the software and hardware side of things will be a lot more mature that it wouldn't surprise me if the Deck 2 and 3 sells far more than the Deck 1, especially because with the Deck 1, it was an unproven concept and clearly the Deck one has proven that portable PC gaming is more then doable, and I suspect a lot more gamers, PC and console gamers alike are probably waiting for Valve to release a Deck 2 before making the jump, assuming Valve doesn't mess it up or take too long.

[@GamingRobioto]

@@paul1979uk2000 yeah agreed, it certainly is remarkable. I'm very excited to see how Valve evolves the Deck as this first iteration is a thing of sheer brilliance

[@KnightMD]

Finally. I love it when DF makes a Deck video. R&C looks incredible although reddit had me convinced that the lowest preset is the way to go. I'm glad Valve is holding off a hardware upgrade till there's a big enough of a leap to justify it. So far, the Deck is holding up just fine but I hope there's something cooking for 2024, because I want to play Spiderman and Portal with Ray tracing...

[@Decenium]

Love Oliver, just great stuff

[@android41]

Thank you Oliver and DF for continuing to cover the Steam Deck. The Deck has spoiled me with its portable nature and I simply can’t tolerate being stuck at my desk anymore. If it doesn’t run on Deck, I just won’t play it.

[@hawk458]

😎

[@TheDaniRainbow]

I always love some steam deck content. Thanks

[@elec123]

Interesting stuff! I can really recommend upgrading the internal storage to a quicker and bigger m.2. They are getting really cheap and the installation process is quick and not very hard.

[@violetshft]

Can you recommend some ssd brands for Steam Deck?

[@fosterfostan5593]

@@violetshftI got Corsair mp600 mini 1tb and have 3500gb/s read / write. Much faster than the 512 native SSD.

[@ivalterbaptista2305]

Upgrade yes. But not to the fastest one out there. Steamdeck wont take of advantage of Gen4 drives. If you buy one, you are wasting your money. Get a Gen 3 drive instead. Cheaper.

[@paul1979uk2000]

The fact that Ratchet is running at all on the Deck is quite remarkable and is actually running at decent visual settings, beside the low resolution and 30fps, which I feel 30fps is more passable on a smaller screen then it would be on a bigger screen, 40fps would be the sweet spot and maybe that might be doable with a few patch updates and if it optimises the game more. Some will say, if it can run on the Deck, surely it can run on the PS4, but we should remember that the Deck has a much faster hard drive, and I'm not sure, but isn't the cpu faster?, I'm not sure, but having a faster hard drive is what is making the difference, it basically means 16GB of memory is enough because the hard drive for the most part can keep up with shifting data in and out of memory, that wouldn't be possible on the PS4, but if the PS4 had more memory, it might be possible, as we see on the PC with more memory and slower drives. The other factor is that it would be difficult to sell on the PS4 at such a low resolution whiles also using upscaling, it would look quite bad on the big screen, so targeting 900p or 1080p would probably be too much for the PS4. Will be interesting to see if the developers continue to work on patching up the game and if it offers overall better performance over the coming weeks and months.

[@fosterfostan5593]

With undervolted and overclocked Steamdeck (CPU/GPU/RAM ) and cryoutlities 2 installed I have much better performance and almost stable 40 fps is doable !

[@therunawaykid6523]

Looking forward to playing rift apart on my aya Neo 2021 handheld pc soon I have always loved the ratchet and clank games since the ps2 titles!

[@Roruoni]

I would like it if they confirmed whether the SSD used a PCIe3x4 of PCIe3x2 drive. Valve started using the lower PCIe lane SSD in many units as a way to increase volume production.

[@CCaribou]

Doesn't matter. It makes no difference which one you have. It doesn't affect throughput in any meaningful way.

[@antonkirilenko3116]

It really makes no practical difference. The storage is not fast enough to use even x2 to begin with.

[@Roruoni]

@@antonkirilenko3116 I guess there is another reason to upgrade the storage dpwn the road. Hopefully there are some newer high capacity TLC m.2230 drives n the future that don't suck too much power. I love upgrading ram and storage.

[@comrade_snarky]

Nice video Oliver. Any idea if DF is going to cover Remnant on normal PC hardware?

[@nomercy8989]

I don't think Alex can handle something as awful mentally

[@comrade_snarky]

@@nomercy8989 lol

[@XZ-III]

I think PC is too big for Alex

[@meanmug5258]

I personally like a clear crisp image over the other bells and whistles these new games go for.

[@raresmacovei8382]

Unfortunately no mention or testing of removing the DirectStorage storage files from Ratchet, that are a universal improvement in performance, less VRAM usage, loading times AND reducing stutters on dimensional traversal.

[@abhinavsaprey4291]

Right? I saw tremendous improvements on my RTX 3070 laptop playing on 1080p High settings with DLSS. On other note it's stupid that an RTX 3070 needs DLSS to hit 60 fps at 1080p.

[@yuriloki64]

Proton does not make use of any of those dll files related with DirectStorage, so deleting them won’t make any difference on the Steam Deck performance.

[@cnochaosnorder124]

Have you consider doing a Midway Arcade Treasures 2 breakdown juxtaposing PS2, GameCube and OG Xbox. It would probably be a fun retro project to tackle. A wide array of emulated games. Which is the best console to run this title on? OG Xbox vs PS2 vs GameCube. Keep up the great work!

[@futurafrlx8874]

Oliver's voice is so deep and bassy, I love how it sounds coming from my speakers.

[@AFistfulOf4K]

I wonder if SteamOS 3.5 might improve performance stability on Remnant 2. It's only available in testing right now but has been shown to be helpful with frametime spikes especially in CPU-heavy titles.

[@joshuaroughan3350]

I find the transitions in Rift Apart hilarious on the SD card,

[@deathdoor]

Ratchet runs so well, it's amazing! I wonder how will it perform after RT is enabled on its GPU.

[@AnimeUniverseDE]

Why didn't you try any of the suggested advanced performance tweaks that you can do to improve performance, especially when CPU-bound? There were a lot of suggestions under your last video and I'm very surprised that you didn't feel the need to mention them on here or even benchmark them. I'm talking about... - CryoUtilities - manually setting the GPU clock lower, allowing more power to go to the CPU, potentially helping frame time spikes - not using FSR2 or XeSS, instead just setting the resolution itself lower and relying on the spatial FSR1 upscaler - FSR2 and XeSS have overhead costs that are highly dependent on the output resolution after all

[@dsbdsb6637]

Maybe they are trying to show experience non-tech users can expect as most people want console-like exp. from SD.

[@jordanscherr6699]

What about the fastest MicroSD cards that money can buy? I'm actually about to get a steam deck, and the MicroSD I'm using is a 1 TB SanDisk extreme, basically as fast as MicroSD gets. So does that put it at roughly equatable to the internal memory?

[@unlimitedslash]

As it seems rather GPU limited, have you tried R&C with overclock on the gpu?

[@ehrenloudermilk1053]

The loading on deck actually soft locked my rift apart on the early right section. Just dropped me into the water next the the pirate ship. Will only drop there on reload.

[@elon6131]

8:20 i think you have clipping issues due to the low internal rendering resolution. FSR screws it up completely while XeSS deals with it better.. until you start moving. i doubt any FSR update would fix that.

[@Minmataro718]

I think its an ok sacrifice to get some loading with a SD card. i mean that just makes sense. Its still amazing that we got R&C on a handheld.

[@aminen5316]

Love Steam Deck reviews

[@MrNagant007]

When you cap the game to 30fps, the GPU will be working less and more power budget can go to the CPU, does this increase rift loading sequences? Is upsampling usable in quality mode locked to 30fps? IGTI in performance seemed to give the best performance, is at least that one usable and better looking at Quality than FSR/XESS in performance mode?

[@neuroflare]

2:00 switches to scene where that artifacting is the MOST deistracting

[@mr.h5566]

A question on the diablo pros: What does happen to the stash from season 1 when the season ends? It cant be transfered to the eternal ream because then we would need mor stashes. Is everythong which is not in the player inventory lost?

[@ThaexakaMavro]

my steam deck is used to play my backlog of games games like borderland will run all high at 4watt tdp 40fps lock it's amazing

[@TheNickmelchiori]

Set resolution one setting smaller than the Decks native, use FSR2 Balanced and then upscale with max sharpness with inbuilt FSR1

[@Zinkolo]

I have rift apart on ultra low and it still chugs lol. The loading also suffers heavily and there's wait times during transitions

[@Riboshom]

It should be noted that Wine/Proton doesn't (to my knowledge) support DirectStorage yet, and could be making use of Linux's io_uring interface for efficient NVMe parallel and asynchronous I/O to better mirror the way it works on the PS5.

[@doyouthinkitsdead]

Nice one!

[@BenchmarksIT]

It's just amazing how brand new titles run on Deck! Excellent port by Nixxes.

[@bagelbomb1887]

I tried it on Steam Deck and it's playable but to it does look terrible compared to on PS5

[@PantsaBear]

@@bagelbomb1887 Yeah agreed. Im happy for people who can still enjoy it as the option is good enough for that, but idk how someone can play a cinematic action game with that much stuff going on at low framerates and resolutions, just to have it handheld. Also the audio experience on handheld is worse too. But like I said, the option to have it is good

[@andrzejos7003]

@@bagelbomb1887 It's a extra slim and tiny handheld, compared to PS5 🙂

[@ZackSNetwork]

@@bagelbomb1887The Steam Deck is weaker than the PS4 what do you expect.

[@doovplayz]

@@ZackSNetworkno it’s not it’s between ps4 and ps4 pro

[@slangthetroubadour]

Are u running Cryoutilities w the recommended settings?

[@ultramegax]

Nice video, as always! :) I would have liked to see a test with a 1tb A2 micro SD card, though. Speeds should be significantly faster.

[@yuriloki64]

It won’t make any difference, since the Steam Deck has a UHS-I micro SD slot. Maximum speed for both write and read is 104MB/s (theoretical). In practice, it’s capped around 90 to 100MB/s.

[@ultramegax]

@@yuriloki64 ohhh. I didn't realize that. That's disappointing!

[@onehitsword6800]

Is KZbin 1080p enhanced bitrate the equivalent of DLSS for video games

[@DanXcel]

I would love the inclusion of the ROG Ally in these comparison videos!

[@XZ-III]

Yeah but then ppl are gonna ask what about Aya neo and so on

[@JFlogerzi]

O/Cing plus Increased TDP? What about an aftermarket 1 or 2TB SSD? Lastly did you try FSR 2.1 and dynamic settings. 30 Locked with medium details and few items at high.

[@kyslem]

Seeing your performance analysis I can’t help but wonder what your opinion on Cryoutilites is. Your teardowns are always amazing and exhaustive, and I’d love to see to what extent Kyle’s tweaks have impact on different games you test. I know that at some point there’s too many options, but I’d like to see a Digital Foundry review of the tool

[@eagle_rb_mmoomin_418]

I suspect he hasn't gone anywhear them. Given the comments about HP. Also don't get the impression DF know anything about Linux. Regarding Cryobytes utilities. They are pretty much mandatory to get decent perf out of Harry Potter.

[@Natureboy8383]

Cryoutilites is pretty much mandatory regardless. With that being said, I love the steam deck community. Without them, my steam deck would be running vanilla lol. @@eagle_rb_mmoomin_418

[@KatalistProductionsKozzySasha]

Cryoutilities works great, I did it for the Xcom turnbased strategy game, but it has also helped on alot of other games to (Harry Potter, Remnant 2, Resident Evil 4 remake,etc..)

[@Maindric]

I would love to see a performance breakdown of Baldur's Gate III on the Steam Deck after the official release. Keep up the great content!

[@kewa_design]

pretty sure its coming, i will try it tomorrow as well, but i guess it will run bad or look bad when running good haha but lets see

[@hungjaketranquang4365]

@@kewa_designnot at all. I heard it runs solid 30fps medium setting

[@ActNasty5]

@@hungjaketranquang4365weird because my 3080 and 3700x stutters on bg3

[@SAGERUNE]

@@hungjaketranquang4365 in the beta i got it to run around 50fps, but that was before i started adjusting the tdp. i found a compromise around 35-40 with medium-low and fsr that still left me with about a 2 hour battery. the control scheme needed to be custom though, i dont know how thats going to translate until they introduce a native xinput scheme, but there are already some good presets. i made a personalized one that felt pretty snappy.

[@benjaminbishop3248]

​@kewa_design197 I play all of early access on it and on medium settings runs well. I didn't even need to force a combatibity with a proton version

[@Nucleosynthese]

How much disk space does the game require? Does it even fit on the 64gb model? Also how does the 512 gb mode perform with the faster SSD?

[@VariantAEC]

R&C:RA on PC is 39.2GB when installed, however Steam recommends over 70GB of space to install the game. So... If you have a PC you might he able to install it there and migrate the installed content to the Steam Deck. I don't know if that will work I don't have a Steam Deck.

[@rubenalejandrojozaminassif142]

Could you make the same videos or with the steam deck compare also the ROG ally with handheld companion at 35 and 40 watts?

[@Jokerwolf666]

If you are okay with running games a few resolutions down you can get huge performance boost in games like Elden ring and you don't even notice a quality drop that minimal.

[@jmsmith6]

The more successful the Steam deck is the more/better the optimization. I mean look at some of the impossible ports Switch has had. I wish(maybe they do) Valve would give a financial incentive to do the hard work in getting the game to run well on the SD.

[@AMidgetWalrus]

In regards to the town in Rift Apart, I remember odd frame drops on PS5 in that area, so that's probably just an issue with the game itself.

[@FSAPOJake]

Oliver really is right at home on the DF team.

[@CSmithyPx]

Started playing remnant 1 on the steam deck and that doesn't run super well either but I'm in and can't wait to play the second

[@borrellipatrick]

Remant 1 was pretty sweet on Switch. Realizing that remant 2 is a little too advanced for the system making me hopeful for a port if the next switch does come out next year

[@Psevdonim123]

Feels like unoptimised... It looks good, but 720p on PS5? Really? There's got to be something wrong, there's no point running so low on new consoles intentionally (I know it's dynamic but still)

[@VinceTrousers4]

Olli you're a hero!

[@AbysmalEnd]

I overclocked/ Undervolted my steam deck so i've been doing pretty good with these games. 1900mhz GPU 3900mhz CPU UMA set to 4G TDP set to 20 watts and since i did SOC,CPU, GPU undervolt temperatures are actually really good and finally I changed out the back plate for JSAUX upgraded one. it comes with more vents on the top and open vent on the back which dropped temperatures by 3-4 degrees!!!

[@AbysmalEnd]

Also I wouldn't consider Remnant ll a good showing of UE5 because the developers themselves said they designed the game to require upscaling. I don't think that should ever be a standard with developing the game. that is why it has horrible performance on a 7900xtx and 4090. Upscaling should be used purely for squeezing some extra frames but never has a standard in development. I love the game but it may mark another moment where developers use it to cut corners on optimization. my 6900xt shouldnt run at 80FPS at 4K with FSR set to performance . the 6900xt is not a 1080P Card maybe a 1440P card for upcoming titles but not 1080. Ratchet and clank looks better, runs better and has way better scaling.

[@tdome3000]

8:00 How did you come to the conclusion that it uses FSR 2?

[@jeveritt8398]

Games like remnant 2 makes me question what testing valve does for the verfied status given the performance. R&c rift apart however looks and runs good enough for a 2nd or 3rd playthrough imo

[@calm2348]

Yeah but remnant 2 isn't even running well on gaming PCs. It's poorly optimized. Not entirely the deck's fault.

[@ScowlerJase]

Do devs or steam themselves not provide optimal configs/settings for games when playing on the steamdeck?

[@Lolkork]

Does the deck/steamos support directstorage?

[@8Paul7]

These videos are awesome, please keep them coming. Steam Deck is great.

[@phrozac]

Just went to check R&C settings on the Deck and it doesn't appear to have XESS as an upscaler option anymore. Am I doing something in the menu that disables it or was it recently pulled out?

[@mikaeldannenberger6]

Just disable the "dynamic resolution scaling" in the graphic options menu, and Xess will reappear ;)

[@Ichigo_Live]

Thank You!

[@yousuff1]

It runs pretty well on my ROG Ally. Nice to see it's good for Steam Deck owners as well.

[@Tainted79]

If your playing at home. You can always use steam remote play. And stream from your PC to your steam deck.

[@Armataan]

Or alternatively, use GeForce now from deck to play at ultra.

[@deckverse]

Good stuff.

[@StooMonster]

Nice analysis Oliver, it's going to be interesting to see whether we're going to see more scaling across performance in PC space because of Steam Deck.

[@Wobbothe3rd]

The Steam Deck isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. It's sold about 2 million copies. Gaming laptops and lower spec PCs are much more prevalent and PC Gaming has ALWAYS involved scalability. If scalability increases or decreases over time, it's not going to be "because of" the Steam Deck. It's funny how people pretend gaming laptops don't exist!

[@steel5897]

@@Wobbothe3rd yeah the steam deck won't help much. Look at steam hardware survey, the most popular discrete GPU is the GTX 1650, followed by the 3060, then the 1060 still. The incentive to scale PC games has always been there, most people are on low or low-mid range hardware.

[@isaboll1]

​​​​@@Wobbothe3rdThe issue with that, is that laptops are never "active" targets that developers account for (consoles contribute more to PC game scalability through ports due to them being active targets the games were based on as a result). The Steam Deck demonstrably is an active target, since Sony/Nixxes and some other devs made an active effort in getting their games to be "verified". How effective the efforts are as it may be, the fact that there's something to specifically focus on there makes the Deck potentially accomplish that much more compared to just the existence of gaming laptops.

[@psp4gamer]

​@@Wobbothe3rdTake in mind the deck is under a huge billionare company that can give the support and updates to the deck, in comparison to the huge variation of components of custom made PC's, laptops and gaming laptops, the deck is a pre defined hardware combo. I get the point but the deck opened the industry to a more mainstream market rather than overpriced mini gaming PC's like the GPD Win series.

[@TheWendellpaulo]

​​@@Wobbothe3rdGaming Laptops are way less practical than something like the Steam Deck or the ROG Ally. It will never attract console players like handhelds does.

[@adrianhazzard6665]

Can't wait for the future Steam Deck vs Switch 2 comparisons.

[@GaminylGames]

MAAAAAAN seeing Rift Apart on a handheld is absolutely mind-boggling. God damn

[@zombiebillcosby]

We should be advising against using the built in steam deck frame rate limiter. It adds a massive amount of input lag.

[@unnoticedhero1]

Yeah, I've noticed in some games frame pacing and input lag is much worse with the Deck limit in place, for example Dark Souls Remastered runs at a solid 60fps with ingame vsync vs the deck limiter where it runs 60 but the frame pacing makes it look much worse, at least on my Deck, though I've had a lot of games where I left it on and I didn't notice a difference.

[@zombiebillcosby]

@@unnoticedhero1 absolutely, someone did some tests on Reddit and if I’m not mistaken at 30 FPS you can add 100+ ms of input lag that’s unacceptable and makes you feel super floaty.

[@Praxss]

What we are running 540p with xess at balance? 360p internal resolution?

[@xtr.7662]

240p

[@pabloescoe]

How are your temperatures so low on every steam deck video? Mine runs at 80 deg C after 15 minutes of playing.

[@nastysdsi]

Have you tried deleting the DirectStorage DLLs in the game folder?

[@yuriloki64]

Proton does not make use of any of those dll files related with DirectStorage, so deleting them won’t make any difference on the Steam Deck performance.

[@devonmarr9872]

720p with performance mode? Would that be 360p?

[@Tyler_tha_narrator]

I have a 256 GB Steamdeck and the portal portion of Ratchet and Clank did NOT lag thst badly. I didnt adjust anything. I installed and played it straight out.

[@BPMa14n]

Wow they run in a handheld. Thats great.

[@melxb]

having the XeSS dlss like solution on these handhelds is amazing, this is what switch 2 should come with from nvidia

[@videogameobsession]

Size Matters was one of the more fun R&C games IMO. I also enjoyed the underrated Secret Agent Clank, also on the PSP. You can play many of them on the PS Vita too. Why wait two decades to play portable R&C?

[@bluflame8894]

I love my deck bro 😭 had it for a month or so now

[@SirDragonClaw]

A more important question is how do they run on the ROG Ally?