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Wow I’m glad somebody is finally quantifying why the steam deck has terrible CPU performance. I thought it might be the tiny cache. Many older games struggle t

Wow I’m glad somebody is finally quantifying why the steam deck has terrible CPU performance. I thought it might be the tiny cache. Many older games struggle to hit a consistent 60 FPS due to CPU limitations. With some testing you can usually figure out which options are mostly bottlenecked by the CPU. There are some games, like Fallout 3, that will chug down towards 30 FPS in busy areas regardless of settings :/

0xDEF 4y ago
That is disappointing to hear. I was actually planning to buy the Steam Deck to play 2010-2016 era action RPGs.
- samuraijack 4y ago
  You should give it a shot. HN can be too negative at times. At least the YouTube vids seem to indicate that the deck can handle the games of that era just fine.
  - clamchowder 4y ago
    (author of the article here) Agreed. I'm just commenting on the hardware architecture. The deck is a pretty competent gaming device, given its ultraportable form factor and tight power constraints. You can find that out on any number of sites that have reviewed the Steam Deck from gaming experience perspective, so I didn't think it was necessary rehash that.
- edrxty 4y ago
  Don't let everyone get you down, I have one and it's extremely performant, even with games from the past few years. It'll work totally fine for stuff from that era.
- jnovek 4y ago
  I’ve been playing through my ARPG backlog on Steam Deck. Is there a particular game you’re curious about?
- rmckayfleming 4y ago
  I’ve been very happy with mine playing games of all vintages and development budgets. Just this weekend I was playing Far Cry 4 and The Division 2 quite smoothly.
  - gambiting 4y ago
    I've been playing Midnight Suns on mine, very recent game, and it works extremely well(if you lock to 30fps). I've played a good chunk of Elden Ring also completely locked to 30fps - no problem at all. Someone said something about it before that makes sense to me - it's a portable PS4. If you are happy with playing games at the level a PS4 would play them, then it's a perfect device for you. If you expect proper next-gen games to run on it(Returnal) then you will be disappointed.
alexklarjr 4y ago
I disagree, it is not really terrible, it is on par with i7 4770, i7 7700hq and even 10310u at two-four times less power consumed. 99% games are only needs 4 cores to achieve 60 fps, and apu is only limit for them at these extremely low TDP. AMD put a decent apu for balance, and compare to 6800u with twice more cores and 1.5 more powerful apu, they only lose 10-20% while consuming 2 times less power.
flatiron 4y ago
I was always interested why Dolphin (wii and GameCube) emulator would chug on the steam deck. Very frequent single digit fps drops. My 2013 MacBook Air on Linux plays with 0 drops.
- rlex 4y ago
  It is strange one, but try to disable SMT and limit cores to 3 while playing dolphin. Solved all of my issues. Guess linux version have some issues when limiting cores.
sylens 4y ago
Yeah pretty early on I realized that I didn’t like playing demanding games on it for a few reasons - screen quality, fan noise, and CPU performance. It’s mostly smaller indie games and emulation for me.
- hoverfd 4y ago
  The new God of War is absolutely unplayable, or at least it was when I uninstalled it in January.
  - awill 4y ago
    yea, uninstalling it would make it unplayable.
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    You mean the game that is not marked as verified but rather as "playable" (which really means: it starts. Figure out yourself how to make it run well) doesn't run well? Well that's not entirely surprising now, is it?
    - hoverfd 4y ago
      Is there a configuration you found that made it run well or did you just want to say something unhelpful?
      - ohgodplsno 4y ago
        Entirely unhelpful, but considering your original comment was pretty much complaining that <old device> cannot run <very new and demanding software>, I figured it was in the theme.
      - m5r 4y ago
        CryoByte33 on YouTube[0] has videos explaining in details different configuration presets to run games like God of War, Witcher 3, or Breath of the Wild. He's also maintaining an impressive piece of software[1] that helps optimize your Steam Deck. Worst case scenario, if you don't find the game you're looking for in his videos, chances are you will find a decent configuration on SteamDeckHQ[2] [0]: https://youtube.com/@cryobyte33 https://youtube.com/@cryobyte33 [1]: https://github.com/CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities https://github.com/CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities [2]: https://steamdeckhq.com/game-settings/ https://steamdeckhq.com/game-settings/
worldofmatthew 4y ago
Fallout 3 may have other issues. The Steam Deck CPU should be more than powerful enough to run all areas of that game at 60FPS+.
- izacus 4y ago
  It's interesting because Skyrim on the same engine runs very well.
  - worldofmatthew 4y ago
    Fallout 3 and New Vegas both have massive issues. You may be better off using Lutris with the GOG version on the Steam Deck and finding a config that installs the performance fix mods.
    - sosodev 4y ago
      I tried performance patches for both FO3/FNV and couldn’t fix it for either. I believe it’s because every prefab that Bethesda renders requires a memory access on every frame. So areas with a ton of prefabs like Mr. House’s penthouse or rivet city market are extremely slow. It checks out given the articles coverage of just how poor the memory latency is once you exceed the tiny 4MB cache. There are ways to “fix” it but they tend to suck. You can crank the draw distance of objects to the minimum but if it’s not done dynamically then every other scene becomes terribly ugly/broken. You can also install mods that remove some of the clutter but how do you know which clutter to remove? Some of it is aesthetically important and the tone of the scene can change dramatically by randomly removing stuff.
  - noirscape 4y ago
    It's important to not forget that Skyrim has been ported to an insane amount of consoles over the years, which includes engine and optimization updates. It's a very actively maintained game that from what I can tell mostly follows sensible design practices with current hardware. Fallout 3(& by extension New Vegas) hasn't had that luxury; those games only got two releases (initial & "ultimate edition"), both of which running on an engine where the glue holding things together is duct tape and technical debt going back to Oblivion and it was released for a set of consoles that needed optimization to the degree where it was just easier to dump the entire world state as it changed into a save file instead of just storing the bare minimum[0]. That's the sort of optimization that will lead to bugs down the line as undocumented features and behaviors change (not to mention the already buggy release state of both games.) [0]: Which in turn caused another infamous bug to pop up where the PS3 would run out of storage to keep individual game saves (the cap was something like 10mb) after playing for long enough.

0xDEF 4y ago

That is disappointing to hear. I was actually planning to buy the Steam Deck to play 2010-2016 era action RPGs.

samuraijack 4y ago
You should give it a shot. HN can be too negative at times. At least the YouTube vids seem to indicate that the deck can handle the games of that era just fine.
- clamchowder 4y ago
  (author of the article here) Agreed. I'm just commenting on the hardware architecture. The deck is a pretty competent gaming device, given its ultraportable form factor and tight power constraints. You can find that out on any number of sites that have reviewed the Steam Deck from gaming experience perspective, so I didn't think it was necessary rehash that.
edrxty 4y ago
Don't let everyone get you down, I have one and it's extremely performant, even with games from the past few years. It'll work totally fine for stuff from that era.
jnovek 4y ago
I’ve been playing through my ARPG backlog on Steam Deck. Is there a particular game you’re curious about?
rmckayfleming 4y ago
I’ve been very happy with mine playing games of all vintages and development budgets. Just this weekend I was playing Far Cry 4 and The Division 2 quite smoothly.
- gambiting 4y ago
  I've been playing Midnight Suns on mine, very recent game, and it works extremely well(if you lock to 30fps). I've played a good chunk of Elden Ring also completely locked to 30fps - no problem at all. Someone said something about it before that makes sense to me - it's a portable PS4. If you are happy with playing games at the level a PS4 would play them, then it's a perfect device for you. If you expect proper next-gen games to run on it(Returnal) then you will be disappointed.

alexklarjr 4y ago

I disagree, it is not really terrible, it is on par with i7 4770, i7 7700hq and even 10310u at two-four times less power consumed. 99% games are only needs 4 cores to achieve 60 fps, and apu is only limit for them at these extremely low TDP. AMD put a decent apu for balance, and compare to 6800u with twice more cores and 1.5 more powerful apu, they only lose 10-20% while consuming 2 times less power.

flatiron 4y ago

I was always interested why Dolphin (wii and GameCube) emulator would chug on the steam deck. Very frequent single digit fps drops. My 2013 MacBook Air on Linux plays with 0 drops.

rlex 4y ago
It is strange one, but try to disable SMT and limit cores to 3 while playing dolphin. Solved all of my issues. Guess linux version have some issues when limiting cores.

sylens 4y ago

Yeah pretty early on I realized that I didn’t like playing demanding games on it for a few reasons - screen quality, fan noise, and CPU performance. It’s mostly smaller indie games and emulation for me.

hoverfd 4y ago
The new God of War is absolutely unplayable, or at least it was when I uninstalled it in January.
- awill 4y ago
  yea, uninstalling it would make it unplayable.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  You mean the game that is not marked as verified but rather as "playable" (which really means: it starts. Figure out yourself how to make it run well) doesn't run well? Well that's not entirely surprising now, is it?
  - hoverfd 4y ago
    Is there a configuration you found that made it run well or did you just want to say something unhelpful?
    - ohgodplsno 4y ago
      Entirely unhelpful, but considering your original comment was pretty much complaining that <old device> cannot run <very new and demanding software>, I figured it was in the theme.
    - m5r 4y ago
      CryoByte33 on YouTube[0] has videos explaining in details different configuration presets to run games like God of War, Witcher 3, or Breath of the Wild. He's also maintaining an impressive piece of software[1] that helps optimize your Steam Deck. Worst case scenario, if you don't find the game you're looking for in his videos, chances are you will find a decent configuration on SteamDeckHQ[2] [0]: https://youtube.com/@cryobyte33 https://youtube.com/@cryobyte33 [1]: https://github.com/CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities https://github.com/CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities [2]: https://steamdeckhq.com/game-settings/ https://steamdeckhq.com/game-settings/

worldofmatthew 4y ago

Fallout 3 may have other issues. The Steam Deck CPU should be more than powerful enough to run all areas of that game at 60FPS+.

izacus 4y ago
It's interesting because Skyrim on the same engine runs very well.
- worldofmatthew 4y ago
  Fallout 3 and New Vegas both have massive issues. You may be better off using Lutris with the GOG version on the Steam Deck and finding a config that installs the performance fix mods.
  - sosodev 4y ago
    I tried performance patches for both FO3/FNV and couldn’t fix it for either. I believe it’s because every prefab that Bethesda renders requires a memory access on every frame. So areas with a ton of prefabs like Mr. House’s penthouse or rivet city market are extremely slow. It checks out given the articles coverage of just how poor the memory latency is once you exceed the tiny 4MB cache. There are ways to “fix” it but they tend to suck. You can crank the draw distance of objects to the minimum but if it’s not done dynamically then every other scene becomes terribly ugly/broken. You can also install mods that remove some of the clutter but how do you know which clutter to remove? Some of it is aesthetically important and the tone of the scene can change dramatically by randomly removing stuff.
- noirscape 4y ago
  It's important to not forget that Skyrim has been ported to an insane amount of consoles over the years, which includes engine and optimization updates. It's a very actively maintained game that from what I can tell mostly follows sensible design practices with current hardware. Fallout 3(& by extension New Vegas) hasn't had that luxury; those games only got two releases (initial & "ultimate edition"), both of which running on an engine where the glue holding things together is duct tape and technical debt going back to Oblivion and it was released for a set of consoles that needed optimization to the degree where it was just easier to dump the entire world state as it changed into a save file instead of just storing the bare minimum[0]. That's the sort of optimization that will lead to bugs down the line as undocumented features and behaviors change (not to mention the already buggy release state of both games.) [0]: Which in turn caused another infamous bug to pop up where the PS3 would run out of storage to keep individual game saves (the cap was something like 10mb) after playing for long enough.