Is Elden Ring held back on Steam Deck? | Deck Dive
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- čas přidán 22. 06. 2024
- Welcome back everyone!
Today we're pushing Elden Ring as far as it can go on the Deck! Buckle up for tons of benchmarks, recommendations, and even some battery testing!
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00:00 - Introduction
00:19 - The Newsroom
01:06 - Benchmark Methodology
01:51 - Baseline (Default) Benchmarks
02:34 - Identifying the Bottleneck
03:36 - Ah, Memories.
03:50 - Swap Fix Benchmarks
04:25 - VRAM Expansion Benchmarks
05:16 - Combined Fix Benchmark
05:44 - DXVK_ASYNC Introduction
06:24 - DXVK_ASYNC Benchmark
06:44 - GPU Pinning Intro
06:58 - GPU Pinning Benchmark
07:10 - Identifying the Bottleneck 2.0
07:45 - Un-Limitless
08:25 - Pushing It
09:00 - Preserving Power
09:59 - Suggested Settings - Intro
10:05 - Suggested Settings - Battery Saver
10:46 - Suggested Settings - Recommended
11:55 - Suggested Settings - Prettiest
12:52 - Preset Benchmarks
13:05 - Other Things I Tested
13:35 - Conclusion
14:24 - Meme O'Clock
14:49 - It's Secret AND a Bonus! - Hry
Update: I just tested all 4 presets with the Co-Op mod, and tested with DXVK_ASYNC again just in case. Performance is still within margin of error, so this is 100% an engine limitation and NOT anti-cheat.
Hello not sure if you will see this but was wondering if you knew about decky loader and if it makes performance worse having it installed
@@McVerdict Hey, thanks for watching! I wasn't aware that Decky impacted performance negatively, and I didn't notice a major difference post-install, is there a known issue for it?
Just for info: you don't need all this Big letters and %command% line....simply put "-dxvk_async=1" (whithout quotes) and it's working ;)
Way more faster and simple to enter (I learn this in the steam OS tuto on an official page on valve's site, they're is a lot if others command lines which can help too for compatibility issues ;))
And imo swap trick is useless, just the vram expansion is needed ;)
@@mikaeldannenberger6 Good tip, I thought it needed to be an environment variable and not a parameter, thanks!
The swap fix is marked as optional in my presets for that reason. I left it that way so people knew they didn't need to revert the fix to default and performance was identical.
Thank you for watching!
I was really curious about co-op mod so thanks for the update!
This is on par with digital foundry and Hardware Unboxed levels of benchmarking. Great job
Thank you so much, you flatter me 😭
@@cryobyte33 when it comes to Steam Deck, you're even better :)
Your channel is exactly what I was looking for when I was trying to minmax settings for that 40fps optimization, good stuff, hope you continue to do this for years to come
Thank you for the kind words! I hope to as well 😄
Amazing work. Waiting for my deck to be delivered. Your videos will be life savers!!
Thank you so much for the super, let me know how the fixes work out for you!
I wanted to say that I've seen alot of Steam Deck related channels pop up and this is the only one I've been interested in and subscribed to.
I appreciate what you're putting out into the world.
Thank you so much for the kind words, subscribing, and for watching! 😄
Congrats! So happy for you! It seems like you really put a lot of work into these videos and you provide us with such great value. Thank you! Can’t wait for you to get to the HZD and hopefully one day GoW deep dives 🤞🏻
Don't worry, they're on my shortlist after your previous request!
Thank you so much for the continued support!
Your channel is sort of the Digital Foundry for Steam Deck users, great content!
Thank you for the kind words and for watching! ❤️
Man your videos are amazing. I just got my Deck a few weeks back and these tutorials and benchmarks helped my gameplay tremendously! Keep up the great work!
Thank you so much, helping is exactly why I do the videos!
I have my longest and most in depth video yet coming up, so I hope you’ll check it out when it goes live in a few days 🙂
@@cryobyte33 looking forward to it 😁👍
Your channel is quickly becoming one of my favorites! DF level of analysis but specifically for the deck. Thanks for the video!
Thank you so much for the kind words, and for watching! Being compared to DF is something I never thought would happen 😭
The best in-depth videos of the deck in all CZcams, awesome work.
Thank you for watching, and the kind words!
your videos are super cool man. No one else is going in depth like you do, look forward to watchin this one
Thank you so much, I hope you enjoy it!
@@cryobyte33 have you tried parking CPU cores I forget the exact term but it basically make the CPU run 2 cores 4 threads instead of 4 cores 8 threads
@@Spencerwalker21 Yup! I mentioned disabling SMT in the video, but I also tried using 2, 4 and 6 cores. Fewer than 4 and you get drops, 4 and 6 and you don't have any gain.
@@cryobyte33 I tried 1080p docked even with everything low or off it ran like a horrible switch port and could barely hit 30fps with frequent dips into low 20s. Knew it was going to be like that but damnit I had to tinker lol
@@Spencerwalker21 lol I don't have a dock to test with so I haven't been able to do deep dives on that. You should be able to get similar perf to my video with 720p though!
Gratz on partner bro!!!!!
You are doing really good work, thank you so much.
You deserve every bit of support.
Thank you so much for the kind words, the sub, and the watch! ❤️
Super useful video man. I'm so glad that SD have so engaged community!
Thank you so much for watching!
Fantastic job on this video! I hope you keep doing this for other titles!
Thank you for watching! I've done 6 more since this video came out and don't plan on stopping 🙂
Great work dude! Keep working, and making videos, I wish you best bro!
Thank you so much for watching, the kind words and the Super! I'll keep them coming 😄
@@cryobyte33 I hope to see more Steam deck videos like this! Also If you don't mind - was it tested and recorded on 1.0.6 or 1.0.7 version o the game?
@@salat12k This was on 1.0.7, I started recording the day after it went live 🙂
Getting back into ER on the Deck on my commute and this video has helped immensely. Thanks
Thank you for watching, I'm glad to have helped!
nice work! I've really been enjoying your content!
Thank you for watching!
Loving these deep dive videos, keep 'em coming!
Thank you so much for watching! I really enjoy doing them, so I have no plans to stop 🙂
@@cryobyte33 Congrats on getting partnered, by the way!
I have already subscribed to most of your channels. I can not see or aware of a more accurate in-depth review “deep dive” on the market. Simply outstanding 👌🏻 You are the only person on CZcams I have for notifications. The deckmaster 😂 Your channels I anticipate will grow exponentially, I find my self full enduldged and wanting to learn. You have a gift. I'm sure the big companies will come knocking on your door at some point with a big cheque #merited
Thank you for the kind words, and for being a subscriber! I'm really happy to teach others, and I love that I'm able to help people play their favorite games on Deck ❤️
As for big companies coming to knock on my door, it better be a pretty good offer, but I'm willing to hear them out 😉
Incredibly produced video. Informative, clear, and gives viewer exactly what they need.
Love your channel! Keep it up!
Thank you so much for the support!
Great job. What a lot of hard work!
Thank you for watching!
Great video, thanks for doing all of the different tests.
Thank you for watching!
Great work, great help. I don't have a Deck yet but will soon buy. This is the kind of videos i was looking for. Subscribed.
Thank you for subbing and watching the video!
Thanks for the thorough dive into the perf settings; very useful. In a lot of games, I’ve found using high textures, and then dialling down the other settings to gain frames so work really well to keep the game looking nice but running fairly smoothly. Also on the smaller screen, many times you can get away with turning off anti-aliasing and it actually looks better *(sharper)* as things are already being smoothed with FSR. Another thing that helps me with experience quality, is using GShade/Reshade, because you can use things like AdaptiveSharpen, HDR, Some colour/vibrance bumps that drastically improve how nice the game looks; making the lower game settings less noticeable.
Thanks for watching!
All great points! I set my "recommended" preset based on exactly that. GShade/ReShade is another possible video in the future, I hadn't thought of using it to blunt the effect of lower quality graphics.
Thank you for the suggestions!
Great content man!
Thank you for watching!
I love that I get better performance from these videos and have learned so much about bottlenecks and general game function.
@cryobyte33 for your recomended settings i dont belive you stated the resolution you had it running at. Love your videos sir have seen all of them and you are truly a master of your craft.
Thanks man! My steam deck shows up tomorrow and this is going to help a ton! I'm gonna look up those vram and swap fixes.
Check out my video "EASY & SAFE Health & Performance Boosts | Steam Deck" to get the latest version and some explanations!
Thank you for watching!
@@cryobyte33 Yup I checked it out and I'm definitely going to use your script! I'm curious if you saw that valve is implementing trim into the latest update? Do you think there will be any interference between your script and valve? I imagine your script will probably override if installed after the update, but I don't know anything about code or Linux.
@@garretts.2003 I saw and am super happy about it! I think that lack of TRIM was the biggest miss by the Deck team, and I'm choosing to think that my video rushed them along a bit 😉
There's no harm in having both enabled, but the latest version of my script already accounts for it!
If you are on SteamOS lower than 3.4, you will still get an option to enable my TRIM-on schedule.
If you are on SteamOS 3.4 or higher, my automatic TRIM will be disabled automatically.
Immediate TRIM is still an option and runs on /home only.
Thank you for watching!
@@cryobyte33 Awesome thanks for the quick reply and everything you're doing for the platform. I definitely look forward to seeing more of your optimisations. And I wouldn't doubt if your video had something to do with the update. Now they just need to see your video on the RDR2 vram issue.
Anyways I'm so happy to be getting a steam deck and it's people like you that will continue to make it the best platform it can be and for that I thank you and all the other community coders. And shout out to valve for not locking steam os behind a bunch of firmware like everyone else and supporting right to repair.
that's a really deep dive. Thanks a lot and looking forward to see RDR2 video as I just started to play it with both VRAM and Swap fix onboard
Thank you for watching! I don't use the term "Deep Dive" lightly 😉
Thanks for your hard work 🤙
Thank you for watching, I hope it helped!
Happy holidays!
Hey CryoByte! I think you should always include a single cpmbat encounter in your benchmarks when you are testing games that go hard on special effects because that's when the FPS matters most in a game like Elden Ring. It's also where the FPS fluctuates the most for me! I dig your videos and they help me set games up very quickly. Cant wait for your Totk video!
Thank you for the feedback! I always check that combat encounters are within the expected results as well, I do a lot of testing off screen but only show you guys the simplest benchmark. It's really hard to include a combat encounter in the benchmark itself for lots of games because the fight can go in many different ways, at which point the test differs too much between runs. 🙂
Thank you for watching!
This is exactly the kind of content I want
Thank you so much for watching, I’m glad you enjoyed it!
great video hopefully you make more steam deck videos!
Thank you for watching! Check my channel out, I have many 😉
you are so underrated. Look forward to you testing more AAA
Thank you so much! Next time will be a deep dive on either RDR2 or Forza Horizon 5 🙂
i am really enjoying your content on these deep dives.
I would like to add a recommendation that could further expand on CPU utilization and that would be installing PowerTools and disabling SMT on the Hyperthreaded cores and just using the 4 physical.
Mainly this is used to help with emulation and makes a big difference, but i have not seen it done yet with Elden Ring
Hey, thanks for watching!
I actually mentioned at the end of the presets section that I tried disabling SMT and altering clock speeds, although I didn’t mention PowerTools it’s what I used. Unfortunately it didn’t help or hurry performance, so it got a footnote rather than a full section🙂
Thank you for the video! I'd love to see an updated deep dive of RDR2, especially with presets you come up with.
Thank you for watching, your vote has been counted!
Wow okay. I've come around. This is good work.
Nice to have all the data.
Thank you for checking it out post-recommendation, I appreciate it 🙂
this is a really well made video, some of the best performance analysis ive seen on yt! on windows, youre able to disable anticheat by changing the names of the respective exe files. if there's a way to get that to work on the steam deck, do you think that would increase performance in a meaningful way, considering elden ring is a predominantly singleplayer game for most players
Thank you for commenting and watching!
In the pinned comment, I actually mentioned that I used the coop mod to disable anticheat and the performance was unfortunately identical.
Great video. Thanks❤
Thank you for watching!
@CryoByte33 Absolutely love you deep dive on the games you review and how to tweak each one specifically for the Steam Deck. I think your analysis and focusing your assessment of a game can net you a spot on the team in Digital Foundry. Keep it coming! As for the next video, I could go both ways: RDR2 or Forza Horizon 2. Thanks again!
Thank you so much for the kind words! I don't think I have a right being on the DF team, but I appreciate it regardless 😅
I'll put +1 on both games for you, thank you for chipping in!
Top notch content!
Congratulations! This is such a good video, I hoped you would do excatly this. One thing I wonder now... the Coop Mod has an own excecutable that runs without anti cheat from my understanding... so would we get a better performance with the mod? I love the steam deck but hate that elden ring cant run stable 40 fps. :(
Oh, that's actually a fantastic point, thank you! I completely forgot that it disabled anticheat. Maybe a followup video is in order if it changes performance significantly.
Thank you for watching and the idea!
I was thinking the same thing the whole time!
@@cryobyte33 hey I tried the potato mod and the remove vignette and other stuff to cranck the FPS up maybe in combination with this you will be able to get a stables 40 fps?
@@kratosmuscle1163 I avoided using that mod in this video because the page mentions that it triggers anticheat, but if I use the coop mod, I may be able to use it after all.
I'll definitely give it a look, thank you!
Update: I just tested all 4 presets with the Co-Op mod, and tested with DXVK_ASYNC again just in case. Performance is still within margin of error, so this is 100% an engine limitation and NOT anti-cheat.
Wooooow, this is what I say "hard work" 🎉 Analysis, charts, drill-downs, calculation of bottleneck's. This is like "Avengers" from the world of system analysis! ❤
Thank you so much for watching and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Great video, subscribed immediately
Thank you for watching, I'm glad that it helped! 😁
@@cryobyte33 tbh I bought the game once again for my pc and asked for a refund immediately after. The games is full of stutters even in the main menu which shows how poorly optimised it is.
I still haven’t received my deck (ordered two days ago and not shipped yet) and I will eventuality buy the game again for the deck. Sure I wait till the price drop significantly because I’m not going to pay 40-60€ for this unoptimised mess 😂
@@shattia Yeah, I have a 3080Ti and can barely manage a stable 60 with my ultrawide, it's horrible how badly the engine is optimized 😞
It's still an amazing game, but they REALLY need to finally figure out the issues, they're not the tiny "Armored Core" studio anymore.
Nice vid 👍🏻
Thank you for watching!
yus! I'm super excited to see your deep dive on RDR2
Thanks for watching! Your vote has been counted 😄
another great video.
Thank you for continuing to watch the content, I really appreciate it!
Hey and thanks for your great videos! I got Elden Ring the other day. Have set it up using your recommended settings for 40fps. As soon as i enter the open world in Limgrave the framerate drops to low/mid 30s. I am using your swapfix and VRAM at 4 GB. Do you have any idea what I could have missed?
Hmmm, with the swap fix and VRAM I was definitely getting rock solid frames, even in Caelid. Maybe the latest updates harmed performance? It's possible that they had to change the engine for the 6p co-op or something 🤔
You may have luck pinning the GPU if the issue is that it needs help, or pinning it lower if the CPU does.
I may look into revisiting this deep dive soon-ish if I get the time, I've learned a lot since filming and might be able to get even better performance, especially if they're making engine updates.
Regardless, I'm sorry that you're not getting a good framerate and I hope that it's temporary 😞
@CryoByte33 Thank you for an extremely quick reply! I'll tinker a bit more and hope for the best. Looking forward to the Witcher 3 video and hopefully a revisited Elden Ring one! 😀
Does it matter if the game is installed on the internal drive or an SD card?
@@e1m0h At the time of testing I didn't have an SD card, so I'm unsure. It's possible, especially when doing asset swaps while running quickly, but it's unlikely to affect performance while standing in 1 area.
@CryoByte33 Tried moving the game to the internal drive. No difference as far as I can tell. I will play the game at 30 fps which seems really solid if I use your 30 fps settings as a base and then lowers a couple of settings. Thanks again for all your hard work. (Ha en riktigt god jul!) 🎅
thank you a lot for this, I haven't seen a lot of channels expand on low power deck gaming, most just limit to saying it runs good at 15w
Thanks for watching! I add a “battery saver” mode into all of my deep dives , so I’m happy that some like to see them 😄
@@cryobyte33 yeah I really do appreciate it, most often I'll sacrifice a little bit of graphics to get the best battery life so this is really helpful
Thank you! This really helped me not obsess over the settings. However, I've played about 16 hours on the deck now and your 'recommended' settings are WAY better at holding 30fps than your 'prettiest' settings in the open world (caves or isolated areas are a non-issue). I wouldn't say there is a noticeable fidelity difference either (bumped AA to high). The frame rate still tanks a bit when lots of enemies are on screen but it's much more stable at medium.
Thank you for watching!
This is actually a problem with the latest patch, it seems that engine changes were made when implementing 6-player multiplayer. I intend to make an updated version of this video accommodating for that, along with some new tricks I've learned.
@@cryobyte33 Ooh! Please part onto us these secrets you learned! Thank you so much for these videos, if there are updates to any of these settings you could put them on the description or a pinned comment so as not to make an entirely new video. Or just a short video going over the settings and not the testing, as you already demonstrated how thorough you are and we trust you. Just one quick question: for your recommended setting you’re using native resolution, right?
Congratulations, you deserve it
Thank you so much!
congratulations
side note, I love how the confetti just trash the quality of the video for a second xD
Oh god, did it? It was fine locally 😨
Well, too late now, thanks for watching!
@@cryobyte33 it's nothing really, it's due to CZcams's compression Tom Scott has a cool video on it (czcams.com/video/r6Rp-uo6HmI/video.html) where he uses a confetti filter like yours
@@BankruptGreek Ah yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for the link!
Fantastic deep-dive, you got a new subscriber. Thx for your Swap/VRam suggestions. I have used them to improve BeamNG and it has been very impressive. I can run pretty much any scenario or map, I can even add traffic. Of course performance is a joke (17fps) but previously the Deck supports only very basic scenarios. I’d love a deep dive on BeamNG.
Thanks for the sub, the watch, and the recommendation! 😄
I do own BeamNG but I haven't booted it in years, I'll add it to the list of deep dives for sure.
Great, I know you will spot stuff I miss… BeamNG is seriously GPU and RAM bound. I was amazed how much difference your mods made. Of course finding a decent frame rate is very important (and elusive :-). Thanks again.
Aww, that's unfortunate.
We can only hope proton or from themselves offer some improvements in the future I suppose, maybe when dlc drops but seems somewhat unlikely.
Nice to see more videos by you, especially since I had a particular interest on this one, keep it up.
You clearly did your homework with this one.
Thanks for watching!
A few commenters mentioned the coop mod disabling anti-cheat, which I forgot about, so I'll be testing that soon. Stay tuned to see if I get more performance!
Yeah, I saw some of those. I'm curious if it'll help.
It'd be kind of ironic, since I have my own opinions about people circumventing from's multiplayer checks and balances.
Always figured this might be one of those things that they'd have to fix on their end, if at all.
@@Smuggers. Update: I just tested all 4 presets with the Co-Op mod, and tested with DXVK_ASYNC again just in case. Performance is still within margin of error, so this is 100% an engine limitation.
Nice job you did here! Great content, great benchmarks, it´s really healpfull! one question: why use 60Hz refresh screen when using a 30fps cap? shoudn´t use 30HZ to save battery?
Thank you for watching and all the kind words!
Does your deck have a 30hz mode? Mine only goes down to 40, so I chose 60 to optimize the frame timing 🤔
@@cryobyte33 my steam deck hasn't arrived yet, i did not know that it doesn´t have 30hz mode, but thx for the aswer, i got it now!
Loving this channel. Are you able to do a video on Death Stranding Directors Cut? Would love to see some better perf on that game on the deck.
Thank you for watching!
This is the second request I got for Death Stranding, so I'll definitely be doing a video on it in the future 🙂
@@cryobyte33 Great to hear!
Fantastic analysis, sub + bell'd!
Thank you so much for watching and supporting the channel!
I'm curious if bumping up the vRAM has a negative effect on emulation framerates since those tend to be more CPU bound. I'd love to see a test with Dolphin and something taxing like the sand ocean level in F-Zero GX.
But either way- you're amazing and I'm glad this channel exists.
Thank you so much for watching!
I’ve actually heard the opposite, higher end emulation like Yuzu and RPCS3 seem to benefit from both fixes, likely because the games have to be loaded almost completely into memory and the shaders are optimized for small memory pools on legacy consoles.
That said, I haven’t actually tested it yet and I’m just relying on other viewer’s testimonials.
Definitely need a recommended settings video for Red Dead Redemption 2!
Thank you for watching and your vote is counted!
The Seamless Coop Mod by Luke Yui removes Easy Anti-Cheat, and it does work on Deck, so that could be used to test Elden Ring without EAC.
A few other comments have mentioned this, I had completely forgotten about it! 😅
I'll be testing it soon, so stay tuned!
Update: I just tested all 4 presets with the Co-Op mod, and tested with DXVK_ASYNC again just in case. Performance is still within margin of error, so this is 100% an engine limitation and NOT anti-cheat.
Got a sub out of me.
Awesome work!
Thank you for watching, and the sub! 😄
i feel like anything running at 540p for battery life could be dubbed the Switch mode haha seeing all ports practically run at max res of 540p. Appreciate the effort you put in for these benchmarks, especially creating your own run through benchmark environments. is it worth including in the future another setting to test? also any chance to review cyberpunk again since your last video? or waiting out for the next release with Phantom Liberty? i tried it for the first time last night with your recommended cryo settings and the 4gb vram and it ran mostly at40/36f;s outside of the city with most settings on medium/low and quality fsr. but man it looked and felt super good. exceeded expectations.
I'm following the guide exactly but im getting mostly mid to low thirties on everything, should i use an older version of proton?
I really enjoy these videos.
Great job.
But damn all this effort when if you have a decent gaming PC already or an Xbox Series or PS5, which I understand everyone doesn’t, you can just do local game streaming on moonlight, remote play or PS remote play.
Can super sample at higher resolutions to the steam deck at 60 fps ultra settings and get 5-6 hours of battery life.
Downsides you can’t leave your house, not an issue for me because 99% of my steam deck time is couch play at home.
Keep making these videos though they’re super interesting.
Thank you for watching!
I don't mind the effort, and I think that the Deck has the potential to be the "one console" for many people in the future. I like remote streaming, but the latency can be finicky in some games, sometimes the console is being used by my wife, etc. Also yeah, you're limited to areas in your own house with decent wifi coverage 😅
Congratulations and thanks for those deep dives videos, they really help a lot !
And I would love to see one on RDR2 first since I will probably be continuing my PC playthrough of that one on the deck soonish (maybe while installing some mods hehe)
Thanks for watching!
Your vote has been added to the tally, thank you! 😄
@@cryobyte33 you're welcome
And thanks 💜
Been playing this for about a month on my steamdeck, just LOVING it. I like 40hz/40fps cap with the settings at High. Thanks for the vids!
Glad that you're enjoying it as much as I am, and thank you for watching!
Hi, can you take a look at if there are any benefits and/or disadvantages between the default settings of 4core/8threads vs disabling hyperthreading in terms of power efficiency and performance. See if there's any content you can make into a video there. Thanks!
Hey, I actually did mention doing this in the section at 13:05. Disabling SMT (AMD Hyperthreading) and only using 2, 4 or 6 cores was part of my testing and had identical results with 4 and 6 cores. 2 cores had major frame drops. In addition, for Elden Ring in particular, I noticed no power draw differences over a 20 minute period.
Thank you for watching!
Thanks for another great video! Just a heads up, though. these settings may work in that small area of Limgrave, but they certainly won't hold up later on in the game. For example, I'm currently at the Altus Plateau and tried your 40fps settings, getting an average of about 34 in a very similar environment to the one you tested in Limgrave. The sad reality is, Elden Ring at 40fps on the steam deck just isn't very realistic (despite some areas jumping even to 50fps, lol), it'll always be a very jarring experience.
Besides that, great video as per usual!
However, I (as well as many others I'm sure), would absolutely *LOVE* to see if you could get Elden Ring running with dx11 on steam deck, as PC users have gained 10fps+ easily by doing so. The theory is that the game was built originally on dx11, but for some reason at the last moment, they were inclined to switch over to dx12. Doing so apparently dropped the framerate massively for lower-end PCs, and made the game absolutely unplayable for non-dx12 PCs.
*PLEASE, DO IT FOR US WISHING FOR A TRUE 40fps ELDEN RING EXPERIENCE ON DECK.*
Thank you for the detailed comment! I haven't gotten very far in the game and have been avoiding spoilers, so I wasn't aware that it wasn't indicative of performance. Most videos I saw of benchmarks previously mentioned that Limgrave around the forest was particularly stressful and was a good benchmark of the game 😅
As for the DX11 fix, I actually had no idea about this. I'll research it a bit and see if I can do a follow-up!
Thank you again for the comment and watching!
Sorry, update! I installed the DX12 Proxy Mod (github.com/tuffee88/d3d12ProxyEdrDx11_0) and tried it out, but have margin-of-error performance with 41.3 FPS vs 41.6 FPS average. I'm going to test a little more over the coming days, but it seems like the engine limitation remains 😞
@@cryobyte33 damn! I really thought that that would’ve made a difference, ugh.
That was *close* to my last hope for a locked 40fps experience, but I’m certainly going to keep trying, as Elden Ring has *quickly* become my favourite game on the deck (EVEN over RDR2, GoW, Spider-Man, Fallen Order, GTA V, and *literally* everything else).
I know grass levels are quite hard on the performance, and the lowest you can set it to in-game is medium, perhaps there is a mod to lower it further? Perhaps that would get us to the 40fps lock, but doubtful based on that one setting alone.
I’m sure one of the “potato pc” mods would get it to 40, and might not even look TOO bad on a 7 inch screen? Although this of course would be my last course of action, I wouldn’t mind seeing it in action. Might try it out one of these days.
Thanks again for the video and for the effort! Earned a sub from me :)
@@stefdezy1562 yeah, I think the potato PC mods are the least hope, but needing to play offline AND have a fidelity hit is a tough sell. I’m going to try and test it when I get some free time, but the lack of a bottleneck already present makes me think that we’ve reached the limit until a patch drops 😢
Regardless, thank you for the idea and watching, stay tuned for more like this!
The issue with GPU fixed clock speed is the TDP is shared with the CPU and that lowers the CPU clocks which Elden Ring is not thread heavy but actually IPC heavy. I discovered that a few weeks ago.
Yeah, unfortunately I couldn't get CPU usage to go higher, even limiting the GPU to 400Mhz and pinning the CPU at 3500Mhz on 4 cores with SMT disabled.
Thank you for watching and contributing!
Hello, thank you for your work! I'd love to hear about RDR 2 because I saw a video on reddit of someone having fps issues when expanding VRAM to 4gb. It's interesting that the game works better when it's have a 1gb
Thanks for watching! I actually have a video on Red Dead 2 already, but it was made before the latest Deck update.
If you watch it, use the video "Easy Performance Boosts for the Steam Deck", also on my channel. It has an updated process for my swap fix, and might be able to get you the performance you're looking for before I can release a new video 🙂
I used TDP 9W, in-game setting all high except shadow and volumetric to medium. Screen cap at 28. 1024x576 resolution with FSR 2x sharpening. Elden Ring ran mostly solid 28 FPS and can get 2 hours and 50 minutes on battery. No customized on vram and No swap fix.
Awesome! I'm all for playing how you want to, I just want to give people the most options 🙂 Thank you for watching!
I came up with a crazy* idea: Use almost your recommend settings, but capping at 30 to have a nice balance between battery saving and visual fidelity.
That is: Medium preset, high textures, low anti-aliasing, depth of field and shadow quality left on medium preset's default and instead putting shader quality on low with 60Hz, allow tearing on, frame cap at 30 FPS and TDP Limit at 10. Obviously while using all off CryoUtilities' recommended settings ;-)
Will need more testing, but a first walk through Limgrave at Late night during rain killing randoms with torches was using between 13 and 15 Watts while having a flatlined frametime graph at 30.
Assuming an average power consumption of 15 Watts I can play this game with nice looking visuals for 2h 40min, which I personally think is spectacular :D
Question. In your Recommended preset, you don't mention what TDP we should be using. Is it correct to assume that instead of manually setting the TDP, we just leave the Deck to handle it? What about Scaling? Do we keep the FSR from the previous settings you tackled, or do we revert it to Linear for the Recommended settings?
Sorry for being unclear, if the setting isn’t mentioned then it’s assumed to be at default, in this case automatic TDP and linear scanning 🙂
Thank you for watching, I’ll try to be more clear about that in the future!
@@cryobyte33 wow, I didn't expect a reply so soon! Thank you so much for the clarification!
@@thespianmask8451 I reply to every comment I see, I’m here to help after all! 😄
Would you still do the test with the potato mod I got a fairly stable 40 fps with it but altus plateau is notorious for worse performance so I dropped in the 35+ fps with it just curious if those performance mods in combination with your file swapping and 4GB of UMA VRAM will allow a stable 40 fps because it felt close with only the mods I installed like potato mod, remove vignette and chromeric aboration, remove particles etc
I can definitely test it, but I think that the combination of offline mode only and far worse quality means that the chances of someone actually using that preset are pretty slim.
I'll see about at least letting you know what the result is when I can get to testing it 🙂
Hey CryoByte, have you tested 2GB of VRAM as well ? I wonder if 2GB would be middle ground, compared to 4GB.
Yup! I tested every value present in BIOS. In general, the higher the VRAM, the better the GPU performs, while the lower the VRAM, the better the CPU performs.
Coupled with the swap fixes seen in Easy and Safe Health and Performance Boosts, the GPU performs better with larger values, and the CPU doesn't lose performance.
Basically, 2GB will be better than 1GB, but not as good as 4GB in any game that uses more than 2GB of VRAM 🙂
Thank you for watching!
I just booted Elden Ring back up on my Deck after a while and I just noticed that it performs better than it used to (at least when CPU limited). In the exact same spot that I used to get 40-41fps, I'm now getting around 46fps, both tests on lowest settings and resolution.
I'm not sure what the cause is though, because inbetween there was the update to CryoUtilities 2.0, some SteamOS updates and the Elden Ring update today.
Just wanted to know if you can confirm a recent improvement in performance for Elden Ring.
I don't have it installed, and also didn't even know there was an update today 😅 It looks like "Several performance improvements and other bug fixes." is in the patch notes, but I've also heard that some people say CU2 works for it as well. AS such let's chalk it up to "both, probably" 😉
Good day, is the TDP matters when applying these settings? are the settings for recommended and prettiest will go
above 15tdp? is it also good to play steam deck when I am getting around 25 tdp or if I am playing while charging tdp does not matter?
Heya, thanks for watching! TDP should be set when the preset specifically mentions it, otherwise it's unset. This was my very first deep dive, so it definitely needs a revisit to bring it up to my better standards 😅
TDP doesn't matter when you're charging with a sufficient power source, so have a blast!
@@cryobyte33 When Charging, cpu temp does not matter? Sometimes I am getting 85-90 degree celcius for a game. Is it safe?
@@longadogan3610 The Deck's CPU is rated to be "okay" until 105C, so 85-90 is perfectly acceptable 🙂
If you don't mind tinkering a bit, and a bit of fan noise, you can set a custom fan curve using the Fantastic Decky plugin, which would allow you to dial the fan curve up a lot.
DXVK_ASYNC=1 is useful for non-steam games because it reduces if not eliminates the stutter caused by shader compilation, a step that isn't necessary on Steam games because Steam automatically downloads pre-compiled shaders for them.
This is a good point that I overlooked. I admit to only having a surface-level familiarity with DXVK_ASYNC, but I'm learning more every day.
Thank you for both teaching me something new, and for watching!
Dxvk async main benefit is that if you run that command, you can delete all shader cache and disable it whilst having smooth performance without any of your storage being used to store cache. I use it on every single game single player or multiplayer and have only had an issue with anti cheat In 1 single game, and that was insurgency lol. I recommend everyone use the command and disable pre caching, it saved me over 20gb of storage. Also it only works on proton ge
Good work though, very high quality content
Hey, I mentioned this in another comment, but I followed all those steps and used GE but completely forgot to mention it in the video. Even after making those changes, my frames were identical.
Thank you for watching!
I told you tiny Programm with the best settings and fixes for games would be awesome, with presets to choose or a custom plugin woukd be awesome. Do you know custom plugins ? I use the for more vibrant colours or theming or to see protondb rating icon on every game preview picture.
You did tell me that, although I was using it prior to your comment 🙂
I've tested every plugin in their store. Fantastic and PowerTools are my favorites since they let me test more stuff!
Thank you for watching!
So with the new OLED model has something changed?
Also i would love to know how it performs while docked to a 1080p monitor!
Have you figured the best setting for oled?
How did you get the MANGOHUD overlay to show the resolution and proton version? Sorry if this has been answered somewhere else!
Hey, thanks for watching! I use MangoHUD instead of mangoApp. Install it through the discover store, make a config file using their GitHub as a reference and then enable it with MANGOHUD=1 MANGOHUD_CONFIGFILE=/path/to/config %command% in the launch options for whichever game. That’s also how I gather the performance logs 🙂
@@cryobyte33 thank you for responding! Does this also work in Game Mode? Or only in desktop mode?
@@gusdiaz it works in both, and of course 😄
I have everything set to high and then I just put Shadows to medium and grass to medium and it locked at 30 FPS with no dips ever, this is with your recommended settings for cryoutilities and the 4 gigs of vram. I've been enjoying it and honestly you don't really notice 30fps after you've been playing it for a few hours.
Hello! I am looking to use your advice but I'm not entirely sure what a swap fix is or how to get it.
Hey, thanks for watching the video!
This deep dive was made before I had dedicated videos on it, but I do now. Check out my video "EASY & SAFE Health & Performance Boosts" where I give an explanation of all the tips I shared in this video, and more 🙂
@@cryobyte33 Thanks! Ill give those a watch
Hi Cryo! I'd love a Death Stranding Steam Deck Deep Dive!
Good idea, I'll add it to the list. Thank you for watching!
In my experience with the Deck (Mainly Cyberpunk 2077) Anything over 1500Mhz on the GPU pinning would result in worse performance. I don't know if maybe it's a binning issue with the GPU's, TDP limitation from trying to remain that high constantly, or temperatures. (But I never witnessed any out of control temperature issues) My guess is that it comes down to the power draw and the CPU/GPU having to fight for the max 15 watts. 1600Mhz is probably achievable only in short bursts when it's meeting certain TDP conditions where the CPU isn't pulling a lot of power as well. Either way, great informative video, I will definitely be doing some of my own tinkering especially using your Swap file and VRAM mods!
Thank you for watching!
As for the pinning, to depends on the CPU utilization of the game. In Forza Horizon 5, for instance, pinning helps. But in games like Elden Ring and RDR2, pinning results in worse performance for the exact reasons you state 🙂
Idk if you got a chance, decky has a tool to take TDP to 2900wh and CPU to 3200mhz. Wonder if TDP will help, if cpu isn’t the bottle neck. Great stuff as usual
Thanks for watching!
I actually tested this as well, no luck!
😢, oh well thanks for checking. As I also didn’t see any difference. Tho MHW was running at 60fps for me. Before TDP tweak was in 40s .
@@RadbatDa I’ll make sure to keep testing it on future deep dives, don’t worry 🙂
Great deep dive, but something you didn't mention that surprised me was that the default resolution of 1280x800 on the SD screen gets automatically letterboxed to 720 for some asinine reason. Doesn't that make the 800p setting a useless waste of extra power over 720p, since (according to what I've read) the game still renders at 800p but literally covers it up with the black bars?
Admittedly I haven't done any real benchmarking so I'm not certain of the difference
Heya, thanks for watching!
This was one of my earliest videos, so I was definitely still learning what to include, sorry for the omission. That said, you're correct, the game will render at full res and then fake letterbox. It actually does the same thing on my ultrawide monitor, and there are mods to remove the bars completely.
However, resolution scaling in Elden Ring is notoriously bad, and reducing the resolution down to absolute minimum, or even further with mods, doesn't actually grant better performance. It seems that the engine is almost entirely CPU dependent, and until a resolution of 1080p, there's no real difference in frame rates whatsoever.
I haven't gone back and done more thorough testing, so I don't have any numbers on hand, but I've played a decent amount and noticed no major differences between setting the resolution to 720p or 800p, although that's hardly a scientific test 😅
Regardless, thank you again for watching!
@@cryobyte33 That's very interesting. I suppose I'll leave it on the default 800p if it sucks either way lol. If only i could mod this game without giving up online too. The text size on the SD screen is a real killer for Elden Ring
@@ventiph4704 Yeah, I only use seamless coop online so modding doesn't affect me as much, but the fact that I don't have the option sucks.
OMG YES !
Thank you for watching, subbing, and the Super!
FH 5 please, thanks very much for your effort!
Thank you for the watch and for being a subscriber!
Your vote is noted 🙂
Hey, sorry I'm not a native speaker in English, but would you generally recommend setting the VRAM to 4GB and doing the swap fix ? Thank you Sir
In general, yes I would recommend that. See my video "Easy Performance Boosts for Steam Deck" for more info 🙂
Thank you for watching!
Interesting thing that I encountered when trying to implement these settings today. If I select the 'Medium' preset, it defaults the "Anti aliasing" value to "Low". Then if I exit the game and restart, it hangs on a white screen. When I launch the game, the "Medium" present is still enabled, but the Anti Aliasing value is now on "High".
After further testing, any time I change the Anti-aliasing setting to anything other than 'High' the game I see the behaviour above. This is a fresh install as of today, following all of Cryobyte's recommendations. Anyone else seeing this?
EDIT: If it matters, I'm on 'Borderless Windowed', 1280x800, 'Auto-adjust' (forget what it's called) is set to 'Off'.
For anyone reading this, I'm also interested! I literally JUST uninstalled this and didn't notice, but I set my settings immediately after booting the game each time 🤔
I'd love to see an updated, and overclocked version to locked high 40fps, or garbage 50+ fps :D That would be awsome. I've tried everything you provided already ( 4gb vram, Cryo 2.0 + OC cpu 3.9 and gpu to 2.0. I couldn't manage to pull stable 50 on low preset + fsr set to below 720p). My deck start to overheat quickly and throttles down. How about yours? :D
I've been just doing 720p all high settings mostly 30 but heavy foliage areas with lots of enemies will struggle at mid 20s. I could drop to medium but the dips are still there but not as bad so I said f it full throttle kept the high settings lol
I played a decent chunk nailing the presets I gave you, try out the "prettiest" option if you want to get rid of most of those drops 😉
Thank you for watching!
FYI!!! Elden ring uses dx12 as it's graphics api meaning the deck is using VKD3D, *not* DXVK. DXVK-Async isn't working not because it doesn't help more, but because it isn't being loaded in the first place. If you want to try DXVK and what improvements it may entail, you'll have to force and patch the game to run using DX11 instead.
Yea, I learned about this later, I tested after the video release in DX11 mode and got identical results. Sorry about the confusion, and thank you for letting me know!
Would you be willing to look into the Xbox Elite Series 2 firmware issues?
Apparently the deck used to recognize the ES2 as a unique device, then MS did a firmware update that makes it just show up as "Xbox Wireless Controller" now.
Is it possible to fix this on the Linux side, it's clear MS doesn't care to fix it.
It's important because it removed the paddles from being programmable on deck.
You can still use the paddles, if you program them through the Xbox or PC, but not directly through the deck options.
Curious on your opinion since you are an experienced Linux Developer.
I can definitely look into it, but based on what you describe it sounds like either Steam Input or the HID portion of the kernel needs an update, which Valve will need to implement.
That said, I do have an Elite Series 2, so I may try to get some time to look at it in the coming days and let you know if I find anything useful 🤞
@@cryobyte33 You're awesome.
Lots of chatter on reddit about getting the paddles to natively work.
Might be a popular video if you could find a fix.
To give you some insight into why I specifically want this;
Using my Series Elite 2 for PS5 games.
1) Remote play in with Chiaki
2) Use Series 2 as controller
3) Set a paddle to the lightbar button.
4) Still use primary TV as display, just leave the deck running to use the controller.
Been doing this on iphone, the only problem is you lose the lightbar button, which for some PS5 games *like GoW* you use it a lot.
So if I could program a different button to the PS lightbar on the Series 2, I could get native support on PS5 games. I can't use the Dual Sense it kills my hands.
But doing this on my iphone I get no noticeable input lag, just can't edit my controller buttons.
My backup plan is to just use a dual shock 4 instead this way on iPhone. That controller at least doesn't cause hand cramping and joint pain for me.
How do you get those 60C I am always on 70 depending on the TDP at max TDP I get like 83 C
This was recorded about 6 months ago, so more recent patches could have changed it, but I didn't do anything special for it! It also might have to do with ambient temperatures, since I keep my apartment between 17-18 Celsius.
Thanks for taking so much time with your work.
I have follow the guide for the swap and 4gb vram. I'm still only getting around 30 - 35 fps on low settings.
This is with the 40hz .
I tried the recommended settings. Unfortunately the game is all over the place. Frame drops and really unresponsive. Even with capped 30fps, it feels choppy
Any ideas?
Thanks
Heya, I've heard that the latest update harmed performance pretty badly. I'm intending to go back and re-test everything to see if I can help.
That said, based on everything I've learned it seems that the engine limitation I mention in this video is simply worse in 1.08, which is unfortunate.
I still intend to re-test regardless, so keep an eye out, and thank you for watching!
@@cryobyte33 awesome stuff!
Great work!!
Just a quick note. There is no need to use dxvk-async with DirectX 12 games as dxvk doesn't handle api translation of d3d12. It is instead handled most commonly by vkd3d-proton. So the variable doesn't have an effect here.
Keep making steam deck videos tho! :D
Good point, thank you! FWIW I also tested it in conjunction with the DX11 mod, and it still had no effect.
Thank you for watching!
@@cryobyte33 rgr rgr.
Also note that it isn't a part of the official dxvk and so isn't included in regular Proton. You would need something like Proton-GE which includes it.
Tho when dxvk 2.0.0 arives it will have some new work that should help with shader compilation stutter in d3d9 - d3d11 games on systems that have new enough driver. Tho exact benefit varies from game to game.
Np. I will continue to try and check out your steam deck videos :)
@@xBlist84 I used GE when recording the video, but completely missed putting it in the script 😅 I haven't heard much about 2.0 yet, excited to see what it brings!
@@cryobyte33 ah gotcha :D 👍