How to fix #SteamDeck CRASHING in games. Things to try before an RMA!

okay so I've been playing the steam deck a bit more recently and I have come across some issues so I just wanted to sort of go over a few potential solutions that people might find useful um before making the decision to jump straight to valve and start crying and start whining saying that they've got a faulty device and you know just help with a little bit of guidance as to some potential Solutions which might help in terms of crashing um just any sort of instability um these things might just help in some cases not every case but certainly in my case it from what I did today I'd ran through a few of these steps and seems to have helped so let's give it a go just remember that these games that you're trying to run on the steam deck most probably through Steam OS they're not actually designed for Steam OS just remember that these games are designed to play on Windows and this is being actively translated as you play through proton so just remember that that not every game is going to be perfect even if it's verified even if it's playable even if it's whatever it is you know even if someone somewhere else says you know I played this game if we start to finish and it played fine there's a lot of variables in play they could be using a different version of proton they could be using a slightly older one which maybe work better they could be using a newer one which maybe works better than the one you're using and maybe you're using a an older one it you know or maybe they're using the experimental version you know which I'll go into not too in depth because I'll be honest with you it kind of flows over my head a little bit but anyway so like I said don't RMA it straight away but just remember that that these games are not designed to be played in the way that they're being played and they're being modified and sort of translated all the time constantly the code base of these games have been actively translated live literally as you play which is amazing really if you think about it so anyway the first step really is like I said just a minute ago to try the game with proton experimental so if you're not sure how to do that you literally just go into the options menu on the game that you're looking to play you go into properties compatibility and then select proton experiment tool give that a try just see if it's any better if it's not then you might just want to try some other things so after you've tried that you would probably want to try maybe increasing the it's a setting called Uma frame buffer size and from memory I think it I think what it does is rather than the steam deck adaptively selecting how much vram it needs on the Fly it will automatically allocate more RAM to the game I think it's I think it's vram there that it automatically allocates but like I say you need to go into the bios for that so to get into the BIOS it's pretty easy if you've not done it before it might be quite it might be quite nerving but if you've got steam deck and you you know you're gonna have to tamper with things I'm afraid so it's just kind of how it is at the moment especially with Steam OS and some certain titles so once you're in the Bios you go into like the setup utility um just have a little dig around I can't remember exactly where it is but if you do a little search online you should be able to find the Uma frame buffer size change that to four gigabytes and then while you're in the Bios might just be worth changing the device to battery mode because I've seen some people online they say that if you change it to battery mode it's helped them out in terms of game crashes and things like that I don't know how it really makes much difference but just before you do that and enable that setting make sure you've got a charger to hand because basically that setting it's essentially how the steam deck arrives from the factory from my understanding um it basically ships in battery mode so that it can't be switched on you know by mistake through Transit um and you know causing some sort of overheated and stuff like that I don't know that that's just what I read I don't know if that's the case but um apparently that helps so worth a go um while you're in there like I say Uma frame buffer size set that to four gigabytes there will be some people that say don't do that but the majority of people say that it's worth doing so I did it and um you know I've not noticed any issues um and then change the battery mode and just see how it goes you can always revert these settings as well by the way they're not obviously they're not permanent but you do just have to go back into that bios and then another thing is some people may have these games installed on micro SD cards they might not be rated that well you know they might have just forgotten the rating of them when they put them in um you know some some some games are just not too great with an SD card put it that way you need some games to be installed on the internal memory especially if you're running newer games bigger games like say for example um like Apex Legends or something like that you you would you would be better off having that on an internal SSD rather than a Micro SD card it's just when you're running the say like the the Battle Royale mode or something like that the world is just huge and to stream all that data in through on an SD card and sort of actively update that as you play you will notice more hitching and things like that um I'd know because I was playing that today and that was running on my SD card and my SD card's not crap it's a decent one it's A2 rated it's you know it's one of it's one of the good ones put it that way um or at least one that you know people would use you know for the steam deck to run certain games but in certain cases just try moving the game from the SD card if it's on there to your internal storage and see how you go there because sometimes what can happen I think is that if you're running the game on the SD card and it's a bit slower at loading you're kind of introducing more room for error because when you're waiting for the games to load and especially say if you've got downloads running in the background and stuff like that I don't know but it just seems like to me you're you're asking for more potential for a crutch or something like that the suit you know the faster that game loads the faster you get into that game I think the better and obviously when you're running on the nvme if you've got one with an nvme um then it's just better really isn't it like yeah I don't maybe that's just a me thing I don't know if it's just that's that's the way I think so after that the uh vram uh can be an issue in some games too I mean you guys have probably read and seen on YouTube that there's a lot of games that are literally chewing up your vram these days um Resident Evil 4 was a culprit for it um and the last was part one was a corporate for it as well and there was I think Hogwarts Legacy I haven't actually played that but I've read that that's that can be a problem too and the problem's only going to get worse over time for situations like that but if you're running the game you know with really high-end texture settings you know if you're really trying to push it again you're kind of asking for more room for error uh so you know just maybe try pulling those settings back a bit just remember it's a 350 pounds device uh it doesn't matter if you bought the height and storage version you're still running a 350 pound device you've just got a better storage solution which does help but just remember it's not a 570 pound device it's a 350 band Device and for what it can do it's it's impressive but maybe just try pulling some settings back and just try and monitor your vram just make sure that you know sort of push in that limit and another thing that I wanted to quickly suggest as well is just a factory reset so literally just make it so that it was a brand new steam deck completely factory reset maybe even get a new image of Steam OS and just start fresh um sometimes you know say if you've got like a launch version um it might just be worth doing that you know it's been roughly a year now since these devices launched give or take a month or two and you know that might be something else to try as a last resort obviously um I mean if all your games are on an SD card or you know if you're mainly sort of using cloud services or something like that it's not really too much of a biggie but then again if you've got loads of emulators set up it might just be worth shifting those over to an SD card if they're not already before you do that but that's another option for you just just to see you know this is the last thing you want to be doing is really sending your steam deck off to valve to RMA it um being without it for a while can be quite frustrating but at the same time you do want a steam deck which is going to work like you would expect it to so just a last resort for that one once you sort of enable some of those or you know just sort of bear some of those things in mind uh you know hopefully that helps so yeah just a quick one today but yeah see you in the next one foreign [Music]

Channel: DeckTested

Views: 20,182

Keywords: steam deck, steam deck gameplay, valve steam deck, steam deck gaming, steam deck review, steam, steam deck tutorial, steam deck games, crashing on steam deck, steam deck wifi problems, steam deck proton ge install, steam deck windows, steam deck ge proton, ubisoft connect crashing steam deck, steam deck guide, steam deck setup, proton, steam deck freeze, forza horizon 4 steam deck crash, steam deck controller, fix age of empires 4 crashing & freezing

Id: lvVOHUvIoss

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Mon May 29 2023