Steam Deck Optimization Guide Ep. 1 - FSR all the Games

i've come to appreciate what valve has done for the handheld industry ever since i got my hands on my deck over two months ago with an ever-growing library over on steam that's well over 5000 playable games at this point as well as my own personal backlog i just find it a joy to get my hands on the deck with the very comfortable controls it's just easy to drain that little 40 watt hour battery but beyond that joyful facade is a lurking face of frustration today is going to be the first video in a three-part series where i do a deep dive on the steam deck and the balancing act that valve has to do in order to balance both the performance the battery life as well as the user experience and beginning our journey we're going to be revisiting a good old friend of the channel fsr let's begin for the uninitiated fsr stands for fidelity fx super resolution it's amd's upscaling technology that uses a lower internal resolution to generate a high quality image for your display resolution by doing so fsr reduces the gpu's graphical load hopefully resulting in higher frame rates but fsr's original intent was for 1080p 1440p as well as 4k gaming and when we translate it down to the steam decks 800p 16x10 screen it's kind of stretching its limits with the steam deck we do have a couple of tricks up her sleeve that we talked about in the previous video but they do have their quirks modern games like cyberpunk 2077 typically integrate fsr into the games themselves that way users can actually access the settings within their own menus and for steam deckers that is probably the best solution to use amd intends for fsr to have about four different quality settings each utilizing a different internal resolution for the game at native resolution with no fsr the steam deck obtains 50 fps in the internal benchmark which is an excellent showing for a 15 watt handheld device going into the game's video menu we can engage fsr's 4 quality settings ultra quality quality balanced and performance mode in quality mode cyberpunk runs at an internal resolution of 984 by 615 pixels nearly half as many pixels as the native experience this pixel reduction bumps us up to 61 fps breaking our ideal 60 fps threshold for modern gaming moving to quality modes 853 by 533 resolution we only gained five additional fps balanced mode translates to 753 by 471 and we continue to lose steam with only three additional frames performance mode touts an aggressive 640 by 480 pixel resolution which is just a quarter of our initial render resolution but despite that reduction we only gain two additional frames judging by the shape of the chart it looks like we're running into one of the primary deficiencies of the steam deck and that is of course the cpu bottleneck with cyberpunk 2077 it looks like four cores at 3.5 gigahertz just isn't enough to cut it especially when we're engaging fsr for hopefully a better gaming experience shifting gears to forza horizon 5 this microsoft title does perform very well with the steam deck if we want to increase our frame rate forza provides an internal scaling option though it might not be fsr that's driving under the hood just as we saw with cyberpunk forza appears to be heavily cpu limited across the board native resolution already hit 63 fps in a stressful race around the town and we cap out our performance at 69 fps nice that's a 10 percentage point improvement in frame rate by reducing our render resolution by 75 percent not exactly a great trade-off for this racer fortunately horizon zero dot is an excellent use case for the benefits of fsr its internal fsr scaling provides excellent scaling across the different modes going from 42 fps at native resolution up to 52 fps in performance mode though only 10 fps separates the different modes the improvement appears to scale with each setting so that's great if your game actually has fsr built in but what about for older titles or games that just don't want to integrate the technology well valve engineers have got you covered and they built into steam os a feature called gamescope gamescope's job is to take the rendered frame from the graphics pipeline and upscale it to the device's display resolution it effectively enables upscaling methods for every full screen game out there but it does have some quirks to engage steam os fsr click your quick access menu button navigate to the battery icon and scroll down to the scaling filter option and then click over to fsr from there you can tune the sharpness of the image just a bit for maximum sharpness use zero and if you want it a little less sharp use a higher number this is sort of counter-intuitive but it's not a bug it's a feature but that just means that the feature is enabled in order to actually engage fsr you have to go into your game's menus and select an output resolution smaller than your display resolution but more on that in just a bit horizon zero dawn is a great place to start because we know what we should expect in terms of performance compared to the in-game solution at 800p we still get that 42fps as expected and if we go to 1152 by 720p we get an improvement up to 46 fps as we continue going down the stack i like to look at 600p 500p and 400p and with that we get 51 53 and 54fps respectively do maternal is another game that already plays very well on the steam deck and lucky for us the developers at id software did a phenomenal job allowing us access to resolutions below 800p as well as enabling dynamic resolution scaling as a super sweet cherry on top at 800p we're almost able to get a solid 68 fps experience with the medium detail setting and if we click our resolution to 1152 by 720p we're able to cross that threshold going over to 600p we're able to increase our frame rate by 10 fps up to 72 going down to 500 p we get an additional 7 frames and we bottom out our resolutions at 480p getting us up to 81 fps so clearly plenty of margin to rip and tear some demons but as we know with doom eternal it gets pretty hectic so i imagine these numbers to shift down just a bit wolfenstein youngblood is another game developed by id software that was pretty popular for a benchmark a few years back but i had to include it in this video because sometimes gamescope does bite us in the butt here in this video we're running at native 800p resolution at medium detail settings and what you'll know is it looks like we have vsync enabled when in fact we don't have that feature enabled and if we push the quick access menu button our frame rate jumps up quite a bit so clearly gamescope is not in its fully final form and i really hope that plagueman and the rest of the developers are able to fix this bug but looking past that bug if we look at 16 by 9 aspect ratios with 720p we're already above 66 fps with the high detail settings so again plenty of margin for high frame rate gaming if we drop down to 576p we go up to 85 fps so lots of room to spare of course as we go down the resolutions we see excellent scaling across the board showing that this game is really well optimized for a graphic solution the last game i wanted to take a look at and the big question i wanted to answer is can the steam deck run crisis well crisis remastered in this case i re-watched the digital foundry video and they did an excellent job of analyzing the quality settings as well as some recommended settings but they didn't talk anything about fsr with the medium detail settings at native resolutions we are just below 50 fps and if we just go one tick below to 1152 by 720p we're able to get 53 fps if you want to go down to 600p you're able to get that coveted 60fps experience and if you're willing to take a dip in your quality more on that in just a second if you go down to 500p you're going to be able to get that sweet 70 fps crysis is a really good looking game even if you drop down to the low quality settings and at native resolutions we are already able to achieve 60 fps again going down to 1152 by 720p we gain an additional 10 going up to 66 fps 600 p goes up to 76 fps and 500 p goes right up to 85. so crisis shows some really good graphical scaling when it comes to fsr and the lower render resolutions at first glance it looks like the performance of the steam deck is actually really good especially for some of these high frame rate first person shooters but as we know with fsr we're looking at lower internal resolutions to get those higher frame rate values and the drawback with that and the balance we have to achieve is of course the image quality so i took a couple of different games and went through the entire quality settings and i wanted to do some side by side comparisons to see what you guys think is the best setting to go with first let's take a look at the in-game fsr solutions and here is horizon zero dawn and right now we're looking at the native resolution everything looks good crisp and as it should be here we have ultra quality mode and it does appear that the image has become a bit more sharp we're able to see a little bit more detail in the foliage the leaves on the tree on the left in the distance and we are able to see alloy's dad a little bit clearer going into the quality mode i actually find this to be more similar to the native resolution and with the additional fps bump i think quality is the ideal setting to run in in-game fsr now we're in balanced mode and we start to see a little bit of the additional blur all of the detail is pretty much lost in alloy's character model as well as the distant foliage and we're starting to see some artifacting from the grass now if you can't tell the difference with the performance mode this is definitely not recommended now we see extreme shimmering across all of the different models and alloy's dad looks like a huge blob with crisis remastered we have access to game scopes built-in fsr upscaling this first clip is going to be running at the native resolution and it looks very natural we see sharp edges across the suits as well as pretty decent detail with the nearby foliage as well as the far off foliage as we get into the action sequence here it's really difficult to tell the difference in the quality next up is 600p and i find that to be right between the ultra quality setting and quality that we saw with horizon zero dawn the edges of the suit are much sharper as he's jumping through the forest and we can also see a lot more of the detail in the tree's bark as well as the distant foliage and as we go into the action sequence here we're clearly getting blurred out by all of the fast-paced movement so i think this is a really good compromise the last available resolution is 500p and i find it to be right between the balanced and the quality mode now it's not as bad as balance with horizon zeroed on we still get the crisp edges on the suit but we do start to lose a lot of the clarity when it comes to the foliage and as the camera starts to pan around we can definitely see the artifacting that's happening in the branches but if you need that fps boost the options there with all those quality comparisons i do have a couple of recommendations if you're going to be using the in-game fsr settings i recommend you guys stick to the quality setting because as we go to balanced in the performance mode we definitely increase the amount of blur that's seen in the image and it just doesn't look really good on the steam deck 7 inch screen now if you're going to be using steamos's gamescope fsr i highly recommend you use the resolution of 600p because it's just below that ultra quality setting and it's just above the quality setting which i find really attractive for most games but if you're really desperate for that fps push 500p is definitely as low as i would go it's just above the balanced setting and could be passable for some games but i will leave that up to you to decide so fsr is a really cool technology and it really comes in handy with the steam deck especially as we're trying to just wring out as much performance out of that apu as possible but as we saw throughout this video there are some caveats that we have to keep in mind when it comes to optimizing our setups first and foremost is that when we engage steam deck we are really starting to highlight the cpu bottlenecks that are within the steam deck itself there's just no way to get around the four core 3.5 gigahertz cpu cores that are built into the steam deck and if you're wanting to get more performance you're just gonna have to look to a different device next if your game doesn't provide in-game fsr support gamescope doesn't necessarily enable it for all games as i was testing some of the other different games like borderlands halo and a couple of others there's just no additional monitor resolutions below 800p or even 720p and as i was going into final fantasy 14 they did offer 1152 by 720p but at that point the performance benefit we get using a lower resolution our gpu and cpu are actually working harder in order to present that frame to the scene so in theory fsr sounds really great but unless the games unlock additional monitor resolutions or the game scope solution provides more to the game itself we're just not going to be able to use the technology lastly fsr is just not powerful enough in most cases as we saw with going from 40 fps up to 50 fps that's a pretty sizable bump and can be used to our benefit but it's not the 60fps that we like to see in most cases across most games we're not able to get a 50 performance improvement going from ultra quality to quality we sometimes get it going into balanced or performance mode but as we saw with the image comparisons those types of settings really have aggressive blur and makes the gaming experience just not enjoyable even on a 7-inch screen bottom line i really do like fsr and i really love its ability to wring out additional fps especially with our steam deck i think we can leverage the technology to boost our performance up to a point that i think we can get some really impressive results but we have to be realistic and can't treat it like a silver bullet that's going to solve all of our problems but that's all i've got to say about fsr with the steam deck and i hope to catch you guys in episode 2 where we're going to be talking about optimized settings for a handful of games and utilizing some of this fsr know-how to get a good gaming experience as always you can catch me over on twitter if you've got any questions leave some comments down below or jump over on the discord if you want to talk nerdy with all the rest of the turk force but thank you guys for sticking to the end of the video i hope you'll have a great one catch you in the next one

Channel: TheTerk

Views: 51,301

Keywords: steam deck, steam deck fsr, amd fsr, steam deck performance, steam deck fsr guide, steam deck fsr explained, steam deck fsr resolution, amd fsr on any game, steam deck review 2022, steam deck performance settings explained, best settings for steam deck, steam deck hands on, steam deck tutorial, steam deck optimization, fsr steam deck

Id: 05FvpTGSj-g

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 01 2022