Update: many months later, I was clearly right and they actually fixed it.
CD PROJEKT RED recently released another major patch for Cyberpunk 2077. Curiously, they added a dedicated Steam Deck preset in the graphics options.
Nice to see they're paying attention and tweaking things like they said they would be. However, I'm not sure what they're trying to achieve with this new option. Checking between the various presets available, the new Steam Deck option is exactly the same as the Ultra setting. It seems broken and doesn't do anything, or it wasn't supposed to be live right now but no matter the case, it's really not right. Doing a benchmark on the Steam Deck with the setting gives an overall sub-30FPS. If you reload the game with Steam Deck set in the settings, it just goes back to Ultra as the preset too.
To show it clearly here's the Steam Deck setting, followed by Medium and the difference is striking:
Direct Link
Of course this was tested and verified across multiple runs, quitting the game between preset changes and such to ensure it was actually fully set. It's just broken, perhaps a copy and paste error.
Hopefully CDPR will take another look and actually set it correctly, as there's simply no way this is what it's supposed to be. For now, it's something to keep in mind.
New Update: After some more fun investigating, the Steam Deck preset definitely doesn't work right. By itself, it sets High+Ultra but it's more than that.
Going from Medium to Steam Deck and running the benchmark, it gave a higher performance than my video.
Reloading the game, it then says it's preset to Ultra. So I set it to Steam Deck again and run benchmark to see really low performance. Then I set it to Low, go back to the menu, then back in and set again to Steam Deck and run then benchmark again, and it's the best performance I've seen yet.
Cyberpunk seems to grab onto what preset you had last for Steam Deck, and any restart when you've set to Steam Deck seems to jack it back up to Ultra. So, the Steam Deck preset is definitely broken which is why other videos may show a different performance or visuals.
Low: 46.31 average FPS
Swapping Low to Steam Deck: 46.26 average FPS
Medium: 36.72 average FPS
Swapping Medium to Steam Deck: 36.30 average FPS
High: 28.39 average FPS
Swapping High to Steam Deck: 28.11 average FPS
Go back to even just the menu after going through the presets and setting Steam Deck, then back into the benchmark: 22.07 average FPS as it seems to default Steam Deck preset to High+Ultra. Saw the same behaviour on desktop too.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_lthCD2III
Last edited by Werner on 23 March 2022 at 12:22 pm UTC
Quoting: Wernerhmm weird, according to this video it seem to workThere is absolutely no way with those graphical settings (high/ultra) that video is correct. Lots of the preset options don't take effect until you restart the game I've found. The Deck simply cannot handle those settings. Edit: they have FSR on and set to Balanced too, so I tried that as well and nope - performance not close to that video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_lthCD2III
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 23 March 2022 at 12:57 pm UTC
Mohandevir Mar 23, 2022
Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: Wernerhmm weird, according to this video it seem to workThere is absolutely no way with those graphical settings (high/ultra) that video is correct. Lots of the preset options don't take effect until you restart the game I've found. The Deck simply cannot handle those settings. Edit: they have FSR on and set to Balanced too, so I tried that as well and nope - performance not close to that video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_lthCD2III
Quoting: Wernerhmm weird, according to this video it seem to work
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_lthCD2III
Yeah, something funky is going on there, as comparing the video shows the quality doesn't match, at all.
(right video is GOL)
Quoting: Spl-itYeah, even with FSR on, their video shows lighting and textures at a much lower quality level for sure. So either way, something in Cyberpunk is not correctly setting things.Quoting: Wernerhmm weird, according to this video it seem to work
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_lthCD2III
Yeah, something funky is going on there, as comparing the video shows the quality doesn't match, at all.
(right video is GOL)
Mountain Man Mar 23, 2022
Going from Medium to Steam Deck and running the benchmark, it gave a higher performance than my video.
Reloading the game, it then says it's preset to Ultra. So I set it to Steam Deck again and run benchmark to see really low performance. Then I set it to Low, go back to the menu, then back in and set again to Steam Deck and run then benchmark again, and it's the best performance I've seen yet.
Cyberpunk seems to grab onto what preset you had last for Steam Deck, and any restart when you've set to Steam Deck seems to jack it back up to Ultra. So, the Steam Deck preset is definitely broken which is why other videos may show a different performance or visuals.
Low: 46.31 average FPS
Swapping Low to Steam Deck: 46.26 average FPS
High: 28.39 average FPS
Swapping High to Steam Deck: 28.11 average FPS
Go back to even just the menu after setting Steam Deck, then back into the benchmark: 22.07 average FPS
Last edited by eldarion on 23 March 2022 at 3:01 pm UTC
furaxhornyx Mar 24, 2022
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