Confused on Steam Play and Proton? Be sure to check out our guide.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

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:

YouTube Thumbnail
YouTube videos require cookies, you must accept their cookies to view. View cookie preferences.
Accept Cookies & Show   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.
17 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
11 comments
Page: «2/2
  Go to:

Corben Mar 24, 2022
Yesterday I thought the patch to 1.52 has wrecked the great performance patch 1.5 has brought again. I wasn't able to get a smooth experience anymore while e.g. just turning the character's view around. No matter what I tried helped, lowering to High preset, with DLSS to quality... still choppy. And before it was possible for me to play on Ultra preset without any DLSS or FSR.
Best I could do was setting it to High and FSR to quality, unfortunately there was a visible quality loss.

But it was on my end, obs was apparently causing it, as after shutting it down the issue was gone.


Last edited by Corben on 24 March 2022 at 7:11 am UTC
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.