Gaming On The Steam Deck
Quick Settings
Brightness Slider / HDR
- For HDR to work on compatible displays (eg. OLED Steam Deck internal screen) these are the requirements:
- Play in Gaming Mode (HDR only works on Wayland, Desktop Mode uses X11)
- Game supports HDR and is enabled in the settings
- Game is set to fullscreen mode
- Helpful commands:
- For some games that run outside of the Steam library -
DXVK_HDR=1 PROTON_ENABLE_AMD_AGS=1 %command%
- For certain games
SteamDeck=0 %command% and -dx12 or -d3d12
- Some information here is copied from and additional useful things can be in this guide by u/mytrixx on r/SteamDeck regarding HDR
- Two-tone slider explanation:
- First part adjusts the brightness via the display hardware which changes how strongly each pixel lights up.
- Second half adjusts the brightness via digital gain on the image we send to the display.
- Source: Valve Employee - Slightly edited for better grammar / punctuation
Audio
Volume & Microphone
- Mute or set loudness of your current output device and microphone
Other
Airplane mode, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Night mode
- Toggle features
- Bluetooth
Add Device button navigates into Settings > Bluetooth
Controller
Game rumble
Steam haptics
Battery
- Shows battery level in %
- Calculates remaining battery life in hours and minutes based on current power usage
- Off: No overlay
- 1: FPS only in top left corner
- 2: FPS, Frametime, CPU, GPU, RAM, VRAM, Battery, Power Usage and Time information in a row at the top of the screen
- 3: Same as level 2 but a tiny bit more detailed and on the left side
- 4: Everything on the left side
To use settings below you need to be in Advanced View instead of Basic View
Use per-game profile
- Toggle to use saved Performance Settings for currently running game
Frame Limit
- Sets framerate and display refresh rate limit
- Optimal settings:
- LCD (60hz screen): 30 / 40 / 60
- OLED (90hz scree): 30 / 45 / 90
Disable Frame Limit
- Allows the Deck to go beyond the highest frame limit
Allow Tearing
Half Rate Shading
TDP Limit
Manual GPU Clock
- In certain situations its more beneficial to set this manually
Scaling Mode
- Auto:
- Integer:
- Fit:
- Stretch:
- Fill:
Scaling Filter
Show Perf Overlay In Steam
- Enables the performance overlay to show up when not playing a game in gaming mode (browsing menus)
Reset to Default
- Resets settings to their default value
- Use in-game settings
- Set graphics quality
- Set resolution
- Use FSR / XeSS upscaling / frame-generation
- Set Frame Limit, TDP Limit and Manual GPU Clock in Quick Settings
- Set Scaling Mode and Filter in Quick Settings
- Overclock / undervolt in the BIOS
Game Compatibility
Game Launchers & Accessing Other Stores
Buying Games