TheSteam Deckhas now officially launched. And while Valve’s handheld console may not be widely available, it’s going to be in an increasing number of gamers' hands from now forward. Many of those newSteam Deckowners are likely going to want to play the latest games on their Steam Deck, naturally, and Valve is going to want to ensure those games are provided. With that in mind, the company recently provided some insight into how it improvedElden Ring’s performance on Steam Deck, even as the game struggled on PC.
Elden Ringwas officially verified for the Steam Deck when it officially launched on PC on February 25. That means it passed all of Valve’s tests, which includes performance metrics as well as support for controllers and legible text. However,Elden Ringsuffered some significant performance issues at launch on PC, and on the Steam Deck, these issues were particularly egregious. Given thepopularity ofElden Ring, Valve stepped in to ensure the game was running smoothly on the handheld.
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Valve describes the most significant issue forElden Ringon the Steam Deckas revolving around the game’s shader pipeline. The game apparently creates “many thousand resources such as command buffers” in certain moments of the game. This, in turn, causes the hitches thatElden Ringplayers have been experiencing. On PC, the issue isn’t simple to solve, since PC hardware is incredibly diverse. With the Steam Deck, which has its own hardware configuration, Valve was able to adapt.
Valve says it was able to use the Steam Deck’s “extensive shader pre-chaching system” to address the issue, at least as much as it was able. Where before, the Steam Deck’s memory manager was going into “overdrive” trying tohandleElden Ring’s command buffersand the like, now the Steam Deck caches those allocations “more aggressively.” Instead of having to access memory for each command, the Steam Deck draws from a “pre-compiled cache entry on disk.”
The solution that Valve came to clearly works, asElden Ringperforms significantly better now on Steam Deck. It’s still a handheld console, however. It’s running at 720p with a 30fps cap and mostly medium-quality settings. But it’s a smooth gameplay experience and is only going to get more optimized from here.
While Valve’s effort to improveElden Ringon Steam Deck has immediate value, in thatElden Ringplayers will have a better experience, there are a lot of long-term positives to take away from the situation, too. Valve’s deep familiarity with theSteam Deck’s hardware, its OS, and its understanding of PC gaming compatibility on the device will prove invaluable going forward.Elden Ringis just one such example, but it’s also evidence of how well future major PC gaming releases could be supported. And it makes the Steam Deck that much more attractive, too.
