How is the Steam Deck in the latest AAA games?

We recently reported on a video of Digital Foundry editors testing a popular Steam deck in the UE5 version of Fortnite with Lumen and Nanite technologies. It’s certainly not the only such demanding game, however, which is why DF has begun further testing, this time across multiple 2022 AAA titles.

Oliver McKenzie tried A Plague Tale: Requiem, where he had to lower all quality settings to the lowest, except for the textures, which he left at medium. At the same time, he turned on upscaling from a lower resolution, thanks to which the game finally managed to maintain a fairly stable 30 FPS, albeit at the cost of significantly worse visual design.

Callisto Protocol is not so famous anymore, after all, it is a game poorly optimized for PC. In Steam Deck, even when using FSR 2 and the lowest graphics settings, the frame rate regularly drops to 20 frames per second, and the problem is usually a lack of processor power, not a graphics chip.

The processor was also a problem in the infamous Gotham Knights, slowing down even the best computers. While the GPU is slowly resting, the CPU is not enough even at the lowest settings. Outdoors, the frame rate remains around 25fps, but indoors you can expect a relatively stable 30fps.

You can also expect the same 30fps for Need for Speed ​​Unbound, The Witcher 3 with the new update, and Uncharted 4 (not new, of course, but a PC port was released last year). ). And all this even at medium detail.

So while the Steam Deck is starting to struggle with new games, it’s certainly interesting to see what this portable device can do.