The Division 2 is Ubisoft's online shooter RPG that has players fighting to bring order to a lawless post-apocalyptic Washington DC. The gameplay harkens back to the third-person cover shooters of the sixth console generation, which makes it a comfortable fit for the Steam Deck. In this guide, we'll introduce the settings we've found to provide the best balance of performance and graphics quality on Valve's handheld. Let's get right into it!
Mass Effect™ Legendary Edition Best Steam Deck Settings
| Compatibility Settings | |
|---|---|
| Proton Version | Default |
| BIOS Settings | |
| UMA Frame Buffer Size | 4G |
Speaking to the game's performance, Mass Effect™ Legendary Edition runs perfectly on your Steam Deck without any pre-game tweaks or tinkering.
The biggest complaint users have had relates to the EA Launcher that appears when running the game on Steam. A small group of Deck owners have found they can't get past the external launcher, even after repeated attempts to log in. Some solutions offered by community members include trying a different version of Proton, with Experimental being the most frequently suggested. For those running a version of Proton-GE, adding "DVXK_ASYNC=1 %command%" to the game's launch commands is a possible workaround.
External launchers are the bane of any Steam gamer, with EA and Ubisoft being the most egregious offenders. From my experience with multiple EA games, running a game feels like a coin flip that decides whether or not the launcher will want to run on the first launch. It may run today only to be broken by a service update tomorrow. If you're planning on running the Mass Effect trilogy all the way through, my advice is to never quit the game and just use the Deck's sleep mode when taking breaks. Unfortunately, until publishers learn that gamers hate external launchers, this will be the state of AAA gaming going forward.
Extended Battery Life Settings (Native@60fps | ~3h)
The Mass Effect games all run great on the Steam Deck, and it would be a shame to dial down the graphics quality settings to extend battery life when the refresh rate setting in the Steam Deck Performance menu is right there. So, the first change we'll make is to reduce the screen's refresh rate down to 40Hz. Then we impose a 40 frame-per-second limiter to keep the game from pushing more frames than it has to.
The next step is to toy around with the TDP setting. A TDP of around 8 Watts will get you silky-smooth, 60-fps performance in all three of the Mass Effect games.
Of the three games in the Legendary Edition, the first Mass Effect received the most visual upgrades. Because of this, the oldest title in the bundle actually runs the worst, and I found myself having to remove the TDP limiter on particularly busy areas of the game, like the Citadel, to keep the framerate stable. From my time playing, Mass Effect 2 and 3 don't seem to have this issue.
| Graphics Settings | |
|---|---|
| Resolution | 1280x800 (6:9) |
| Window Mode | Fullscreen |
| Dynamic Shadows | On |
| Motion Blur | Off* |
| VSYNC | Off |
| Framerate Cap | 60 |
| Film Grain | Off* |
| Antialiasing | On |
| Ambient Occlusion | On |
| *Set to personal preference. | |
| Steam Deck Performance Menu Settings | |
|---|---|
| Refresh Rate | 60 |
| Framerate Limit | 60 |
| Allow Tearing | On |
| Half Rate Shading | Off |
| Thermal Power (TDP) Limit | On |
| Watts | 8 |
| Manual GPU Clock Control | Off |
| Scaling Filter | Linear |