Since SteamOS 3.5 finally released into stable, I’ve been looking forward to try out PS3 emulation on the Steam Deck, especially the Uncharted series & MGS4.

Long story short, performance was rather subpar, with frequent FPS drops.

Looking around, I came across this post on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/16ydaoz/mgs4_on_rpcs3_with_full_visual_effects_on_the/

After applying the tweaks referenced there, I really did saw a boost of a few more additional frames, but the real improvement is that the frametimes become more even, resulting in noticeably less stuttering.

With a 50 % resolution render scale, Uncharted 1 can be considered playable on the Steam Deck, IMHO.

Hope these tweaks help you guys out, too!

        • helpmeiwantgoodmusic@alien.top
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          1 year ago

          even if it’s a shit port it’ll still be much better than being stuck emulating it (though im sure rpsc3 will make great leaps in a year or two in terms of performance) or buying a ps3 to play it lol

        • Jase_the_Muss@alien.topB
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          1 year ago

          Maybe volume 2 and maybe the complexities of getting 4 right has meant they phoned in volume 1 but most likely it won’t be there and if it is it will be shite lol.

    • iamfromouttahere@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      finished it today, I had audio skips all over the game and can’t load NG+ save…

      BUT I FINISHED IT :D

    • helpmeiwantgoodmusic@alien.top
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      1 year ago

      I have played it on my steam deck, I didn’t beat it because I got really bored with it (even after not playing it for 10 years, i still remember it so well…)…

      honestly, it’s not the best experience on the steam deck. I get around 15-30 fps (30 fps in very tight areas, and down to 15-20 in the more open areas.) since it’s a stealth game 15fps isnt horrid… but it’s not a great experience.

      audio will frequently cut out in the more intense areas (there were two parts in particular where the audio bassically couldnt be heard, but otherwise for me the audio was generally good with only occasional cutting out.), ppu/spu cache takes literal hours to build. you can turn off precompilation, but then every loading screen on your first time around will be actual minutes long. on top of that, one of the settings that almost completely stops the audio glitching is only usable once you have gotten past the intro (it causes a crash at the very beggining otherwise, meaning you will have to suffer through the intro, then save and restart the emulator).

      but other than that… cutscenes do run great, at around 40-60 fps. and mgs4 IS mostly cutscenes. overall though, i wouldn’t reccomend it. I saw someone on youtube who overclocked their steam deck and it seemed to perform much better, but at that point you are drawing so much power out of the battery you are bassicaly married to the charger and… eh.

      even without the overclocking, you are still gonna be pulling the full 25w out of the battery, so you aren’t gonna be playing this game as a on-the-go sort of deal at all, and the fans SPIIIN like holy fuck they spin. so loud. so fast.

      something odd about op’s post is that uh… resolution scale bassicaly does nothing for me. I don’t know why it would, even. RPSC3 bassicaly chokes out the CPU and leaves the GPU clocked at like 200mhz the entire time. settings the resolution to 1080p only reduces my fps by like… 3. it’s a very minor tweak, and even when I set it to 480p it barely made a difference too, and its so much uglier you might as well leave it at 720p

      all that being said though, despite the bad framerate i was still enjoying myself quite alot in the parts of the game that aren’t boring. mgs4 really tanks gameplay wise near the midway point sadly.

      if you still want my settings despite this, I can hand them over in another comment lol

      • iamfromouttahere@alien.topB
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        1 year ago

        I managed to squeeze 24-30 fps in my deck with a nice experience overall… but audio is still choppy, how did you manage to fix it?

        Basically I use Fidelity FX with a lot of sharpness, resolution scale to 50% and a few of the patches in the wiki, I can share my settings if you need it

    • MrFontana@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      My guy I have got some GOOD news. I originally only updated my steam deck using the cryoutilities and increasing VRAM/swappiness. With just those I noticed a massive increase in performance to MGS4. Aside from that I used Decky to increase the CPU and GPU min/max outputs and that further increased the performance. I just applied all the changes about an hour ago suggested in the article and let me tell you for the last hour or so I have been playing MGS4 like it was on the PS3 itself!!

        • MrFontana@alien.topB
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          1 year ago

          Yeah I’ve tinkered a few times and noticed that sometimes the non SPU caches compile weird and deleting them and recompiling usually works. You can also go to the audio settings and down it from 32bit to 16bit if I recall and that helps sometimes. I’ll post all the resources I used to optimize my settings on this comment

          • iamfromouttahere@alien.topB
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            1 year ago

            Somebody reommended to enable Max SPURS threads to 3 in advanced… It works! :D

            I’m in chapter 2 now, and its a noticeable difference :O

            • MrFontana@alien.topB
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              1 year ago

              Oooooh I’ll try that now as well. It’s already running so smoothly but I still get random hangups during cutscenes so I wonder if this’ll fix that.

              I tried dropping the resolution scale to 50% and doing 100% FSR but it was too noticeably bad quality so I upped the resolution scale to 75% and it’s pristine