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!
I can’t even get non steam games to run after the update.
the audio is choppy for me, do you know how to fix it?
Quick question for anybody that can help I got rpcs3 and I know where all the roms are but my issue is what folder do I put the rom in so my game will be playable on emudeck please somebody help
I havent tested PS3 as much, but the switch emulation has also improved a little
THPS 1 + 2 is more stable in some levels
Pokemon Violet used to run at around 80% speed with a lot of frame drops. Now it still has the frame drops but it seems to be running at full speed
Switch emulation has been pretty good in my experience. The weird differences in performance have been when I run games in desktop mode compared to SteamOS. Some work better in the former and others the latter
I’ll try playing metroid dread with lower tdp now. Probably will be able to do 6 hours gameplay
Is there even a need for THPS 1 + 2 emulation now that the game has been released on Steam?
Not imo and especially since they patched out the online check upon start.
btw make sure to reenable SMT for Yuzu, they seemed to have fixed the performance drop that required us to originally disable SMT
Any luck with God of War 3 ?
Do you also use cryoutilities? Also what vram you use? Thanks.
Iv been playing demons souls since launch… Iv found it runs pretty good at locked 30 fps with the gpu set to 700 mhz makes the frame timing on target… it will run at 60 but for me… I feel like it breaks the game engine sorta… like the game was designed to play at 30… I dunno even one a better pc I find this to be true minus the gpu lock
Are Motorstorm Pacific Rift and Apocalypse playable now ? I cannot test right now, I probably will one day, but I’m wondering if anyone tried recently (with the steam update and all).
Exactly what I came to the comments wondering, I’ve been playing Arctic Edge on the deck but I’d love to be able to play the PS3 games.
Was it even playable in rpsc3? Last I checked it on my pc it couldn’t properly render most of the post effects
In my experience Pacific Rift was pretty good after tweaking. Apocalypse was a little more rough but I found it mostly playable. And I have a pretty modest/old build.
Did somebody try Demon’s Souls via rpcs3 on steamOS 3.5?
I didnt
But I’ve it was already super stable even before the update.
What about Azura’s Wrath? That game was completely unplayable with the intro sequence being literally 1fps.
Report back for MGS4!
Hopefully Konami releases a good port eventually.
You’ve got the O in the wrong place it’s O god Konami
Given the master collection; don’t hold your breath
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
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.
This is the most important question!
The one true test. :D
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
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
in “advanced” set max SPURS threads to 3
Thanks! I’ll try later in the day :D
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!!
do you have audio working?
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
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
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
finished it today, I had audio skips all over the game and can’t load NG+ save…
BUT I FINISHED IT :D
Anything for skate?
I did these tweaks before updating to 3.5.5. Do I need to do it again now that I’ve updated?
Is god of war 3 playable yet?
Debating getting Demons Souls running
Imagine Sony sitting there, planning out every PS5 game they’ve ever made as ports to PC EXCEPT Demon’s Souls.
That’s including Sackboy.
But not Demon’s Souls even after Dark Souls became a massive hit on PC that blew everyone involved away and led to the incredible success of Elden Ring.
That meeting where they had to pick which launch title to port and they chose Sackboy over Demon’s Souls was one where a lot of money was lost.
You should, it runs well out of the box.