Especially with the 3.5 preview/beta update I’ve been seeing a lot of people say that the stuff CryoUtilities does is wack and doesn’t really work, and one dude even went as far as to call it a placebo in a post where I mentioned it.
Does stuff like the swap file and swappiness, amongst other things, really boost performance and all that? Or is it just a waste of time and (storage) space?
If the difference can be measured in a controlled scenario, it is not placebo. It is the exact opposite. CryoUtilities’ performance gains can (sometimes) be measured, and in those cases, it is not placebo.
People who claim that it increases performance are providing anecdotes. These are not measurements, and while a lot of them can help affirm its effectiveness in increasing performance, they can’t be backed up and in many cases are the result of placebo.
It doesn’t take much time to install, just a few minutes, so I wouldn’t really call it a waste of time. Unless you’re hurting for storage, I wouldn’t really call it a waste in that regard either. If you are hurting for storage, I’d say that it is a waste unless you know for a fact that the games you’re trying to run perform better with it on.
On paper, the concept behind the changes made by CryoUtilities is correct, and can technically lead to some performance gains. But the Deck is very rarely bottlenecked by its memory, so the gains are often minimal or non-existent.