I like to play docked. Indies and old games run great (even going up to 4k). Newer games I just keep the deck resolution and use FSR to upscale. You probably would have to check each game. Steam have a per game performance setting so you should check once and then is plug and play. Great experience. For controllers I use 8bit do.

My Workstation is a Mac, so I mostly play on steam deck (the Mac get some civilizations now and then)

What kind of games? Indies should go up to 1440p native without issue. If you play on game mode you can use FSR to upscale (I upscale to 4k depending on the game)