The Last of Us was released on Steam, which means it’s also available on the Steam Deck. However, what are the best settings for playing? Let’s find out!
Sony’s portfolio hit The Last of Us Part I is finally out on PC. Unfortunately, it’s not free from technical difficulties, even on the fastest PCs running the RTX 4090. Is it possible this will work on Valve’s handheld console? Really ifdespite the fact that the game has not been verified on Steam by the Steam Deck Compatibility program at the time of this writing.
Configuration of the steam bridge
By default
As expected, due to hardware limitations, the game runs between 25 and 30 fps between the two preset with Quality FSR Enabled. We can still expect occasional frame drops when the action is at its most intense.
Going beyond the above settings or trying to disable FSR will cause the game to work 20fps. This exchange is not worth it because the difference in graphics quality is barely noticeable on such small screens.
One interesting thing to note is that even after manually unlocking the GPU clock frequency, the game does not significantly improve its performance. This is because the CPU is crashing the game instead of the GPU..
lower
Even if the game is set to the lowest possible settings with FSR set to Ultra, doesn’t seem to benefit much from this change. Performance is still limited by the CPU. Sure, it peaks at 30fps while there’s not too much action going on, peaking at 45fps indoors.
conclusion
The Last of Us on Steam Deck works surprisingly well given that it has technical difficulties on many PCs. As players report, the The game can be played with the default settings being the most balanced. It is also very important for let the game build the shaders first, since you can avoid possible accidents.
The default settings strike the middle ground between quality and frame rate. A game set up this way should be fine for most players. Although the lowest setting provides a slightly higher frame rate, it will still drop when the action is more intense due to CPU throttling.
We are still waiting for more Steam Deck optimization and verification. However, even now, if you want to focus primarily on plot and gameplay (not graphics), The Last of Us works well enough to enjoy.