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- It's rough: even at the lowest settings it's tough to reach 30 FPS.
- Usually in the 20s, around 27–30 FPS at 800p Low, whichever upscaler you pick.
- Ray-traced shadows and geometry can't be fully turned off, and that hits both the CPU and GPU.
- Not a stutter mess, just low FPS. Patches, mods or a Steam Deck preset could change things.
I did expect Gears of War: E-Day to be a little rough on the Steam Deck OLED, since the game makes you use some ray tracing features. And it is: even at 800p with everything on Low, it's tough to get to 30 FPS right now. Some updates, patches or mods could change that, and maybe they'll come up with a Steam Deck preset at some point. For now, it's a hard game to run on the Deck.
What I tested
- Exclusive Full Screen, 1280x800
- V-Sync off, Max FPS unlimited
- Upscaling: FSR4, Balanced (TSR and XeSS tested too)
- Custom preset with everything on Low
- Motion blur, hair strands and detail objects off
- Ray tracing geometry and ray-traced shadows on Low (they can't be turned off)
That's pretty much as low as you can go. You can't completely turn off ray tracing for things like shadows and geometry, and that really takes a hit on both the CPU and the GPU on the Steam Deck.
Performance
This is the beginning of Act 2. I've only played Acts 1 and 2 so far, but performance was pretty consistent across both, so I don't expect big changes over the 12 or 13 hour campaign. It's usually in the 20s, and maybe it reaches 30 sometimes.
All three upscalers performed about the same for me on Balanced:
- TSR Balanced: 27 to 30 FPS
- XeSS Balanced: 27 to 30 FPS (it doesn't render from the exact same base resolution)
- FSR4 Balanced: 27 to 30 FPS (the Deck's GPU can't use all of FSR4's features)
Use Balanced or Quality, whichever you like. Going to Performance doesn't make a big difference, because the game gets CPU bound as well as GPU bound depending on what's going on, especially with the forced ray tracing.
Verdict
On the Steam Deck, Gears of War: E-Day is about as tough to run as I figured it would be. It's not a stutter mess or anything like that, but it's definitely low FPS, sitting in the high 20s even with everything turned down. I'm testing it on all my handhelds, all the way up to the G3 Extreme and Z2 Extreme, so we'll see how it does on the newer chips.
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