God of War It appeared for PC at the beginning of this 2022 as possibly the most anticipated and desired conversion of one of Sony’s star titles. At the time we dedicated a detailed technical analysis of a high-end computer, but it does not hurt to broaden horizons and see how it works on the Steam Deck compared to the last two generations of PlayStation consoles.
The YouTube channel ElAnalistaDeBits has published a video in which it has compared the performance of God of War on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and the Steam Deck, however, some considerations must be taken into account. On PlayStation 5 the game has been run using backwards compatibility, at 2160p resolution and with the framerate unlocked to go to 60.
For its part, the Steam Deck is a “canned” mini-PC in the form of a hybrid console. As an operating system it uses SteamOS 3, which is a standard GNU/Linux with immutability features. This means that to run God of War it is necessary to use Protonthe Wine-based compatibility layer powered by Valve to make it easier to run video games compiled for Windows on Linux and macOS.
The graphic quality on the Steam Deck was set to “Original”, which is similar to that used by PlayStation with some improvements, and resolution was set to 800p compared to 1080p on PlayStation 4, a console on which it works at a fixed 30fps. Looking at the God of War ProtonDB page, some users recommend using Proton Glorious Eggroll (a community re-implementation also known as Proton-GE or GE-Proton) and introducing the following Steam launch parameter to improve performance:
DXVK_ASYNC=1 %command%
Although the Steam Deck has an architecture closer to that of a laptop than that of a desktop computer, there is one aspect in which it surpasses Sony’s consoles: loading times, which are shorter on Valve’s device. The Steam Deck also beats both PlayStations in the draw distance in some areas and in the quality of certain texturesthings possibly due to the fact that what is actually running is the version for Windows, which is apparently aimed at more powerful computers.
In ElAnalistaDeBits they conclude that the experience of God of War on the Steam Deck is superior to that obtained through the PlayStation 4. In case of using the Valve device in portable mode, they say that it would be better not to use FSR, while connected to a monitor they do recommend putting AMD’s upscaling technology to the maximum to have a stable frame rate. In no case have they managed to get a rate of 60 frames per second, so they recommend locking it to 30.
It is obvious that PlayStation 5 plays in another league. However, it is remarkable that the Steam Deck is capable of offering a better experience than PlayStation 4, which shows that Valve has done a good job with its console, and that support for God of War points to room for improvement. . We leave you with the video in question.
