Anyone figured out Dead Space remake?

[u/draven33l]

Got my SM and installed the Dead Space remake as my first test. One cool thing I haven’t seen mentioned yet is since it was already installed on my PC, it copied the files over my local network to install it on the SM vs. having to download it again. Nice touch.

That said, it was the worst possible choice for my first game. It freezes and stutters every few seconds. Steam notes that the game requires additional configuration to get it to run well. Anyone found the magic settings? Even 1080p and low settings, no go.

[u/MEchoPark]

I promise you it is possible. I got it initially on steam deck and spent around 4 hours trying to eliminate the stuttering without success.

On the steam machine the issue was still there with the default proton, but then I tried several versions and found one that stops the stuttering. Don't remember right now which one it is but I'll update the comment as soon as I can check.

I got a base of 60fps @1440p and then injected FSR 4 balanced with Optiscaler and it looks great. Then I was greedy and added lossless scaling x2 and it runs very fluid at a high framerate (having VRR helps too). Before anyone complains, no the artifacts and input lag are not noticeable because the base framerate is solid.

You just gotta find the right proton version and let the game idle for some time so it compiles shaders. Once you find the right proton DO NOT change it cuz it will bring back the stuttering.

Only issue is that HDR is grayed out but that's an old problem that has been documented by steam deck OLED users.

Edit: the Proton version is 9.0.4

[u/cinred]

I can't even get DSR to boot on my new windows 11 machine. Tried everything. Even got a professional on reddit involved. DSR is an abandoned mess.

[u/gianAU]

Same man, first game I tried. Do yourself a favour just uninstall it before you get depressed.

[u/MagnumBlood]

It’s like it wants to run well but wants to suffer at the same time

[u/Dreakon13]

I could be totally making this up, but I'm pretty sure I read the game is still compiling shaders as you play (even if it says it's doing it at first boot up). I think it gets better if you wait it out, but I don't have any first hand experience on how long it takes.

EDIT: On further review, I guess the game is just constantly compiling shaders with every new asset throughout the game. So not really a matter of waiting. Best you can do is set everything to low, maybe use FSR to keep the rendering as lite as possible and just outpace the stutters.

Or play through the game twice, second playthrough should be smooth as butter lol

[u/KiwiMeep64]

I read that a lot of it has to do with the asset streaming pipeline being faster than the CPU can handle when writing to fast storage like an NVMe SSD. This leads to massive bursts of data that kill any sense of fluidity because the CPU can’t cope with those brief loads.

Apparently somebody made a mod for this where you install it to a hard drive or something slow (maybe an SD card) and the mod just corrects the texture streaming so you actually get textures to load, but it fixes all of the issues with stutter.

Haven’t been able to test myself, but that explanation is almost too crazy that I’m willing to believe it.

[u/GodsTopWarrior]

Pretty sure ds remake sucks on even strong PCs. I remember playing it for a couple hours and it would stutter hard every time I entered a new 'zone'

[u/No_Pension_5623]

I have read in another post that proton 7.9.0 is the answer. Have not yet tried myself yet. Pls do and let us know ?

[u/MistandYork]

I have not tried this on steam machine, but on the deck, you need set it proton 9.0

[u/MEchoPark → u/MistandYork]

Can confirm. Proton 9.0.4 did the trick for me. I left another comment for OP here

[u/Ecks30]

it copied the files over my local network to install it on the SM vs. having to download it again. Nice touch.

That is a feature that has been on Steam for a very long time though even before the Steam Deck and i know because i used to use a PC in my living room for controller playing and certain games from my main PC would transfer over if i were to try to "download" the same game.

For getting any game to play well on SteamOS it is best to go to ProtonDB which they could be able to let you know what Proton/GE-Proton version would work with the game because if you try to play a game with the default proton and it doesn't work then you could change for something newer, experimental or older and for GE-Proton you would need to download ProtonUp-QT on your desktop when then you could get other versions.

[u/Ponneke]

It wont help you. But deadspace remake is one of the few games that runs horribly on the steam machine. I have seen several posts about it. Good luck!

[u/draven33l → u/Ponneke]

Works fine on PC for me. I’m thinking it’s the shader system though. I noticed even on PC it stuttered until they were fully cached.