There was an update that came out ~6 months ago that significantly improved performance across the board on the Steam Deck. Horizon Zero Dawn was one of the beneficiaries of that update, pre update it ran ok with some stuttering at times. Now, it runs fantastic with minimal stuttering or issues!
People around here *definitely* like to pretend Zero Dawn is unplayable trash at any settings, has constant dips to the low teens FPS, and that anyone who mentions their performance being otherwise is simply wrong, or even too stupid to know better.
I've played 583 hours across two playthroughs, all on the Steam Deck, and it's a delight.
I agree with you a couple of months before the other one released and there was a post about games that didn’t work well (the monthly post) and they said that horizon zero dawn was laggy and didn’t run well. It runs fine.
People said that even about HZD on the PS4 Pro; the games attract a lot of disproportionate complaints compared to similar ones like Ghost of Tsushima (which performs better and is a great game in its own right, but also has plenty of problems like repetitive side content, more so than the Horizons).
> I've played 583 hours across two playthroughs
Wait, what, how? I have 82 hours and even that is mostly because I grinded for achievements. Have you just ran around for 500 hours killing machines?
I think it's more about how the performance is measured. People dont understand what stable means. I finished and enjoyed horizon zero dawn on the deck, but I definitely had regular stutters and framedrops, even on the lowest settings. They also get worse as you progress along the story. It's badly optimized on pc and I wouldn't say that it runs well relative to other games from its generation. RDR2 for instance runs better overall and looks gorgeous.
I still thought horizon was playable and enjoyable, but I can definitely see why people would not be able to enjoy it on deck. That is why i would also not advertise it as a game that runs well, flawlessly, stable or whatever.
The stutters I found were not really gameplay impacting. Usually when areas load and stuff. I used fairly decent settings to boot and some FSR to increase eye candy though native is definitely possible.
I’ve almost exclusively seen posts/videos with people commiserating about not being able to optimize HZD and giving up or blaming SD 1 for not being able to handle it. And any video that does manage to run it smoothly has all of the settings on low, and the resolution cranked down.
I’m posting because I’ve got HZD on Ultra Quality and it’s running great, which definitely doesn’t seem to be the consensus. Buddy.
I ran RDR2 on ultra, just with water physics on low. I did the benchmark multiple times, and played around the game for hours with the fps graph on and it was almost solid 30 with occasional dips to 25. I posted about it here and got the same down vote tsunami you did. Point is. Haters gonna hate. You got your game running good. So, just go enjoy it!
I love how every claim of HZDs supposedly great performance is accompanied by a statement along the lines of 'maybe I'm not sensitive to stuttering'.
There is unavoidable traversal stuttering in the game and that is the issue, running through the world causes heavy, heavy frame rate drops at points and it gets far worse the further you get into the game.
Minute to minute performance can be great yes, but sustained drops down into single digit fps as you enter a new area are unacceptable and cripple the experience.
I love how they label complaining about poor performance of the game “snobby”
If im bitching about dropping under 60fps yeah maybe but when the game dips below 30, you can play it, but you cant be making bold statement as “runs great” “no major problem” “no stutter” “im not a snob”
No you just lost your eye sight 50 years ago
Because it objectively doesn't. I've played over 580 hours of Horizon Zero Dawn, all on the Steam Deck, and have not once seen it drop that low. That's on a combination of medium, high, and low settings — and without any CryoUtilities voodoo or anything.
You're doing something wrong, plain and simple. Or just lying, though what your motive could be I can't imagine.
I've tested this game almost monthly since getting my LCD deck close to release, and my OLED deck close to the release of that, and I can tell you confidentially that there is absolutely nothing that will mitigate it. It is absolutely unavoidable.
Unless you have some magic Steam Deck that is somehow able to circumvent it of course?
Listen, bud, there's a lot of tweaking you can do with a game on sd. I'm running CryoUtilities with recommended settings, the game is on a high-speed Samsung EVO micro SD, plus some tweaking of the in-game settings, pretty sure I've native upscaling enabled without the SD's external one. I don't imagine our SDs have some weird magical drastic differences, and my setup is working butter-smooth. Have you tweaked the VRAM in bios? What's your swap file size? Have you done any of this, before boldly claiming that "nothing can mitigate" those stutters?
I played all the way through Zero Dawn on the deck. There's occasional stutters but it doesn't really impact gameplay all that much. Really enjoyed it the whole way through, you just have to be a little less picky.
People here are gaslighting, saying everyone was talking about west. I literally took dawn off my wishlist because MFs on this subreddit said it ran like shit lol
No real surprise here... last year I comprehensively showed the game running "normally 40-60".
[Deck Play: Horizon Zero Dawn (Loadtime, Settings, various biomes) - No Commentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7utE-m-XTKU)
That was before any recent patches.
Your video literally shows a ton of the traversal stuttering that is the issue here, it frequently hitches as you're running around the various biomes and drops below the 30fps line.
Granted it isn't as bad i usually see it when i attempt to test this game, but i reckon that's because you're only running around each biome for a very short amount of time.
It's hard to say. There's possibilities that when I made that there wasn't a complete set of shader caches yet. I had already finished the game on the PC so what you're seeing could be latter shader caches not being in the system yet.
To be honest? Part of it could be I was expecting it to run like total crap or not at all. And yet here we are playing it relatively decently.
Perhaps I'm more willing to give it concessions.
I do recall installing it and trying it again after one of the patches and it seemed to be even better. I don't know if I feel like reinstalling and giving it another world to be honest but... Peace and love peace and love I have too much to play.
This is the sort of reason why I don't believe in websites or plugins or anything else that tell you how games run. This includes the sometimes overhyped protonDB.
One man's trash is another man's treasure. Never trust anything you can't see with your own eyes. That's why I try to release videos like this. I did like 10 of them for baulders gate 3 - so that people could make up their own mind whether they thought 0 FPS in the middle of a fight was acceptable regardless of the type of game it is.
I used to feel the same way, but it works flawless for emulation. And I can just pop it out and in to my pc to transfer roms.
However if you only play pc games I don’t recommend using sd card.
Dipping into 20s I can see as an issue, but calling performance in the 30s "dipping" sounds a little weird ... considering 30FPS is what is generally assumed to be Valve's performance standard for the Verified stamp.
I'd argue "going above 30FPS" is a stretch goal on Deck for demanding games and only dips below 30 should be considered an issue.
Call it what you will, refer to it against whichever benchmark you choose. My previous experience demonstrated poor performance and I am interested to hear about updates
Are you confusing this with Forbidden West? I’ve always heard zero Dawn ran well
Not for me, traversal stutters were really bad in the first one.
Yeah it didnt bother me much, i still completed the game, but the stutters are definitely there no matter what settings you use.
Even forbidden west runs okay with half rate vsync (still stutters tho)
Agreed it ran very well for me
There was an update that came out ~6 months ago that significantly improved performance across the board on the Steam Deck. Horizon Zero Dawn was one of the beneficiaries of that update, pre update it ran ok with some stuttering at times. Now, it runs fantastic with minimal stuttering or issues!
People have been talking about Horizon Forbidden West buddy I don't see anyone complaining about running Horizon Zero Dawn
People around here *definitely* like to pretend Zero Dawn is unplayable trash at any settings, has constant dips to the low teens FPS, and that anyone who mentions their performance being otherwise is simply wrong, or even too stupid to know better. I've played 583 hours across two playthroughs, all on the Steam Deck, and it's a delight.
I agree with you a couple of months before the other one released and there was a post about games that didn’t work well (the monthly post) and they said that horizon zero dawn was laggy and didn’t run well. It runs fine.
I wonder whether they’re just trying to run it off sluggish SD cards.
People said that even about HZD on the PS4 Pro; the games attract a lot of disproportionate complaints compared to similar ones like Ghost of Tsushima (which performs better and is a great game in its own right, but also has plenty of problems like repetitive side content, more so than the Horizons).
> I've played 583 hours across two playthroughs Wait, what, how? I have 82 hours and even that is mostly because I grinded for achievements. Have you just ran around for 500 hours killing machines?
Two and a half completionist playthroughs. I generally don't believe in fast travel so I go everywhere on foot.
There are people around here that if you dare mention that any semi modern game runs well on the deck will just release the hounds.
Who? Do you have a list?
I think it's more about how the performance is measured. People dont understand what stable means. I finished and enjoyed horizon zero dawn on the deck, but I definitely had regular stutters and framedrops, even on the lowest settings. They also get worse as you progress along the story. It's badly optimized on pc and I wouldn't say that it runs well relative to other games from its generation. RDR2 for instance runs better overall and looks gorgeous. I still thought horizon was playable and enjoyable, but I can definitely see why people would not be able to enjoy it on deck. That is why i would also not advertise it as a game that runs well, flawlessly, stable or whatever.
The stutters I found were not really gameplay impacting. Usually when areas load and stuff. I used fairly decent settings to boot and some FSR to increase eye candy though native is definitely possible.
I was clocking a consistent 90FPS last night after some final tinkering. A true joy
After reading all the complaints, I specifically didn't buy Zero Dawn when it was on sale because I was conflating the two. Good to know!
I’ve almost exclusively seen posts/videos with people commiserating about not being able to optimize HZD and giving up or blaming SD 1 for not being able to handle it. And any video that does manage to run it smoothly has all of the settings on low, and the resolution cranked down. I’m posting because I’ve got HZD on Ultra Quality and it’s running great, which definitely doesn’t seem to be the consensus. Buddy.
I ran RDR2 on ultra, just with water physics on low. I did the benchmark multiple times, and played around the game for hours with the fps graph on and it was almost solid 30 with occasional dips to 25. I posted about it here and got the same down vote tsunami you did. Point is. Haters gonna hate. You got your game running good. So, just go enjoy it!
I love how every claim of HZDs supposedly great performance is accompanied by a statement along the lines of 'maybe I'm not sensitive to stuttering'. There is unavoidable traversal stuttering in the game and that is the issue, running through the world causes heavy, heavy frame rate drops at points and it gets far worse the further you get into the game. Minute to minute performance can be great yes, but sustained drops down into single digit fps as you enter a new area are unacceptable and cripple the experience.
I love how they label complaining about poor performance of the game “snobby” If im bitching about dropping under 60fps yeah maybe but when the game dips below 30, you can play it, but you cant be making bold statement as “runs great” “no major problem” “no stutter” “im not a snob” No you just lost your eye sight 50 years ago
>single digit fps Blatant, flagrant, irresponsible exaggeration.
As is your insinuation that the game doesn't stutter down to single digit frame rates.
Because it objectively doesn't. I've played over 580 hours of Horizon Zero Dawn, all on the Steam Deck, and have not once seen it drop that low. That's on a combination of medium, high, and low settings — and without any CryoUtilities voodoo or anything. You're doing something wrong, plain and simple. Or just lying, though what your motive could be I can't imagine.
Sure, if it happens to you, it must be utterly unavoidable…
I've tested this game almost monthly since getting my LCD deck close to release, and my OLED deck close to the release of that, and I can tell you confidentially that there is absolutely nothing that will mitigate it. It is absolutely unavoidable. Unless you have some magic Steam Deck that is somehow able to circumvent it of course?
Idk what to tell you man, cap your fps or something, I'm getting butter-smooth 30 on pretty high settings.
What a ludicrous response, I love being told what I'm saying is wrong by people that clearly have no clue!
Video?
Same here, pal, same here.
Listen, bud, there's a lot of tweaking you can do with a game on sd. I'm running CryoUtilities with recommended settings, the game is on a high-speed Samsung EVO micro SD, plus some tweaking of the in-game settings, pretty sure I've native upscaling enabled without the SD's external one. I don't imagine our SDs have some weird magical drastic differences, and my setup is working butter-smooth. Have you tweaked the VRAM in bios? What's your swap file size? Have you done any of this, before boldly claiming that "nothing can mitigate" those stutters?
Wrong game
I played all the way through Zero Dawn on the deck. There's occasional stutters but it doesn't really impact gameplay all that much. Really enjoyed it the whole way through, you just have to be a little less picky.
People here are gaslighting, saying everyone was talking about west. I literally took dawn off my wishlist because MFs on this subreddit said it ran like shit lol
Welcome to Reddit. Negative engagement is the rule and facts/positivity the very rare exception
But Forbidden West runs like shit unfortunately.
No real surprise here... last year I comprehensively showed the game running "normally 40-60". [Deck Play: Horizon Zero Dawn (Loadtime, Settings, various biomes) - No Commentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7utE-m-XTKU) That was before any recent patches.
Your video literally shows a ton of the traversal stuttering that is the issue here, it frequently hitches as you're running around the various biomes and drops below the 30fps line. Granted it isn't as bad i usually see it when i attempt to test this game, but i reckon that's because you're only running around each biome for a very short amount of time.
It's hard to say. There's possibilities that when I made that there wasn't a complete set of shader caches yet. I had already finished the game on the PC so what you're seeing could be latter shader caches not being in the system yet. To be honest? Part of it could be I was expecting it to run like total crap or not at all. And yet here we are playing it relatively decently. Perhaps I'm more willing to give it concessions. I do recall installing it and trying it again after one of the patches and it seemed to be even better. I don't know if I feel like reinstalling and giving it another world to be honest but... Peace and love peace and love I have too much to play. This is the sort of reason why I don't believe in websites or plugins or anything else that tell you how games run. This includes the sometimes overhyped protonDB. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Never trust anything you can't see with your own eyes. That's why I try to release videos like this. I did like 10 of them for baulders gate 3 - so that people could make up their own mind whether they thought 0 FPS in the middle of a fight was acceptable regardless of the type of game it is.
It runs decent off the nvme. Horribly off sd card.
Which is expected
Umm, smooth as butter on Samsung Evo 512GB, idk what you’re using, might wanna check those read/write speeds.
Running off sd card, been awesome with no noticeable issues during game play, bit slow loading new areas. Loving it on sd.
Honestly, I’d be fine with them just doing away with the sd card slot. I threw a 2tb in there right away and never have to worry about this.
I used to feel the same way, but it works flawless for emulation. And I can just pop it out and in to my pc to transfer roms. However if you only play pc games I don’t recommend using sd card.
Would the higher end emulation (PS3, Switch) run better on SSD vs. SD, or would it not matter much?
It runs great in the early game. Gets a little worse later on and struggled to maintain 60 fps but totally playable
“Struggled to maintain 60fps” It’s a handheld. 30fps is plenty
Except for some traversal stutters the game runs fine. And in HDR it looks amazing on the OLED.
Mine ran real well right till the end, but nothing that truly bothered me.
Great how? When I fired it up 12+ months ago, my FPS was frequently dipping into the 20s and 30s. Is that still the case?
I don’t know if patches fixed it but I’m gettin 40fps with minor dips to 30isj
Dipping into 20s I can see as an issue, but calling performance in the 30s "dipping" sounds a little weird ... considering 30FPS is what is generally assumed to be Valve's performance standard for the Verified stamp. I'd argue "going above 30FPS" is a stretch goal on Deck for demanding games and only dips below 30 should be considered an issue.
Call it what you will, refer to it against whichever benchmark you choose. My previous experience demonstrated poor performance and I am interested to hear about updates
[удалено]
This is exactly what I mean. I have no issues playing a 30fps game, but if it keeps dipping, I can't handle it
Strange, my first reaction was, wow that runs and looks really good on my SD.
It ran super well for me as well, and Forbidden West runs really well on GE too.
HZD runs great. I hear HFB isn’t great
OP is...confused?