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Steam Deck users can rejoice once again, as the performance improving script, CryoUtilities by CryoByte33, has been updated to version 2.0.

If you are a Steam Deck user, making use of the CryoUtilities script is a must if you want to get the best performance overall for each and every game you play on the Deck. For those unaware, CryoUtilities is a script specifically tailored and developed to increase the performance of the Steam Deck by making changes to some of the default configurations that the SteamOS comes with. These changes give massive improvements to performance of not only default Steam games, but also can help in a lot of more resource-heavy emulators, like Yuzu/Ryujinx for Nintendo Switch. Some of the most important changes are:

• Modifies Swap file size from the default 1GB to a recommended one of 16GB.
• Modifies "swapiness" to be 1 as recommended.
• Enables Huge Pages for the Linux-based SteamOS.
• Enables shared memory in THP for SteamOS.
• Disables Compaction Proactiveness for SteamOS.
• Disables Huge Pages defragmentation for SteamOS.
• Sets Page Lock Unfariness to 1 as recommended.
• Sync game data to the storage device where the game is actually installed into (i.e. leave game data on SSD if installed on SSD, or move ALL game data to an external SD if it's installed on the external SD).
• An option to delete ALL game data for certain games, as currently the Steam uninstaller leaves remnants of some of the game's files, particularly shaders and some save files (this is certainly helpful for users with Steam Decks with only 64GB of internal storage).

For a more in-depth analysis on what each and every one of the features from CryoUtilities do, please refer to CryoByte33's video about the latest update.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Would any of these changes affect battery life? I've been playing Yakuza 4 Remastered on my Steam Deck, and for some reason, even though it's not a graphically-intensive game or anything, it drains the battery from 100% down to 5% in an hour to an hour and a half. For some reason, the Steam Deck thinks it needs to go balls-to-the-wall full-force to run the Yakuza games.

That's not an issue of CryoUtilities itself, but rather poor settings on the Deck's options.
For each and every game, I suggest you use the option for setting Watts and GPU clocks manually from the Decks options menu.

Press on the 3 dots button while on Gaming Mode with Yakuza running.ok the background, then browse to the icon that has a battery icon.

In here, I suggest you enable the FPS viewer, so you can watch the FPS live, then go down to the Watts option and start lowering the Watts usage to a number that still holds the 60fps for that game, once you find the sweet spot, play a little and see if the 60 are maintained, if not, then set a slightly higher number of Watts. Once that is done, do the same for the GPU clock speeds.

I had a similar issue with all of the Resident Evil games, initially with RE0 which was getting temps around 70°C and around an hour and a half to two hours of battery time, but after tweaking the Watts and GPU clocks, I doubled the battery life and had the temperatures lower to around 50-60°C.

These options are KEY for most games to get the best performance possible for each and every game. And even better, if you toggle the "per-game profile" option, the settings you set are automatically applied on each game boot, so it's a one and done thing.

 

[trepp0]

Wish i knew about this before my play through of horizon zero dawn.

Post automatically merged: Feb 21, 2023

That's not an issue of CryoUtilities itself, but rather poor settings on the Deck's options.
For each and every game, I suggest you use the option for setting Watts and GPU clocks manually from the Decks options menu.

Press on the 3 dots button while on Gaming Mode with Yakuza running.ok the background, then browse to the icon that has a battery icon.

In here, I suggest you enable the FPS viewer, so you can watch the FPS live, then go down to the Watts option and start lowering the Watts usage to a number that still holds the 60fps for that game, once you find the sweet spot, play a little and see if the 60 are maintained, if not, then set a slightly higher number of Watts. Once that is done, do the same for the GPU clock speeds.

I had a similar issue with all of the Resident Evil games, initially with RE0 which was getting temps around 70°C and around an hour and a half to two hours of battery time, but after tweaking the Watts and GPU clocks, I doubled the battery life and had the temperatures lower to around 50-60°C.

These options are KEY for most games to get the best performance possible for each and every game. And even better, if you toggle the "per-game profile" option, the settings you set are automatically applied on each game boot, so it's a one and done thing.

For me i have discovered that watching the fps kind of ruins the immersion for me, i spend more time looking at it than the gameplay, might just be adhd tho

 

[ShadowOne333]

For me i have discovered that watching the fps kind of ruins the immersion for me, i spend more time looking at it than the gameplay, might just be adhd tho

You just have to watch the FPS while you're setting up the GPU and Watt settings, after that you can toggle it off and play just fine.
I leave it on in case I stumble into a case in the game where the FPS drops, then I bump up one of the two settings manually if desired, but that's it.

 

[CloudStrife190100]

Is it definitely worth doing this then when my deck arrives via post?

 

[linuxares]

Is it definitely worth doing this then when my deck arrives via post?

One word: yes

 

[CloudStrife190100]

One word: yes

Sweet hopefully it'll arrive sometime this week. Already purchased some games via the steam library already and a dock

Feel like a kid waiting for Christmas

 

[CoryPugh]

Really good! unavoidable for all Steam Decks.

 

[deathblade200]

One word: yes

it really does nothing and is a load of useless tweaks idk why you are pretending otherwise. they are ancient tweaks easily researchable. but I guess people think for example turning off ram defragmentation is a good thing now even though that provides less and less ram the longer you run the system without a reboot. guess insanely oversized swap files that are barely even touched are also a good thing. guess its also logical to set swappiness to 1 with a huge swap file even though swappiness controls how often the swap file is used further showing the flaws in using a huge swap file. ignoring the fact cryo claims swap files can improve performance which is impossible. its sad to see a mod falling for placebos and spreading it to others. the reality is the only thing providing any performance boost is turning down swappiness to 1 since by default its set to 100 making the slow ass swap file be used constantly instead of physical ram. this goes against his claims of the swap file improving performance though which is just straight up impossible.

 

[linuxares]

it really does nothing and is a load of useless tweaks idk why you are pretending otherwise. they are ancient tweaks easily researchable. but I guess people think for example turning off ram defragmentation is a good thing now even though that provides less and less ram the longer you run the system without a reboot. guess insanely oversized swap files that are barely even touched are also a good thing. guess its also logical to set swappiness to 1 with a huge swap file even though swappiness controls how often the swap file is used further showing the flaws in using a huge swap file. ignoring the fact cryo claims swap files can improve performance which is impossible. its sad to see a mod falling for placebos and spreading it to others. the reality is the only thing providing any performance boost is turning down swappiness to 1 since by default its set to 100 making the slow ass swap file be used constantly instead of physical ram. this goes against his claims of the swap file improving performance though which is just straight up impossible.

You obviously never used a swap file nor use a Linux system talking like that, or your system have had massive amount of RAM all the time.
It made a huge difference in some games I tried. It's still a tweak, however you like it or not. I rather let it swap to the SSD if the RAM is full than letting the CPU stall waiting for new instructions causing lag.

So no, don't come here and say it's Placebo when it works.
Now I haven't used my Steam Deck in a while, maybe Valve have optimized the system but back in Feb. It was a big difference.

EDIT: You will notice the biggest difference in open world games and shader caching

 

[deathblade200]

You obviously never used a swap file nor use a Linux system talking like that, or your system have had massive amount of RAM all the time.
It made a huge difference in some games I tried. It's still a tweak, however you like it or not. I rather let it swap to the SSD if the RAM is full than letting the CPU stall waiting for new instructions causing lag.

So no, don't come here and say it's Placebo when it works.
Now I haven't used my Steam Deck in a while, maybe Valve have optimized the system but back in Feb. It was a big difference.

EDIT: You will notice the biggest difference in open world games and shader caching

a swap can not improve performance ever. it can prevent crashes which with 16GB of ram is not an issue. though people use these tweaks and cause ram issues turning off defragmentation and turning on transparent huge pages which both waste ram with zero actual benefit don't even get me started on the useless 4GB vram tweak that alone locks up a lot of system ram with no benefit since the vram changes dynamically up to 8gb regardless. its 100% a placebo. I played all these games that people claim that need it such as Elden Ring, RDR2 and God of war with zero issues nor crashes with the swap file completely disabled. this whole utility is a massive placebo and its crazy to me how people fall for it still.

 

[linuxares]

a swap can not improve performance ever. it can prevent crashes which with 16GB of ram is not an issue. though people use these tweaks and cause ram issues turning off defragmentation and turning on transparent huge pages which both waste ram with zero actual benefit don't even get me started on the useless 4GB vram tweak that alone locks up a lot of system ram with no benefit since the vram changes dynamically up to 8gb regardless. its 100% a placebo. I played all these games that people claim that need it such as Elden Ring, RDR2 and God of war with zero issues nor crashes with the swap file completely disabled. this whole utility is a massive placebo and its crazy to me how people fall for it still.

Do as you wish.
Swap files do help to pre-cache the files and keep them there read for memory. It's quite fast on a SSD after all.
I haven't played any of those games, so I wouldn't know. I play older titles and the newest I tried was Soul Hackers 2 that gave me roughly 10 fps extra to make it playable (even tho barely)

Ram defragmentation? Memory is a temp space, their is no need to defrag a temp place. Plus defragmentation means nothning on an SSD since it's not a physical needle being moved.

Anyway, let people use if they wish. I so far were happy with it when I used my Steam Deck the last time.

 

[deathblade200]

Ram defragmentation? Memory is a temp space, their is no need to defrag a temp place. Plus defragmentation means nothning on an SSD since it's not a physical needle being moved.

the funny thing here is you acted as if I knew nothing about linux while exposing you know nothing about linux or even linux page files which handle memory. ram defragmentation has nothing to do with the physical storage and over time will cause the same issue as if you ran out of ram completely. your posts are filled with a lot of misinformation you should really do some research before telling people to use apps like this. thats the problem with apps like this the people that don't understand what any of it does act like its a magical tool. and another thing SSD isn't even close to the speed of ram so no a swap file will never improve performance its a crutch nothing more and will always be slower

 

[Xzi]

thats the problem with apps like this the people that don't understand what any of it does act like its a magical tool

Is it not? You set it, forget about it, and enjoy a 5% to 15% performance boost depending on game. Nobody cares to know more than that, or needs to.

 

[deathblade200]

enjoy a 5% to 15% performance boost depending on game

this is extreme hyperbole and a clear show of the placebo effect

 

[Xzi]

this is extreme hyperbole and a clear show of the placebo effect

There are plenty of benchmark videos and articles out there, you know. If anything I'm underselling it, some specific games can see more than a 15% boost. Horizon Zero Dawn becomes far more playable from my experience.

 

[deathblade200]

There are plenty of benchmark videos and articles out there, you know. If anything I'm underselling it, some specific games can see more than a 15% boost.

there are many videos calling out its bullshit as well but people only care about confirmation bias. right now go set every setting back to default and only turn swappiness down to 1. you will get the SAME EXACT effect. an effect that goes against cryos bullshit claims. wonder when people are going to stop playing pretend or actually learn how useless these "tweaks" are and how they are actually hurting performance.

 

[Xzi]

there are many videos calling out its bullshit as well but people only care about confirmation bias.

Correct, people care more about seeing what the app can do for themselves rather than listen to others whine about it. Even a 1% performance boost is worth a ten-second free download.

 

[linuxares]

the funny thing here is you acted as if I knew nothing about linux while exposing you know nothing about linux or even linux page files which handle memory. ram defragmentation has nothing to do with the physical storage and over time will cause the same issue as if you ran out of ram completely. your posts are filled with a lot of misinformation you should really do some research before telling people to use apps like this. thats the problem with apps like this the people that don't understand what any of it does act like its a magical tool. and another thing SSD isn't even close to the speed of ram so no a swap file will never improve performance its a crutch nothing more and will always be slower

There is no such thing as a "page file" in Linux. It's called a "swap file" or "swap partition".
Now you try to throw the "do research" when I actually know the thing. Swap is used for example when Ram is full (or a page file on Windows) or if the programmer wish, to put what isn't needed at this moment in the swap. Swap files can therefore improve fps, even if it's noticiable in most games.

https://itsfoss.com/create-swap-file-linux/

For example this util edits the Swapiness to make the Steam Deck to use the RAM as much as possible instead of the slower SSD. It do help in some games for sure! Open world games do love their RAM after all.


So what happens on the Steam Deck if the RAM is full and it can't use a swap? Well you will notice a performance degradation since it will wait for the instructions to clear before new instructions can fit in. The swap can help mitigate that.

 

[deathblade200]

Correct, people care more about seeing what the app can do for themselves rather than listen to others whine about it. Even a 1% performance boost is worth a ten-second free download.

and yet we have people like you spreading hyperbole with performance claims that its impossible to provide with this archaic "tweaks" people cripple their system while a placebo tells them its doing good because they dont understand what any of it does

Post automatically merged: Jul 9, 2023

There is no such thing as a "page file" in Linux. It's called a "swap file" or "swap partition".

this again makes my point for me. since you can't understand what I'm saying https://tldp.org/LDP/tlk/mm/memory.html . I'm not talking about a swap file this just drives home that you don't know about linux hell I'll even highlight a bit for you "To make this translation easier, virtual and physical memory are divided into handy sized chunks called pages. These pages are all the same size, they need not be but if they were not, the system would be very hard to administer. Linux on Alpha AXP systems uses 8 Kbyte pages and on Intel x86 systems it uses 4 Kbyte pages. Each of these pages is given a unique number; the page frame number (PFN)."

 

[linuxares]

Are you talking about "Huge Pages" now or are we still talking about Swap?

It's also very much up to Valve how they configured the kernel on this. I haven't put a lot of reading in to Huge pages but it seems to be more an issue of the past than current systems (we got more memory now). Kind of interesting to Google about since a lot of people seem split on how useful or not it is. The swap file should help with memory fragmentation since it can swap out the application to let another use the ram memory instead.

Seems like some games work better with THP always (native games?) and other with Madvise. So apparently after looking in to it. Some games gets worse by Cryo some games gets a lot better. Seems like the games I play got a boost back then.

So sadly, since Proton is emulation/translation, and if it's not well implemented. Games will not work well, "Always" or "Madvise".

EDIT: I should factory reset my Steam Deck and do a test with the three games I played on it last and see how much of a performance I get or not :3