Steam Deck

Best Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered Graphics Settings for the Steam Deck

Horizon Zero Daw Remastered was released on PC last month to a largely mediocre reception. The game may not have been much popular among the average Steam audience, but it’s a hit among Steam Deck owners. The visual upgrades over the base game are debatable, but the Zero Dawn Remaster runs decently on the Steam handheld. You can go through our PC optimization guide here.

Performance and FPS

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered runs fairly well on the Steam Deck. Using a mix of most low and a few medium-quality graphics settings, you can hit a stable 30 FPS on average. Of course, you’ll need to enable FSR 3 upscaling to achieve that performance. We recommend sticking to the balanced quality mode, but if you don’t mind a bit of blur, then the performance mode works well too.

You can expect close to 40 FPS using the performance upscaling preset, and roughly 45 FPS using the ultra performance mode, but that can result in excessive loss of detail. There’s frame generation as well, but it doesn’t play well with the game’s frametimes, leading to uneven frame pacing and increased input latency.

Graphics Settings

In the graphics settings, you’ll want to increase the “Texture Quality” to medium, and “Texture Filtering” to 2x Anisotropic. Disabling ambient occlusion provides a more stable performance, but it’s recommended to keep it at “SSAO” for better image quality. Screen Space Reflections should be disabled, while “Shadow Quality,” “Level of Detail,” “Hair Quality,” and “Terrain Quality” need to be reduced to the lowest setting.

Depth of Field is best disabled, while Bloom is merely a matter of personal preference. The same applies to Motion Blur and Lens Flares. In case you were wondering, we tested the game at the Steam Deck’s default 800p (1280×800) resolution in Fullscreen mode, with VSync disabled in-game, and system-level FPS limit set to 30 FPS at 90 Hz.

Battery Life & Visual Quality

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered looks pretty on the Steam Deck, even moreso if you’ve got the OLED version with HDR enabled. On a full charge, the battery lasts for two and a half hours which is quite generous for a AAA game running at native resolution.

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered: Best Graphics Settings for the Steam Deck

Optimized SettingsSteam Deck OLED
Resolution1280×800
FPS Target30 FPS|45 FPS
VSyncOff
Texture Filtering2x AF
Shadow QualityVery Low
Ambient OcclusionSSAO
Screen Space ReflectionsOff
LODVery Low
Terrain QualityLow
Hair QualityLow
Cloud QualityLow
FOV0%
Screen Space ShadowsOff
TransparencyDefault
Parallax OcclusionOn
Motion BlurOff
BloomUp to you
UpscalingFSR Balanced
FSR Frame GenerationOff|On

Areej Syed

Processors, PC gaming, and the past. I have been writing about computer hardware for over seven years with more than 5000 published articles. Started off during engineering college and haven't stopped since. Find me at HardwareTimes and PC Opset.
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