God of War: Ragnarok is out on Steam and Epic Games. Although the game launched a few years after the first one (on PC), the visual quality is largely unchanged. There’s no ray-tracing or advanced global illumination tech to back up the delayed release, but Santa Monica has included a variety of upscalers to boost performance on low-end machines. Our optimization guide covers each graphics setting in detail, with an add-on piece for low-end PCs. This post explores the game’s performance on the Steam Deck, recommending the optimized settings for the handheld.
Performance and FPS
God of War: Ragnarok performs commendably on the Steam Deck, averaging 40-45 FPS in most regions, but drops to ~30 FPS in crowded scenes. We recommend capping the framerate to 30 FPS (via the Deck system settings) for an optimal experience.
Graphics Settings
After a bit of tweaking, we settled on the “Low” quality settings, although “Anisotropic Filter” and “Ambient Occlusion” can be turned up to “Medium.” The remaining settings don’t have a notable on the visuals (except textures, but they can be problematic) due to the Deck’s pixel density.
We went with the obvious upscaler, AMD FSR 3 set to “Balanced mode.” You can experiment with XeSS 1.3 as it generally produces superior quality at the cost of slightly worse performance. It also offers wider scaling options for a more tailored experience.
We set the scaling mode to “Fit” and the scaling filter to “Linear,” but that’s irrelevant as the game handles the upscaling. As mentioned, we set the system frame limit to 30 FPS for a uniform experience.
Battery Life & Visual Quality
God of War: Ragnarok looks pretty good on the Steam Deck, even more so if you’ve got the OLED variant. The HDR works well, enhancing the colors and texture quality. You can expect visual quality comparable to the PS4 with certain visual/performance improvements.
Ragnarok lasts about 2.5 hours with a fully charged battery on the Steam Deck, as is the norm with most AAA games. Overall, God of War: Ragnarok offers a satisfying experience on the handheld, particularly if players set their expectations for performance based on a console-like 30 FPS experience.
God of War Ragnarok: Best Steam Deck Graphics Settings
| Optimized Settings | Steam Deck OLED |
|---|---|
| Resolution | Native |
| FPS Target | 30 FPS+ |
| Texture Quality | Low (Medium also works) |
| Model Quality | Low |
| Texture Filtering | Medium |
| Lighting Quality | Low |
| Shadow Quality | Low |
| Reflection Quality | Low |
| Ambient Occlusion | Medium |
| Tesselation Quality | Low |
| Atmospherics Quality | Low |
| Anti-aliasing/Upscaling | FSR Balanced (or XeSS Quality) |
| Frame Generation | Off |
