The Last of Us 2 is the latest PlayStation exclusive to land on PC and, by extension, on the Steam Deck. It’s been five years since the game’s original release, so we reckon it should run well on Valve’s handheld. Earlier this week, we published the optimization guide, detailing each setting, including performance and visual factors.
The Last of Us: Graphics Settings
The Last of Us 2 runs best using a mix of medium and low-quality settings on the Steam Deck. The resolution was set to 720p (1280×720), backed by FSR 3.1 “Quality” upscaling. The in-game refresh rate was set to 90 Hz, and the system-level limit to 80 Hz.
The LOD, textures, volumetrics, and refraction quality were set to “Medium,” while shadows and particle density were reduced to “Low.” Image Based Lighting was enabled, and Lens Flare resolution was set to full.
We opted for 4x Anisotropic “Texture Filtering,” and everything else was disabled or set to the lowest possible value.
Performance and FPS
The Last of Us 2 averages 40 FPS on the Steam Deck using the above-described graphics settings. The performance is stable with little to no frame rate drops. Switching to balanced mode upscaling grants slightly higher FPS, but introduces noticeable blurriness, especially in vivid environments like forests or towns.Â
It’s worth noting that the game is more GPU-bound than CPU. Hence, upscaling should be more effective than frame generation. The system memory usage is fairly high, averaging 12 GB, while the VRAM usage hovers around 7 GB.
Battery Life
The Steam Decks lasts approximately 2 hours running The Last of Us 2 on a full charge. It’s recommended to adjust the screen brightness to around 50% to maximize battery life while maintaining visibility.
Overall, the gameplay is stable with minor frame time fluctuations (21.3ms to 34ms) but generally consistent at 25.0ms average. Slightly higher frame rates can be achieved using lower upscaling presets or frame generation, but the results are unsatisfactory.
The Last of Us 2: Steam Deck Optimized Settings
| Steam Deck | |
|---|---|
| Resolution/FPS | 1280×720 |
| LOD | Medium |
| Texture Filtering | 4x |
| Texture Quality | Medium |
| Shadow Quality | Low |
| Screen Space Shadows | Off |
| Image Based Lighting | On |
| Bounced Lighting | Off |
| Ambient Occlusion | Off |
| Screen Space Reflections | Off |
| Real Time Reflections | Off |
| Real Time Cloud Shadows | Off |
| Sub Surface Scattering | Off |
| Refraction Quality | Medium |
| Depth of Field | Off |
| Motion Blur | Off |
| Bloom | On |
| Particle Density | Low |
| Volumetric Effects | Medium |
| Lens Flare | Full Res |
| Upscaling | FSR 3 Quality |
| Frame Generation | Off |
