In this section, I'll briefly explain what each setting does. This should help you tweak things to your own liking without relying solely on my setup.
If you don’t have time to read through everything — skip down for ready-to-use settings without extra explanations.

👷 Determines how the game is displayed on your screen. Available modes:

• Fullscreen — takes up the whole screen; best performance.
  
• Borderless Window — looks like fullscreen but functions like a window; faster app switching, slightly lower performance.
  
• Windowed — runs in a regular window; good for multitasking, lowest performance.

✅ Recommended: Fullscreen — best performance and smoothest gameplay.
I personally use Windowed so I can record video at native 1280×720 resolution for YouTube.

👷 The resolution at which the game is rendered (e.g., 1280×800 for Steam Deck).

✅ Recommended: 1280×800 (native Steam Deck resolution) — best balance of visuals and performance.

👷 Syncs the game’s frame rate with your screen’s refresh rate to eliminate screen tearing. ➕ Smoother image. ➖ May cause input lag.

✅ Recommended: Off — especially if you're already using a frame rate limiter.

👷 Caps the maximum FPS.

✅ Recommended: Set to 60 FPS in-game, then limit to 50 FPS via Steam Deck settings.

👷 Displays real-time FPS or VRAM usage.

✅ Recommended: Disable unless troubleshooting — any monitoring overlay adds a small performance overhead.

👷 Adjusts screen brightness without changing system display settings.

✅ Recommended: Adjust to personal preference.

👷 Field of View — determines how much of the environment you can see.

✅ Recommended: 75–90 — a good balance between visibility and visual distortion. Higher FOV may slightly lower FPS.

👷 Simulates blur during quick camera movement.

✅ Recommended: Off — adds GPU load with little visual benefit.

👷 Dynamic reflections based on what’s currently visible on screen (e.g., water, shiny surfaces).

✅ Recommended: Off — not worth the performance cost on Steam Deck.

👷 Global preset for all graphics settings (Lowest to Ultra).

✅ Recommended: Tweak each setting manually — presets often aren't optimal.

👷 The game tries to detect the best graphics level for your hardware.

✅ Recommended: Use as a starting point only — manual adjustments will get better results.

👷 Determines how far away objects remain detailed (trees, NPCs, buildings).

✅ Recommended: Low to Medium — test during gameplay and adjust to taste.

👷 Controls visual effects like explosions, magic, smoke, lighting.

✅ Recommended: Low — effects are GPU-heavy.

👷 Affects the density, detail, and animation of grass, bushes, and trees.

✅ Recommended: Low — small visual downgrade, big FPS boost.

👷 Controls the sharpness, detail, and update rate of shadows.

✅ Recommended: Low — shadows are very demanding.

👷 Simulates how light bounces between surfaces.

✅ Recommended: Low or Medium — not a huge visual improvement but big performance hit.

👷 Resolution of object textures (walls, weapons, armor, etc.).

✅ Recommended: Medium — balances clarity and VRAM usage.

👷 Quality of surface reflections (e.g., water, metal).

✅ Recommended: Low — high settings reduce FPS significantly.

👷 Adds effects like blur, vignette, depth of field, color correction.

✅ Recommended: Low or Medium — depends on taste, but can lower FPS.

👷 Detail level of hair rendering using modern tech (e.g., HairWorks, TressFX).

✅ Recommended: Lowest or Low — very demanding on GPU.

👷 Physics simulation for clothes (capes, banners, loose outfits).

✅ Recommended: Low to Medium — not essential, and lower settings help with stability.

👷 Hardware-based ray tracing for Lumen lighting (Unreal Engine 5).

✅ Recommended: Off — Steam Deck doesn’t support hardware ray tracing.

👷 Lighting mode for Lumen RT (e.g., Surface Cache, Ray Traced).

✅ Recommended: Off — not available on Steam Deck.

👷 Software ray tracing — no special hardware needed, but very demanding.

✅ Recommended: Low — can't be fully disabled, so set it as low as possible.

👷 Smooths jagged edges on objects.

✅ Recommended: Disable — better to use image upscaling instead (see below).

👷 Renders the game at a lower resolution and scales it up to native for better performance.
Available options:

• FSR 3 (FidelityFX Super Resolution) — from AMD; compatible with Steam Deck.
  
• XeSS — from Intel; works too, but less optimized.

✅ Recommended: While FSR 3 looks good in theory, it often causes visual artifacts in this game on Steam Deck. I recommend using XeSS based on real-world results.

👷 Intel’s Xe Super Sampling — reconstructs high-quality visuals from a lower-resolution image.
Modes: XeSS AA, Ultra Performance, Performance, Balanced, Quality, Ultra Quality, Ultra Quality+.

✅ Recommended: Balanced or Quality — best trade-off between sharp visuals and good performance.

To get the maximum FPS in demanding games, I recommend adjusting a few key settings. These will not only boost performance but also make gameplay more stable.

👷 This setting lets you set the maximum number of frames per second the game can output. Limiting FPS reduces the load on the CPU and GPU, which is especially important for a portable device like the Steam Deck.

✅ Recommendation: Personally, I use a 50 FPS limit because, based on my observations, the console rarely maintains a higher framerate in Oblivion Remastered.

👷 When vertical sync (V-Sync) is disabled, the GPU displays frames immediately after rendering, even if the display hasn’t refreshed yet. This can cause "screen tearing," but it allows for the highest possible performance.

✅ Recommendation: On — this is a highly recommended setting for performance-heavy games.

🔍 You can find these settings on your Steam Deck by pressing the "⏺⏺⏺" button and navigating to the "Performance" tab.

👷This preset is aimed at achieving maximum performance, even at the cost of reduced image quality. The expected FPS is in the range of 25–50 frames per second with minimal input lag. However, keep in mind that the game currently includes some poorly optimized areas, where brief dips below 25 FPS may occur.

👷 This preset is a compromise between graphics quality and performance. These are roughly the settings I use. The expected FPS is in the range of 20–50 frames per second, with slightly higher than minimum input lag. Occasionally, there are dips down to 15–20 frames, but these are not constant.
👷 I will also mark parameters that have changed compared to the performance preset with this triangle: "🔺".

👷 This preset is optimized for screen recording with subsequent publishing on YouTube. These are the settings I use for both gaming and video recording ( upd: not anymore, see the next section 👇). While this option may be less efficient in terms of performance than the previous two, I consciously accept this compromise. The expected FPS is in the range of 20–50 frames per second, with slight input lag. Occasionally, there are dips to 15–20 frames, but these are not systematic. The main feature is the use of Window Mode and Display Resolution settings optimized for a 16:9 format, which is ideal for YouTube.
👷 I will also mark parameters that have changed compared to the performance preset with this triangle: "🔺".





An example of how my screen recording settings look in-game can be seen here:

Remember: the image looks much better on a real Steam Deck than in the recording! 😉

👷 The Steam Deck’s hardware does not support ray tracing technology (LumenRT), which means the device has to calculate ray effects via software rendering — a process that puts a significant load on the system. The game also lacks a built-in option to completely disable this feature — and that’s understandable: ray tracing adds a lot to the game’s charm and visual appeal.
❗️ However, with a bit of “ini file magic”, you can fully disable rays. Doing this dramatically improves gameplay smoothness, boosts FPS, and minimizes input lag.
🤷‍♂️ Of course, this comes at the cost of some visual fidelity, but the performance gains are well worth it — especially on a system like the Steam Deck.


👷 To fully disable LumenRT, you need to find the config file "Engine.ini", located at:

/home/deck/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/2623190/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Documents/My Games/Oblivion Remastered/Saved/Config/Windows/

👷 All you need to do is add the following lines to the end of the file (or modify them if already present):
👷 After this, it's recommended to set the file as “read-only” to prevent the game from overwriting it. If you install a patch or update, you may want to temporarily disable this attribute to let the game update the file. This step is optional — it’s up to you.

⚙️ I’m also sharing my preset configuration used for disabling ray tracing:

🤠 Personally, I'm satisfied with how the game runs on the Steam Deck "out of the box," without any additional enhancements that will likely come in the future through various patches. Yes, it's not perfect right now — the game has some optimization issues. But considering how Bethesda improves its projects over time, I have no doubt that the game will feel much better on the Steam Deck in the future.
😎 As a game developer, I can say there are areas in the game where optimization could be improved, which would help stabilize the unstable FPS in certain locations — for no apparent reason, it sometimes drops there.
😎 For now, I consider this guide complete. However, I don’t rule out that I will add various "goodies" and additional optimization tools in the future.


🔥 Added a new section describing how to fully disable LumenRT. This is now my favorite performance preset. The image quality on Steam Deck doesn't take a significant hit, but the smoothness improves noticeably. I highly recommend trying it out if you haven’t already.

First of all, I want to sincerely thank you for reading all the way to this point.

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