Can you play Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty on Steam Deck?
Dexerto Wondering if Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty runs on Steam Deck? We’ve got everything you need to know about how the new expansion runs on Valve’s handheld right here.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is shaping up to be one of the most impressive expansions to a base game that we’ve seen in recent memory. But, since the game has launched alongside a 2.0 update, which drastically increases CPU usage, does Valve’s portable handheld still manage to run the game?
We’ve tested Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty for hours on the Steam Deck, twiddling with all the settings to find that perfect balance of performance and image quality. The good news? If you want to ignore all of that and launch straight into the game, it works very well. But, we’d recommend tweaking some settings down for a more stable experience.
Best settings for Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty on Steam Deck
| Settings | Selection |
| Intel Xe Supersampling 1.1 | Balanced |
| Intel XeSS 1.1 Sharpness | 0.50 |
| Depth of Field | On |
| Motion Blur | Off |
| Contact Shadows | On |
| Depth of Field | On |
| Antistropy | 16 |
| Local Shadow Mesh Quality | Medium |
| Local Shadow Quality | Medium |
| Cascaded Shadows Range | Medium |
| Distant Shadows Resolution | Low |
| Volumetric Fog Resolution | Medium |
| Volumetric Cloud Quality | Off |
| Max Dynamic Decals | Low |
| Screen Space Reflections Quality | Medium |
| Subsurface Scattering Quality | Medium |
| Ambient Occlusion | Medium |
| Color Precision | High |
| Mirror Quality | Low |
| Level of Detail (LOD) | Medium |
| Crowd Density | Low |
In our testing, we found the best performance-to-image quality ratio with the above settings. We scoured through some of Dogtown’s most demanding areas to see just how far Valve’s portable powerhouse can take it. The answer? Surprisingly well. We saw 1% lows at 23 FPS with the settings above, with an average framerate of 29 FPS, just a hair away from the golden 30 FPS mark.
You might get better results when using tools like CryoUtilities, but for now, these are the best settings that we can muster for Phantom Liberty on Steam Deck without messing around with any external applications.
The good news is that the game is more than playable, thanks to using a mixture of settings around the Medium to Low mark. It’s not going to look as good as if you streamed it from your PC, but it still looks great, and can keep up with any solo Cyberpunk antics that you might come up with.
While FSR is a good alternative to XeSS, we prefer the way that XeSS looks, compared to FSR 2.0’s Quality preset. The final image is slightly less muddy, while still bringing the same level of performance to the table.
You can easily knock out any smaller jobs and gigs while on the move, and the Steam Deck really manages to punch above its weight here, so color us impressed. Maybe the Steam Deck 2 will bring some more power to the form factor, but until then, this is the best you get from Valve.