The new God of War is absolutely unplayable, or at least it was when I uninstalled it in January.

yea, uninstalling it would make it unplayable.

You mean the game that is not marked as verified but rather as "playable" (which really means: it starts. Figure out yourself how to make it run well) doesn't run well?

Well that's not entirely surprising now, is it?

Is there a configuration you found that made it run well or did you just want to say something unhelpful?

CryoByte33 on YouTube[0] has videos explaining in details different configuration presets to run games like God of War, Witcher 3, or Breath of the Wild. He's also maintaining an impressive piece of software[1] that helps optimize your Steam Deck. Worst case scenario, if you don't find the game you're looking for in his videos, chances are you will find a decent configuration on SteamDeckHQ[2]

[0]: https://youtube.com/@cryobyte33 [1]: https://github.com/CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities [2]: https://steamdeckhq.com/game-settings/

For anybody else reading the discussion, knowing that GoW is not advertised as fully supported is important context.

Entirely unhelpful, but considering your original comment was pretty much complaining that <old device> cannot run <very new and demanding software>, I figured it was in the theme.

And unlike the Switch, the Switch doesn't enter a higher performance mode when docked.

Yeah, but Switch doesn't come close to Decks performance in any configuration - there's a staggering amount of games that don't even reach 30fps consistently while looking like a blurry mess.

The performance difference there is stark.

Yeah but the Deck isn't as cool as the Switch

The switch slows itself down when not docked to save battery.

The resolution is lowered in many games too.

My own experience is that it kinda does. Some games run with a noticeably higher frame rate when docked.