How to Use CryoUtilities to improve your Steam Deck's gaming performance

The Steam Deck is a powerful PC gaming handheld, but there are some titles that will never run well on it. There are others that may struggle without decreasing their settings massively, but CryoUtilities is a Steam Deck plugin that you can use to help improve that somewhat. It's not a silver bullet that will solve all of your performance woes, but it will make things significantly better.

To use CryoUtilities, you'll need to set a root password on your Steam Deck, and you'll need to download the CryoUtilities installer on GitHub. CryoUtilities is basically a Steam Deck plugin, though it doesn't need Decky Loader to work.

How to install CryoUtilities on the Steam Deck

It's pretty easy

To install CryoUtilities on the Steam Deck, you'll first need to boot into desktop mode.

1. Press the Steam button and scroll down to power, and then select Switch to Desktop Mode.
2. Hold the power button and select Switch to Desktop Mode.

Once you're on the desktop, open up Firefox and head to the CryoUtilities GitHub page. I'd recommend just searching "CryoUtilities GitHub" on Google on your Steam Deck, especially if you're reading this article on a PC while you install it.

Follow the instructions on the GitHub page to install it. In the meantime, open the Terminal (dubbed "Konsole" on the Steam Deck) and change the root access password. Simply type "passwd" and it will allow you to type a new one.

This password will be needed for CryoUtilities once it's installed, and you'll launch it by going to your desktop and finding the icon for it. Once launched, you'll see the option to input your password, so put in the password that you changed it to using the "passwd" command.

Once you've launched CryoUtilities, go ahead and set the Recommended settings as above. This will increase the swap file size to 16GB, enables transparent hugepages (this may negatively impact performance in a small number of games), reduces swappiness of memory, disables memory defragmentation, and a bunch of other smaller tweaks and changes. The big improvement is the reduction in swappiness, which means the system is less likely to immediately use the swap file in storage as soon as RAM starts filling up.

CryoUtilities will also recommend increasing your VRAM to 4GB from the default of 1GB in the Steam Deck's BIOS, and it will tell you how to do it. We recommend trying that out, though it has been known to negatively impact Red Dead Redemption 2 among other games, so feel free to return that setting back to 1GB if it does negatively impact game performance.

You can modify other settings in CryoUtilities too, but we just went with the recommended settings.

How CryoUtilities improves performance

We noticed big gains in Cyberpunk: 2077

I tested Cyberpunk: 2077 with and without CryoUtilities, and the difference was impressive. The above graph was drawn when using CryoUtilities with all of the recommended default settings, and it performed exceptionally well. With 99% of frames above 24.86 FPS and 99.9% of frames drawn above 21.64 FPS, that's an exceptional increase. Take a look at the table below to get a sense for what I mean.

As you can see from the above, CryoUtilities makes a big difference to the baseline performance of Cyberpunk: 2077 on the Steam Deck. It didn't do much for the average (given that the game is capped at 30 FPS), but it's a sizable improvement that will be noticed by pretty much anyone. The massive increase in 99.9% low FPS makes the game feel a lot smoother, as it feels considerably smoother and more consistent to play overall.

Similar gains are found in other games, with the community noting that CryoUtilities also does a fantastic job with titles such as Elden Ring as it's most capable of eliminating those 1% lows. CryoUtilities improves on the bandwidth constraints when it comes to memory in the Steam Deck, which is where some of those FPS drops come from.

We definitely recommend giving CryoUtilities a try if you play any of the best Steam Deck games, as many of them will benefit from the improvements here. If it doesn't work, then it'll take five minutes to turn your Steam Deck back to normal too! Simply open CryoUtilities and select to go back to Stock settings.