Well today is definitely an interesting day to say the least and this definitely came out of nowhere. A new update for The Last of Us Part 1 came out today which has a lot of Steam Deck optimizations and overall fixes. On top of that, the new update brings the game to finally be Steam Deck Verified!

The Last of Us Steam Deck Verified

The new update, which triggers a full shader rebuild, has optimizations to improve CPU and GPU throughout the game, overall texture and environment loading improvements, faster shader compilation times, and tons of fixes and new settings added. On the Steam Deck end, we see overall improvements to performance, tons of fixes, and a fixed memory leak issue that would cause crashes. All of this sounds fantastic for sure, but we also need to look and see how it actually runs!

You can check out the full changelog of this update over on Naughty Dog's website.

The Last of Us Part 1 v1.1.0 - Steam Deck Performance

I have not tested the entire game with this patch, so there still might be some drops in different spots. Consider this a first look instead of a full seal of approval.

So far, performance seems to have greatly improved. There is still a decent amount of RAM and VRAM being taken up, but performance is definitely more stable in some areas and can keep 30 FPS, with some slight dips to 27-28. With a TDP limit of at least 13, I was able to play the default settings of the game without many issues, keeping battery drain around 14W - 22W depending on the area.

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On top of that, I even saw a decent boost in a specific part of the beginning of the game where I experienced some big drops. In the beginning, this scene would make my game drop to 22 - 25, but with the new patch, it can sit at 30 with a high drain.

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Overall, it seems the game really has improved in terms of performance, which is fantastic to see. It will still drain your battery and small stutters will be present here and there, but overall, it's a nice improvement I am happy to see. I would say it still drains a lot of battery, more than I would personally like, but it's playable from what I have seen so far.

You can get The Last of Us Part 1 for Steam on multiple different storefronts including:

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Noah Kupetsky
A lover of gaming since 4, Noah has grown up with a love and passion for the industry. From there, he started to travel a lot and develop a joy for handheld and PC gaming. When the Steam Deck released, it just all clicked.
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