Steam Deck Ultimate Windows Guide

Improving Audio

"Better Audio" is always a very subjective/relative thing and even in the world of Steam Deck, not all speakers are created equal. However, according to most community members, this will have a "huge difference in games with music and general music with exposed treble, it tones down the harshness and balances the sound out"

Follow all of the instructions below for the preferred audio setup(don't skip any steps).

Equalizer APO

Download and install the following software:

Equalizer APO - Sourceforge

At the end of the install, it will ask which device to be assigned to, we want the "Speakers" of the "AMD Audio Device"

After clicking OK, say "I want to manually reboot later"

Download the following config file, extract it to C:\Program Files\EqualizerAPO\config, we will use it in the next step:

Peace Steam Deck Config (Right-click and Save As, make sure you remove the .txt extension)

Peace GUI

Download and install Peace GUI

Once you run it, make sure it says "Yes, Installed" like below. Then you can click the Install button, say yes to the prompt, then click Start Peace

This doesn't need to run at startup or anything. Reboot for all changes to take effect.

Graphics & Performance Enhancements

Lossless Scaling

Lossless Scaling is an application that can upscale games(yes it has FSR as an option) and can be purchased directly on the Steam Store for $5 or less:

This app can fix the issues with certain situations for games, such as:

There are other options, such as MagPie or Borderless Gaming, but Lossless Scaling is cheap, works better(in my experience) and received updates often

Lossless Scaling is DRM Free and it can be copied outside the SteamApps folder(and then ran without Steam)

Here are some instructions to set it up:

  1. Purchase and download it
  2. Optionally, copy the lossless scaling from outside your SteamApps folder to something else(this is so Steam does not launch when you start it)
  3. Run it once, set the Scaling Type to LS1(this is recommended over AMD FSR, but the option is there) and then click the Settings button

  4. If you are using Steam Deck Tools SteamController, then set the Scale Hotkey to Steam + D-PAD Up
  5. Toggle on Start as Administrator (the word on the street is performance is better with this enabled)
  6. Toggle on Start minimized at Windows startup and Minimize to tray then click Close

  7. To make this work, you need to launch games in Window mode. If you are having trouble figuring out how to do this, search the PCGaming Wiki for your game and how to enable Window mode
  8. Once the game is in Window mode, set your desired in-game resolution, then scale it up with the hotkey you assigned (previously we set this to Steam + D-Pad Up

DXVK (Vulkan Direct3D Rendering on Windows)

Some games may function better in SteamOS thanks to Vulkan Shader-caching. However, Windows has the same capabilities. A couple things to note however is that it is not recommended for online games with anti-cheat as it could result in a ban due to the modification/addition to game files -- and it does not work for Gamepass games in testing.

You can set this up by following the YouTube guide here (highly recommend DXVK A-Sync):

DLSS / FSR 2.0 Mod for Specific Games

The following mod will enable DLSS on certain games for the Steam Deck(or other AMD hardware). This has not been extensively tested, but you can view the compatibility list to see what games are supported:


That's it for the guide! Check out the last step 9. Troubleshooting Problems for fixes to common issues.