Baldur’s Gate 3 performance is about to get a whole lot better on Steam Deck

Karlach from Baldur’s Gate 3 doing some wavy hand fire magic


Karlach from Baldur’s Gate 3 doing some wavy hand fire magic

Larian Studios has made considerably optimisations for Baldur’s Gate 3 on all platforms. The intensive fantasy RPG game should now sap less of your hardware’s resources.

With the Baldur’s Gate 3 Xbox port still in development after issues with the lower-powered Xbox Series S, Larian’s optimisations for Microsoft’s small console have benefited every platform. Specifically on PC, gamers will notice less VRAM and RAM usage after the game’s latest update.

Larian CEO Swen Vincke revealed that Larian engineers have substantially decreased the RAM and VRAM consumption of the RPG by a considerable amount. After months of worrying that the Xbox Series S version wouldn’t be possible, Larian’s engineers have done the impossible.

“Got a nice present from our engineers,” Vincke said. “Ensuring memory is well under control and having buffer for peaks was the main thing holding us back I think this will benefit all platforms too. Still some work left but very close now.”

Back in September, Baldur’s Gate 3 sucked up over 5.5GB of RAM, which Larian engineers have managed to bring down to just 4.7GB. Furthermore, the game’s VRAM usage used to take up around 3.2GB, but now uses just 2.2GB.

Of course, Baldur’s Gate 3 is also extremely CPU intensive as well, especially when you get to the Steam Deck destroying Act 3 section. With so many physics and AI calculations going on, the game is still going to take up a lot of your processing power.

While the RAM and VRAM requirements of Baldur’s Gate 3 aren’t particularly taxing for most PC players, it will help those on lower powered rigs. Of course, the main PC benefit will be for Valve’s Steam Deck and other handheld PC consoles, such as the ASUS ROG Ally. With FSR 2.0 also now available in Baldur’s Gate 3’s PC release, the game can also look better on these small handheld versions.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is available right now on PlayStation 5 and PC. The Xbox Series port is still in development, but will allegedly launch before the end of 2023.

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