A recent analysis by Digital Foundry has shed light on how native Steam Deck versions of Baldur’s Gate 3 and Cronos: The New Dawn perform against their Proton-based counterparts. While Baldur’s Gate 3 shows a clear performance uplift and smoother frame pacing in its Linux-native build, Cronos appears to gain little from the conversion—at times even performing worse than the Proton version.
According to the report, Baldur’s Gate 3 demonstrates notable improvements across several benchmarks. During testing in Act 3, a notoriously demanding section of the game, the native Linux build reportedly achieved around 15 percent higher performance compared to the Proton version. More importantly, the native version showed significantly reduced stuttering and cleaner frame pacing. Although frame times remain somewhat uneven, the results are far more stable than what players experience through the compatibility layer. Digital Foundry noted that capping the frame rate on the native version could further enhance consistency, making the game’s most performance-intensive areas much more playable on the Steam Deck.
This optimization effort was reportedly led by a developer within Larian Studios who aimed to make the game run more efficiently on Valve’s handheld. Digital Foundry praised this initiative, calling it “really, really good work,” particularly given the performance challenges that Baldur’s Gate 3 has faced in dense city environments. Despite the Steam Deck’s modest hardware, the native version appears to provide a substantially improved gameplay experience for players navigating the complex world of Faerûn.
However, the situation differs greatly for Cronos: The New Dawn, developed by Bloober Team. While the game initially runs at comparable speeds in its opening cutscene, the native Linux version begins to fall behind once gameplay starts. Digital Foundry measured the Proton version running up to 18 percent faster, an unexpected result given that the native build bypasses the additional processing overhead of Proton. This inconsistency persisted even after multiple tests.
In visual comparisons, the native version of Cronos did exhibit slightly sharper interface and HUD elements, though the overall performance advantage remained with Proton. The analysts speculated that differences in rendering resolution or configuration might be responsible for the discrepancy, with Proton’s support for Intel XeSS upscaling possibly contributing to its stronger showing.
Ultimately, the results underline two contrasting outcomes for developers creating native Steam Deck versions of existing PC titles. In the case of Baldur’s Gate 3, a hands-on optimization approach delivered meaningful gains in performance and frame stability. Cronos, on the other hand, demonstrates that a native build does not necessarily guarantee improvements, especially when Proton’s compatibility layer continues to offer impressive efficiency for most games.
Despite these mixed results, the findings highlight a growing trend among developers experimenting with native Steam Deck support. While Proton remains remarkably robust, Baldur’s Gate 3 proves that direct Linux optimization can still yield measurable advantages—especially for titles that push the hardware to its limits.
