Dune: Awakening runs on Steam Deck – but GeForce now still delivers the superior experience
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Steam Deck users will be happy to know that, due to some graphical tweaks to the game, Dune Awakening is playable on Steam Deck natively. However, GeForce Now is definitely the way to go if you want the best gaming experience on your handheld.
Dune: Awakening is the latest installment in the Dune games franchise, released on June 5th, 2025. The game has some fairly robust system requirements on launch, meaning that playing the game natively on the Steam Deck is a little challenging – even with the newly lowered resolution. That said, there are ways you can play the game on Steam Deck, and for us, GeForce Now is 100% the way to go about it.
Dune: Awakening on the Steam Deck vs. GeForce Now
In a recent video by the YouTube channel Steam Deck Gaming, they showcased Dune: Awakening in advanced access, before the game was officially released. The gameplay looks smooth without any stutters, but it wasn't anywhere near what it could've been graphically.
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They highlighted that the current version is much better than what it was in beta, but in the auto mode, the resolution has been dropped by 30% with the graphics settings set to the lowest point.
The result of that is that there is a lot of pixelation in the character model, surroundings, and overall textures. While that can be improved by turning on the “Override upscaling preset” and setting the Intel XeSS upscaler quality to balanced.
This should improve the pixelation and the graphics quality, but it will sit in the 40 FPS range, which also looked pretty smooth. However, doing this will not completely resolve the issue, as some quality drops were seen here and there during the gameplay
This title has also been added to GeForce Now, meaning if you have a GeForce Now subscription and the native app on the Steam Deck, you can experience Dune: Awakening in all its glory, granted you've got the internet connection to handle the processing.
With GeForce Now, we saw this game running at every setting set to Ultra with frame generation, motion blur, and V-sync turned off. After that, it was able to run at a stable 60-61 FPS due to the limitations of the Steam Deck, but the potential FPS was in the 80-90 range.
However, we can see that the GeForce Now was running with the RTX 4080, meaning it is the Ultimate subscription, which can support up to 240 FPS. That being said, if you want to play it at the best possible graphical quality, or play on a bigger screen, GeForce Now is the way to go with Frame Generation turned on and running it at 120Hz with 4K resolution in the docked mode.
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