That's actually a misconception, though one that was often propagated so it stuck, unfortunately.
The Steam Deck will dynamically allocate video memory - way below 4GBs, or even larger than 4GBs, regardless of what you set as the UMA framebuffer setting. And it will change this allocation in real time, during each frame, as it monitors memory pressure.
The UMA buffer will indeed give a default "the GPU would like to report that 4GBs of memory are mapped to itself when the driver loads" but the CPU can (and will!) immediately ignore that as soon as needed.
Don't believe me? If you got 15 minutes to do a little experiment, try setting it at 256MB. 256MB for a device running modern games? No way! It won't get past the loading screen, right? Well, it will, and the performance will be quite literally identical to setting it at 4GB.
Addendum: some games give warnings of "Your system do not meet the minimum requirements of VRAM" when running on systems with APUs, in that particular case, setting a large UMA buffer will probably work to bypass the warning... But again, performance is similar.
Yeah, most people set it larger for desktop mode or windows use, where the drivers don't auto allocate vram. Although as you said it seems many think it affects game mode which it doesn't.
My understanding on the advantage for the VRAM change is that RAM gets priority over VRAM. If the systems needs more RAM, it will allocate the VRAM to RAM, and then reallocate back to VRAM, over and over. Increasing the minimum VRAM both keeps the VRAM from dropping below 4GB during high RAM demand and reduces the system swapping RAM between VRAM and RAM. That swapping back and forth can cause stuttering, which is the main thing the VRAM change is trying to fix.
It runs at 30fps on the real switch so that's what the physics engine expects.
I do use a dynamic fps mod on my desktop because I get 40-50fps. I'll try that one out though, the one I'm using doesn't handle prerendered cutscenes properly. Their speed doesn't scale with the framerate, so I'm looking for one that fixes that.
I've been playing on my Windows PC and Steam Deck (syncthing ftw) and so far so good, but I haven't gotten to that part yet. I'll try to remember to report back when I do.
Is it worth trying to play this on the deck yet? I’ve been dragging my feet because I don’t really care much about making it run and better than it does on the switch; I just find the switch itself in handheld mode stupid uncomfortable and would mainly want to be able to play on the deck instead of switching between devices
If you don't care about making it run better than on the Switch, you're good. I did a little bit of hoop-jumping, following a guide that was on Reddit (and I don't know if it's currently visible) to get it running really well and also synchronize saves and mods to my PC.
I have not played TOTK on the Switch at all, I've exclusively experienced the game as a PC/Deck game and it's a damn good one. Sometimes I think "oh the emulator's chugging" when the game dips to 40FPS (PC) or 20FPS (Deck) while fiddling with the Ultra-Hand or bombs, but then I see my roommate do the same thing on an actual real Switch and it lags even more.
Do you have any recollection of the guide you used? I'd be curious to look around for it just in case it's not stuck inside the reddit void. So far I've had luck limiting the fps to 30 and setting the gpu clock to 1200 (granted, I am only in the first sky island area and haven't been anywhere near lava yet)
been playing it via Yuzu EA builds. It runs just fine on the Deck at around 30fps, dipping to 20fps in some of the harder to render areas but it's certainly playable. I play on my gaming rig as well where it can easily keep a consistent 30fps.
The fire temple ran like ass for me also, but it was playable.
Check out this guide, it may contain settings you didn't already tweaked yourself:
https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/post/112584
I am getting decent frame rates but it just bricks up after a random period of time and crashes the whole deck on me. Your settings seemed to have improved it tho but still crashing
I just got the latest version of yuzu on emudeck last night and it seems to work fine but I only played for 10 mins. Have you installed the latest version of yuzu or ryujinx?