Best Deadlock settings for FPS on PC & Steam Deck performance

❘ Updated: 2024-09-26T01:44:31

Valve

In a competitive game like Deadlock, it is crucial to dial in the best settings to get the best performance on PC and Steam Deck. So, here is everything you need to know.

After months in a not-so-secret playtest, Valve has finally acknowledged Deadlock, allowing the world to see the hero shooter MOBA crossover in an early form.

With the stamp of approval from its enigmatic devs, Deadlock has already gained considerable hype, with thousands of players already online.

If you’re one of those lucky players who managed to gain access to the playtest, you may notice there are some performance issues, no surprise since it’s in very early access.

So, here are the best settings to get as much FPS as you can from the game.

Best video settings

Best settings for low PC specs

Here you can find the best settings for low PC specs:

Window Mode: Borderless Window
Aspect Ratio: 16×9
Resolution: Preferably 1920 x 1080 at 60 Hz
Upscaling: Stretch
Render Quality: 70%
Anti-Aliasing: None
Screen Space AO: Off or Low
Distance Field AO: Off or Low
Motion Blur: Off
Shadow Quality: Low
Texture Quality: Low
VSync: Off
Distance Field Shadows: Off
Displacement Mapping: Off
Post Process Bloom: Off
Effects Bloom: Off
Area Lights: Off
Depth of Field: Off
Distance Field Reflections: Off
MBOIT: Off
Max FPS allowed: 240

Note: In the screenshot, our Window Mode is in fullscreen, that’s because to get to 1920 x 1080 on 60 Hz we needed to make it fullscreen. However, depending on if your monitor’s max Hz is 60, you won’t need to put it in fullscreen.

With these settings, you can expect around 60 FPS and slightly more depending on your specs.

Of course with these settings, your game isn’t going to look the prettiest, nor will you have the highest refresh rate, but the goal with this is to squeeze as much FPS from your system.

Essentially anything that can be turned as low as possible without affecting gameplay has been turned off or set to low. We’ve kept the Render Quality at 60% because if you go any lower than that, it becomes really hard to see enemies far away.

We’ve also kept the resolution at 1920 x 1080 at 60 Hz. Having a low refresh rate is not ideal, but making the resolution at least HD should compensate.

However, if you find yourself needing more FPS, you can lower your resolution. We found 1600 x 900 on fullscreen works best as it isn’t so low to the point it degrades your experience, but is good enough to squeeze more FPS from your system.

Best settings for mid PC specs

Here you can find the best settings for mid PC specs:

Window Mode: Borderless Window
Aspect Ratio: 16×9
Resolution: Preferably 1920 x 1080 on 144 Hz to 240 Hz
Upscaling: Stretch
Render Quality: 70%
Anti-Aliasing: None
Screen Space AO: Low
Distance Field AO: Low
Motion Blur: Off
Shadow Quality: Med
Texture Quality: Med
VSync: Off
Distance Field Shadows: On
Displacement Mapping: On
Post Process Bloom: Off
Effects Bloom: Off
Area Lights: Off
Depth of Field: Off
Distance Field Reflections: Off
MBOIT: Off
Max FPS allowed: 240

Depending on your PC specs, you can expect around 80 to 120 FPS, although it can go higher if you have a much better system than what we’ve tested with.

Even if you have a high PC spec, these settings can also work for you if you want as much FPS as possible while still maintaining the prettiness of Deadlock. It essentially is a good middle ground to start with.

Overall with these settings, you should have enough visual clarity to see everything great while getting as much FPS from your system as possible.

We’ve chosen to turn on Distance Field Shadows and Displacement Mapping since it will help us see enemies at a distance or in dark corners.

Best settings for high PC specs

Here you can find the best PC settings for high PC specs:

Window Mode: Borderless Window
Aspect Ratio: 16×9
Resolution: Preferably 1920 x 1080 on 144 Hz to 240 Hz
Upscaling: Stretch
Render Quality: 90%
Anti-Aliasing: None
Screen Space AO: Med
Distance Field AO: High
Motion Blur: Off
Shadow Quality: High
Texture Quality: High
VSync: Off
Distance Field Shadows: On
Displacement Mapping: On
Post Process Bloom: Off
Effects Bloom: Off
Area Lights: On
Depth of Field: Off
Distance Field Reflections: Off
MBOIT: Off
Max FPS allowed: 240

At these settings, depending on your PC specs you can expect 120 to 200 FPS. The rig we’ve tested with isn’t the highest end PC, with a Ryzen 7 5700X and a RTX 3070, and it still performed great, regularly hitting 160 to 200 FPS.

Luckily Deadlock isn’t the most graphically intense game, so you can get away with putting everything to high. Of course since this is a competitive game we have to make some concessions.

The Render Quality is put at 90% since we still want as much FPS as possible while seeing the pretty parts of the game. We also put the Screen Space AO at Med for the same reason.

Many of the lighting options such as Effects Bloom and Depth of Field have been turned off because they may be distracting and suck up too much performance.

However, if you don’t particularly care about getting a optimal FPS performance, you can just turn everything up and Deadlock in all its glory, but your FPS may take a hit.

Best audio settings

Below you can find the best audio settings for Deadlock:

Master Volume: Your preference
Game Sound: 100%
Menu Music Volume: Your Preference
Voice Chat Volume: 50%
Speaker Configuration: Headphones
Mic Trigger Threshold: 0%
Open Mic: Off
Push To Talk: V

Screenshot of the Deadlock audio settings.

Audio is quite personal, so don’t take this as gospel, but rather as a template to start finding the right settings that work for you.

We’ve left the Master and Menu Music volumes up to you as everyone has their own preference. We’ve completely turned off the Menu Music and have the Master at 85%, but it will be different for you.

Additionally, we’ve left the Mic Trigger Threshold at 0% and turned off Open Mic. This is just so you aren’t disturbing your teammates with unwanted noises that other players won’t want transmitting into the game.

We’ve also changed the default Push To Talk button to V from the default T because most players are used to having V as their mic button.

Best Steam Deck settings

Below you can find the best Steam Deck settings for Deadlock:

Resolution: Use Native Resolution
Rendering: Direct3D 11 (-dx11)
Upscaling Technology: Stretch
Render Quality: 70%
Anti-Aliasing: FXAA
Screen Space AO: Off
Distance Field AO: Off
Texture Quality: Med
VSync: Off (Unselected)

Standard matchmaking is currently unsupported on Steam Deck. However, there is a workaround. Go to Deadlock in your Steam library and select Properties > General > Launch Options.

Here, in the launch options text box, bring up the built-in keyboard and type:
SteamDeck=0 %command%

Despite this fix, Deadlock still isn’t optimized for Steam Deck. (Which is likely why matching was unsupported in the first place.)

First off, Deadlock doesn’t have controller support on Steam Deck. This makes playing the FPS on Steam Deck incredibly awkward.

Even while browsing through various recommended, or community-created, button layouts, the game’s tutorials will reference the PC controls making it difficult to progress and play.

Custom photo of Deadlock running on a Steam Deck OLED.

At the default settings, the game also runs anywhere between 25-30 FPS on the handheld — not ideal for a first-person shooter. It’s also a huge battery drain, only producing up to 2 hours of playtime on a fully-charged OLED model Deck.

Our recommended best settings can help improve the performance on Steam Deck further, with the FPS boosted to an average 45 to 50 FPS.

However, with the game still in early development, we’d recommend waiting for Valve to finish working on optimizing the brand-new FPS for its own hardware.

Other than that, all these settings are just suggestions and you don’t need to follow them exactly, so make sure you experiment a little. You can also check out our mouse and keyboard settings guide if you haven’t set up your keybinds and sensitivity just yet.