Best Deadlock Settings for FPS and Visibility

Deadlock is a shooter, so a high, steady frame rate matters more than pretty lighting. Particle-heavy fights with 12 heroes are where frame rate usually drops, so tune for those moments, not for an empty lane.

System requirements

Valve hasn’t published official requirements. The Steam page lists everything as TBD, apart from needing a 64-bit processor and operating system.

Deadlock runs on Source 2, the engine behind Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2. As a rough guide:

• If your PC runs CS2 or Dota 2 smoothly, it will most likely run Deadlock well on medium settings.
• An SSD is strongly recommended. Load times and in-game hitches are noticeably worse on a hard drive.
• 16 GB of RAM is the comfortable baseline for modern Source 2 games with Discord and a browser open.

Which settings to change, in order

Change one setting at a time and check your FPS in a busy fight, not in the sandbox.

1. Resolution: keep it native

Running below your monitor’s native resolution makes enemies and soul orbs blurry. If you need more FPS, use an upscaler (see the next step) rather than lowering the resolution directly.

2. Upscaling: FSR or DLSS on Quality

If your GPU is the bottleneck, turning on FSR (any GPU) or DLSS (NVIDIA RTX cards) on Quality is the biggest single FPS boost you can get, with only a small loss in sharpness. Avoid the “Performance” presets unless you have no other option; they make distant targets hard to read.

3. Shadows: low or medium

Shadows are among the most expensive settings, and in fights they mostly add visual noise. Lowering them is the classic FPS fix in Source 2 games.

4. Particles / effects: low or medium

Every ability, explosion and spirit effect is a particle. Lowering this setting makes the biggest difference to how smoothly team fights run, and it can make fights easier to read.

5. Ambient occlusion: off

Ambient occlusion adds soft shading in corners. It costs performance and adds nothing competitively.

6. Anti-aliasing: low

Some anti-aliasing stops edges shimmering. Very high settings cost FPS for little gain.

7. Textures: as high as your VRAM allows

Texture quality uses video memory, not raw GPU power. If your card has 6 GB of VRAM or more, medium or high textures cost little FPS.

Other settings that matter

• V-Sync: off. It adds input delay. If you see screen tearing, cap your frame rate a few frames below your monitor’s refresh rate instead.
• Frame rate cap. A stable 140 feels better than a frame rate jumping between 200 and 90. Cap it at a number your PC can hold in fights.
• NVIDIA Reflex (if listed in your settings). Turn it on to cut input lag.
• Fullscreen mode. Exclusive fullscreen usually gives the lowest latency. Use borderless windowed if you alt-tab a lot.

Outside the game

1. Update your GPU driver. New drivers often fix stutter in Source 2 games.
2. Close browsers and overlays. Chrome with lots of tabs open can cost a lot of FPS on mid-range PCs.
3. Use Windows’ High Performance power plan on laptops, and play plugged in.
4. Verify the game files in Steam (Properties → Installed Files) if you get crashes after a patch.

Quick presets

Your PC	Suggested approach
High-end (RTX 4070 / RX 7800 XT or better)	High settings, shadows and particles on medium for clarity, no upscaling needed at 1080p or 1440p
Mid-range (RTX 3060 / RX 6600 class)	Medium textures, low shadows and particles, upscaler on Quality at 1440p
Low-end / older laptop	Everything low, textures medium if VRAM allows, upscaler on Quality or Balanced, frame cap at 60

These are starting points, not benchmarks. Every PC is different, so always test in a real match.

Next: Controls and keybinds →