Deadlock Best Settings for FPS: Keep Fights Readable

Start with Low shadows, Low fog, Screen space AO Off and Med textures. Keep your display’s native output resolution and highest usable refresh rate, then try 1.5x upscaling if the rendering cuts still aren’t enough. I’d reduce the atmosphere before shrinking the whole picture: a frame-rate improvement has less value when you’ve made the fight difficult to read.

The choices below use Valve’s English settings definitions and tooltips extracted by GameTracking on September 30, 2026 ↗ (opens in a new tab), after City Never Sleeps. They are a supported starting profile, not a setup we’ve benchmarked. We haven’t captured the live menu on a PC, and hardware can affect which options appear. For the update’s map and practice changes, use our City Never Sleeps guide ↗ (opens in a new tab).

Start with these Advanced settings

Enable Advanced settings so you can choose the compromises individually. The first four rendering changes below are the heart of this profile; the other controls either shape the picture or depend on what you want from the display.

The tracked Valve tooltips ↗ (opens in a new tab) supply the cost descriptions in this table. They give AO, shadows and fog a reason to go first, but don’t rank the FPS each will recover on your machine.

Understand the picture you’re trading away

Low shadows and fog reduce the quality or resolution of those effects. AO adds soft contact shadowing, so switching it off removes that extra detail. These are targeted cuts: they leave the output resolution alone while reducing particular rendering work.

Textures deserve a gentler starting choice. Valve says lower texture resolution can possibly improve performance on lower-end systems. I’d begin at Med, then try Low if you still need another cut. That wording doesn’t support flattening the textures automatically in exchange for a supposed large FPS win.

Bloom and Area lights can share a lower priority. Post process bloom spreads bright light into the surrounding image, Effects bloom enhances effects through the bloom buffer, and Area lights render large or irregular light sources such as beams. Turn them off for this leaner profile, but remember that Valve calls their costs small; Area lights may cost more on a low-end system. If you miss their appearance, they’re candidates to restore once you have a useful result.

Depth of field is easier to settle: choose the picture you prefer. Its current tooltip says the cost is negligible and it should not affect gameplay performance. Keep it off if you prefer the image without it; treat that as a visual choice.

Try 1.5x before going straight to 2x

Upscaling renders a lower-resolution input and reconstructs the output image. NVIDIA DLSS requires a GeForce RTX card. AMD describes FSR2 ↗ (opens in a new tab) as temporal reconstruction without dedicated machine-learning hardware, with support extending to compatible AMD and competitor GPUs. Pick an option your system exposes; that isn’t a promise that every GPU supports every mode.

The tracked menu uses 1x, 1.5x, 1.7x and 2x for FSR scaling. DLSS includes 1x (DLAA) and Auto alongside the reduced-resolution tiers. At 1x, the ideal internal dimensions equal the output dimensions. It can still involve processing, so “native” isn’t shorthand for the fastest configuration.

The higher ratio labels mean smaller internal images. Explore their ideal dimensions and pixel area at your output resolution below.

At 1080p output, 1.5x corresponds to an ideal 1280 × 720 input. At 2x, that falls to 960 × 540. The game may round its render dimensions; Auto has no fixed dimensions to calculate here.

That explains why 2x is a substantial image compromise at 1080p. I’d try 1.5x first and pay attention to distant detail before moving further. If your image is already blurry, move toward 1x instead of reducing it again. The upscaler has reconstruction work of its own, and other game work doesn’t shrink with the pixel count; 25% of the pixels cannot be read as four times the FPS.

Set Reflex, sync and caps for your goal

Start NVIDIA Reflex at Enabled when it’s available. NVIDIA recommends enabling Reflex ↗ (opens in a new tab) as a latency-oriented setting. Enabled + Boost isn’t an automatic FPS upgrade: Valve’s tooltip says it can draw more GPU power and slightly affect FPS while pursuing lower latency. Begin with Enabled rather than making that extra tradeoff by habit.

If you prioritize responsiveness and accept tearing, VSync Off is the conditional starting choice. NVIDIA’s guidance for that route includes switching it off in both the game and driver settings. Tear-free play is a different priority.

For active NVIDIA G-Sync and tear-free play, Deadlock’s resource text recommends G-Sync, V-Sync and Reflex together. NVIDIA describes automatic below-refresh capping in this combination, with slightly higher latency than uncapped Reflex play. Check the effective FPS on your chosen renderer before relying on that automatic cap. Keep it within the active display range and below the refresh ceiling for this goal; the evidence doesn’t establish one Deadlock cap margin for everyone.

The placement of VSync matters too. NVIDIA says driver VSync applies to fullscreen applications, and directs windowed players and MS Hybrid laptop users to in-game VSync for this setup. Don’t turn that into an instruction to switch both controls on everywhere. The NVIDIA auto-cap description also isn’t a promise for every FreeSync configuration or graphics API.

Keep In-game maximum FPS and Dashboard maximum FPS separate. Setting the dashboard to 60 is a reasonable way to limit menu work when the cap binds; it doesn’t raise match FPS. Choose the match cap around a rate you can sustain and your tearing or sync preference. Lowering the monitor’s refresh rate is a different change, with no established Deadlock FPS benefit here.

Make one comparison, then choose the next cut

Set HUD Telemetry → Show frame time and FPS → Always while you compare. The tooltip defines frame time as the worst recent frame time, while FPS is the current average. That lets a recent slow frame and the average tell different parts of the story; it isn’t an exported 1% low.

Use the same warmed-up replay section or another repeatable scene. Keep the hero, camera, output resolution, renderer, cap and sync state unchanged, then change one setting and repeat. A binding cap can hide a performance difference, so interpret a capped result accordingly. Our FPS comparison guide ↗ (opens in a new tab) explains the longer method when the result is uncertain.

Choose what you see to narrow the next comparison.

Leave file-changing configs for a separate decision

Menu tuning gives you a useful first route without adopting somebody else’s wider configuration. OptimizationLock’s inspected README ↗ (opens in a new tab) describes replacing gameinfo.gi, lists a missing Doorman ultimate indicator, and says major updates overwrite the file. Missing a gameplay cue is a real cost for a guide whose priority is readable fights. That config isn’t established here as universally faster or safe.

Once your in-game baseline is settled, Hone’s Deadlock page ↗ (opens in a new tab) covers its Windows-side offering, with the app on our download page ↗ (opens in a new tab). Hold the graphics baseline fixed if you explore a Windows change, so you’re judging that change rather than a different picture and cap at the same time.