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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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Steam Hardware
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I remember seeing someone play a Steam Deck in an airport awhile ago and the 3D game had a HORRIBLE frame rate.
To the person playing to their credit they didn't seem bothered but I couldn't look away for a couple of seconds it was so shockingly bad. It made me think that a lot of people may have not really had the importance of framerate explained to them and what the relevant numbers are (film is 25, 30 is generally minimum for games and 60 is best).
Almost by definition we aren't going to know those people but that is because if you are here you are probably a nerd, so this is good for all those blindspots. No one deserves a poor framerate if they don't have to, unless you are Mitch McConnell.
Lowest I can go is 20fps, anything below is too nauseating. I learned to cope because I modded Skyrim to the point of no return, and I could only get max 20fps with a decent rig and a ton of optimising. Hair physics and 4k trees definitely worth it 👍
I grew up playing RuneScape at 15 frames per second on the crappy school computers, so I'm used to it.
Yeah, I started gaming when games were bought on cassette tape. Pretty much anything is an improvement. Though TBF some stuff back then was pretty cool at the time.
I played first the Wing Commander + special operations with 8088XT 10MHz, 768kB RAM system. FPS was 20 when things were quiet, but when the shit hit the fan it was below 10.
A neat trick you can do with heavier games on ... at least an OLED Deck (not sure if this is doable on the LCD version)...
You target 45 fps, min, lock the max frame rate at something like 45-50, then, use VRR set at a 1:2 ratio, so you get 45 fps at 90hz.
In many games, this generally, at least imo, ends you up with a smoother and potentially graphically higher quality than just targeting 60 fps / 60 hz.
You can also use Optiscaler / DeckyFrameGen to basically hack different/better ability to do upscaling and framegen into a fair number of games that otherwise don't normally support it.
For instance, the OptiScaler people recently, successfully managed to get FSR 4 working on RX 6000 and 7000 cards, which also works on a Deck.
They essentially reverse engineered the previously leaked FSR4 driver to work on INT 8.
I didn't think Deck supported VRR? If you have VRR you just cap your frame rate at 37 FPS or whatever and the screen syncs to that and refreshes at 37 Hz. What you're describing sounds like old school vsync.
setsubyou got it more correct, my terminology is a bit off.
Yeah, you can lock the refresh rate at basically 15hz intervals (i think, last time i checked?), which is not true VRR, but, if you take the time to configure profiles and graphics settings per game, get stable and consistent frame rates, and then match the configurable refresh rate to that...
... this is sorta close to the ... idea/performance of what true VRR is going for, it just doesn't all work 'automagically'.
I have an OLED, not an LCD, so yeah it looks like the LCD tops out at 60hz.
So with an LCD, you could aim for basically 'always a bit above 30 fps' and then 60hz, for that 1:2 ratio, and with an OLED, aim for 'always a bit above 45 fps', and then 90hz, for the same 1:2 ratio.
Its not the same, of course, as actually having 60 or 90 fps, but, as long as your fps never dips below the screen refresh rate, it looks/feels smoother than doing a 30fps or 45fps traditional vsync.
But of course, you'll probably only need to do this for... significantly graphically heavy games... tons of less graphically intense / better optimized games will not need this level of tinkering min maxxing.
It doesn’t have VRR but it does have a configurable refresh rate. So e.g. if a game runs at a stable 40 fps you can run the display at 40 Hz too (or 80 Hz for the OLED model) and then you don’t get the uneven frame spacing you’d get from vsync with 40 fps on a 60 Hz display. With VRR the screen would also adjust to whatever frame rate the game produces even if it’s not stable, and the Deck doesn’t do that. But being able to get 40 fps with uniform frame timing instead of the 30 fps you’d have to use if the display was locked to 60 Hz (LCD model) or 90 Hz (OLED model) is a huge difference.
I don't have a PC. My only way to play PC games is through a Deck. I'm at the point where I'm just happy to be able to play these games, period, let alone on the go.
shit, was that me? that sounds like me. cyberpunk runs pretty bad on the deck, bg3 is pretty choppy… but older games like DS1 and DS2 seem to run pretty smooth for me, but I’ve always been bad at noticing quality.
Any game with motion needs 60fps at a bare minimum, with a consistent frametime. Although 90+ is preferable for an actual pleasant experience. 30fps is just abysmal for anything that isn't FTL, Balatro or the like.
Idk man, I've enjoyed many a game at 30 fps. 60 is my general target but acting like it's a minimum to have a fun time is ridiculous.
I can't play FTL at anything less than 240 fps. Those life bars depleting from oxygen deprivation need to be buttery smooth
I fly helicopters and airplanes in battlefield type games on multiplayer servers on my steam deck framelocked at 40 fps and do fine, I play shooters all the time at that framerate. I think if you get used to a higher framerate your brain just must lose the capability to fill in the blanks or something, it really doesnt bother me too much.
My brain sees it like distortion in a quadcopter fpv goggle feed or something lol. The issue is really rapidly changing framerate, the acceleration and deceleration is disorienting.