this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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Steam Hardware

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[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] zurohki@aussie.zone 8 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

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.

[–] setsubyou@lemmy.world 5 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

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.