Deadlock PC Optimization Guide: Best Graphics Settings for Valve’s Early Access Game

Deadlock is Valve’s latest MOBA game, still in early access but with one with close to 200K concurrent players. The game is invite-only and features a fresh gameplay blueprint. At the moment, a lot of the features are WIP, but it runs stably without any major bugs or crashes. We expect additional graphics technologies in the future, including DX12, DLSS, and maybe even ray-tracing, but for now, Deadlock is a minimal package.

Windows/System Settings to Optimize

• Enable Resizable BAR.
• Turn on Game Mode.
• Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) and Windowed Optimizations.
• Use the Windows “High Performance” power profile and set your GPU power management mode to the same.
• Disable Memory Integrity. Windows Menu->VBS->Device Security.
• Ensure you use the proper XMP/EXPO memory profile (if available).
• Overclock your GPU if you’re narrowly missing the 60 FPS mark.
• Here’s a guide with more detailed instructions.

Deadlock: Resolution & Upscaling Performance

Deadlock scales well with resolution. From 110 FPS at 4K “Ultra,” we recorded an average framerate of 182 FPS at 1440p and 228 FPS at 1080p using the same graphics settings. This indicates a well-optimized game that’s GPU-bound even on the fastest GPUs across all three resolutions.

Testing Methodology

• The “Ultra” quality graphics preset was chosen as the reference point at 4K “native”.
• The following benchmark order was used for testing the graphics settings:
  1. Resolution and upscaling.
  2. DX12 vs. Vulkan performance.
  3. The individual graphics settings’ benchmarks.
  4. A summary of the optimized settings for high, midrange, and low-end PCs.
• The following hardware setup was used:
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
  • Cooler: Lian Li Galahad 360 AIO.
  • GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4090 FE.
  • Motherboard: MSI MPG X670E Carbon WiFi.
  • Memory: 16 GB x2 @ 6000 MT/s CL30.

AMD FSR 2 produces 4K output using an input resolution of 2560×1440, 2259×1270, and 1920×1080 using the quality, balanced, and performance presets, respectively. Comparing the resolution and upscaling numbers, we observed a framerate drop of 9% at the highest-quality preset. Conversely, the lowest quality upscaling preset performs better than 1080p native.

Thanks to modern upscaling technologies, you can expect well over 200 FPS in Deadlock (even at 4K), given you have the right hardware.

Deadlock: DirectX11 or Vulkan Graphics API?

Deadlock features the DirectX11 and Vulkan API. We expect the former to be replaced by DirectX12 closer to the official launch. Interestingly, the two APIs deliver nearly identical framerates at 1080p and 1440p.

At 4K (with FSR 2 enabled), DirectX11 pulls ahead with slightly higher averages. These deficits will vary from uarch to uarch, and may even reverse on Radeon GPUs.

Ambient Occlusion

Deadlock features two kinds of ambient occlusion techniques—Screen Space Ambient Occlusion or SSAO and Distance Field Ambient Occlusion or DFAO. The former is widely used in almost every game and uses screen space (Z-buffer) data to approximate the ambient shadows. SSAO is highly scalable and performant in most scenarios. Regardless, it reduces framerates by up to 20% on average at 4K.

Distance Field Ambient Occlusion uses distance fields to calculate the shadows. It tends to be more performance-intensive, but more accurate as well. The performance impact varies from 5-10% depending on your resolution and settings.

Distance Fields are distance vectors used to define the space and position of an object (surface). A distance field at any given point (say x) denotes the distance of that point from the surface. They’re used on computer graphics to calculate the position of different objects in a scene.

More recently, they’ve gained increased usage to calculate lighting and global illumination. For example, Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen GI uses two kinds of distance fields for calculating the lighting for objects at varying distances from the viewport. This is done as follows:

A ray is cast from the camera and through the pixel on the screen. The ray approaches the object (circular surface in this case). Upon reaching point 1, the distance to the nearest point on the surface is calculated. In this case, it’s a miss, so the process is repeated a few times till it’s concluded as a miss. This is called ray marching.

In the case of a hit, the distance of the ray (to the surface) is calculated as the distance field at that point. Distance fields are positive or negative depending on whether they’re outside or inside the surface.

Source: Jasmcole.

Textures & Shadow Quality

Deadlock uses over 9 GB of graphics memory or VRAM at 4K which drops to 6.6 GB at 1440p and 6.2 GB at 1080p (Ultra). You can probably get away with an 8 GB buffer as long as you have a relatively recent GPU.

Shadow quality doesn’t notably affect the performance, with all four options performing within 5-6 FPS of one another at 4K.

Distance Field Shadows & Area Lights

Distance field shadows cast inexpensive, low-definition shadows for dynamic objects from lights not covered by the shadow maps. Area lights and DFS have a negligent impact on quality and performance.

Bloom & Displacement Mapping

Deadlock features pre and post-process bloom which is inexpensive, but the same can’t be said for displacement mapping.

Displacement mapping, like parallax mapping, uses displacement maps (versus normal maps) to add artificial detail to otherwise flat surfaces. It can drastically improve the detail of a scene without adding many additional processing requirements.

MBOIT: Moment Based Order Independent Transparency

Moment Based Order Independent Transparency or MBOIT handles transparency in a scene. Depending on the map, it can be fairly expensive but we observed a drop of just 6 FPS on average.

Transparent (or partially transparent) surfaces such as fog, glass, and water are a common occurrence in modern gaming. Being transparent, they transmit light. The final pixel value of such a point depends on the order of the surfaces towards the viewport. The one closest tends to have the most impact on the resulting pixels.

Rendering transparency is expensive because of the need to sort the surfaces before calculating the final value. Recently, multiple order-independent transparency (OIT) techniques were introduced. This reduces the performance impact of transparency, while also improving accuracy.

Moment-based OIT (MBOIT) uses a sequence of moments (quantities that describe the shape of a function graph) to approximate the transparency in a scene. It is processed in two passes one to calculate the moment and the other to use those moments to reconstruct light transmission and blending of surfaces.

Source

Deadlock: CPU Bottlenecks

Deadlock is surprisingly GPU-bound for a MOBA game built on DX11. At 1080p “Ultra,” we observed a GPU-Busy deviation of ~10% using DX11 and Vulkan.

When using upscaling (Performance), Vulkan produced a lower CPU overhead with a GPU-Busy deviation of just 1% versus 13% using DX11. Regardless, the latter delivered superior averages and lows.

Best Graphics Settings for Deadlock on PC