Steam Deck’s Framerate Limiter Might be Having Latency Issues 

Ever since Steam Deck was rolled out, Valve gave everything to push forward the boundaries of the gadget industry by providing the handheld with much-needed and frequent improvements.  

Thanks to all this love that the developer poured into the Deck, it emerges as a powerful and flexible handheld PC that stands out from the crowd.  

Overall, the Steam Deck has been positively received by the community, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its fair share of flaws, with the most recent one being associated with input latency. 

Reddit user Dacvak took to Steam Deck’s subreddit and posted a report that zeroes in on how enabling the framerate limiter enhanced the handheld’s input latency.  

This means that the system-wide frame rate cap could quadruple the duration between the user input and its in-game effect, making the gaming experience slow. 

Out of the few shortcomings that the Steam Deck has had, its limited battery life has been the most prominent one. To get it fixed, Valve implemented this frame rate cap feature to let users fine-tune their games’ performance and power consumption. 

But if the Redditor’s report is accurate, it hasn’t gone according to plan. As per the data shared, relying on the new 40Hz refresh mode in the absence of a frame cap will result in 34 ms of delay. On the other hand, a cap will result in 120 ms. 

Considering how highly the 40Hz refresh mode was rated when introduced because it perfectly balanced the Deck’s battery life and gaming performance, it’s hard to imagine the option exposing users to substantial input latency. There is no fix available to overcome this issue to make matters worse. 

Valve has put in an absolute shift up to this point, and we can only hope that resolving the input lag problem is at the top of the company’s priority list so that the device is back on the road that leads to the next era of gaming. 

About Valve Software

Valve Corporation, also known as Valve Software, is an American video game developer, publisher, and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington. Valve is best known for the software distribution platform Steam, along with gaming franchises such as Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Dota.