Best Settings to Play EA Sports FC 25 on Steam Deck: Maximize Performance and Enjoy Smooth Gameplay

With the release of EA Sports FC 25, many Steam Deck owners are eager to dive into the action of the new era of football games.

Given the portable nature of the Steam Deck, optimizing your settings is crucial to getting the best performance without sacrificing too much visual quality.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the ideal settings for running EA Sports FC 25 on the Steam Deck, ensuring smooth gameplay and a great gaming experience.

Why Optimize Settings for the Steam Deck?

The Steam Deck, while powerful for a handheld, doesn’t have the same raw performance as a high-end gaming PC. To make sure that EA Sports FC 25 runs well, you’ll need to tweak the settings to balance graphical fidelity with frame rate. Since FC 25 can be demanding on hardware, optimizing the game to ensure it runs at around 60 FPS is essential for a smooth experience, especially during fast-paced matches.

Best Settings for EA Sports FC 25 on Steam Deck

Below are the best settings to achieve a good balance between visual quality and performance on the Steam Deck.

Display Settings

1. Resolution: Native Steam Deck Resolution (1280×800)
   Running the game at the Steam Deck’s native resolution ensures that the visuals are sharp without overloading the hardware with unnecessary scaling.
2. Display Mode: Fullscreen
   Fullscreen mode provides better performance compared to windowed or borderless modes. This allows the system to allocate resources more efficiently and prevent unwanted frame drops.
3. Refresh Rate: 60Hz
   The Steam Deck’s screen supports a refresh rate of 60Hz, which should be matched with the game’s performance to ensure smooth visuals.
4. Frame Rate Limit: No Limit
   Setting the frame rate to “No Limit” allows the Steam Deck to push its hardware to reach the highest possible frame rate. However, the system usually runs EA Sports FC 25 at around 60 FPS on optimized settings.
5. V-Sync: Off
   Disabling V-Sync will reduce input lag, which is important in a fast-paced game like FC 25, especially when timing and responsiveness matter during gameplay.
6. Dynamic Resolution Scale: Off
   While dynamic resolution scaling adjusts the resolution in real-time to maintain performance, it’s better to leave this off for a more consistent visual experience, especially when running the game at native resolution.

Graphics Settings

The following settings will help you maintain a balance between good visuals and smooth performance:

1. Rendering Quality: Medium
   Medium rendering quality ensures that the game looks sharp without putting too much stress on the Steam Deck’s GPU. Higher settings might cause unnecessary slowdowns, while lower settings would reduce visual quality noticeably.
2. Grass Quality: Medium
   Grass quality can be taxing on performance, especially in a football game where the pitch is always visible. Keeping this on medium strikes a good balance between quality and performance.
3. Cloud Quality: Low
   Cloud quality has minimal impact on gameplay, so reducing it to low frees up processing power for other, more important visual effects.
4. Cloth Quality: Low
   Cloth physics affect the rendering of kits and other cloth materials. Reducing this to low will not affect gameplay much, especially since you’ll be focused on the action rather than minor visual details.
5. Ambient Occlusion Quality: Low
   Ambient occlusion adds depth to shadows and lighting effects but can significantly impact performance. Setting this to low improves frame rates without drastically changing the look of the game.
6. Motion Blur: Off
   Disabling motion blur improves clarity during gameplay, particularly when the camera moves quickly. It also helps reduce strain on the hardware, resulting in smoother frame rates.
7. Cutscene Frame Rate: Half
   Cutscenes do not require as high of a frame rate as gameplay. Setting the cutscene frame rate to half (30 FPS) will save battery life and prevent the Steam Deck from working unnecessarily hard during non-interactive moments.
8. Strand-Based Hair: Off
   This feature is mainly used for close-up scenes during cutscenes, so turning it off will not affect your in-game experience but will improve performance during gameplay.

Power Optimization Tips

In addition to in-game settings, there are a few extra tweaks you can make to ensure you’re getting the best possible performance from your Steam Deck:

1. Limit Brightness: Lowering your screen brightness to a comfortable but not too high level can help conserve battery life during longer play sessions.
2. Battery-Saving Mode: You can also enable the Steam Deck’s battery-saving mode, which reduces overall system power usage without drastically affecting the gameplay experience.
3. Refresh Rate Tuning: If you’re looking to conserve more battery power, you can experiment with lowering the refresh rate to 40Hz, though this will cap the game’s frame rate. It’s an option if you want longer battery life during extended gameplay sessions.

How Well Does EA Sports FC 25 Run on the Steam Deck?

With the settings outlined above, EA Sports FC 25 should run at a consistent 60 FPS on the Steam Deck when using Medium settings. The gameplay will be smooth, responsive, and visually appealing without major sacrifices to the game’s appearance. You can push the graphics to High settings if you don’t mind a slight drop to around 45-50 FPS, but for the best experience, Medium is recommended.

For users running Windows on the Steam Deck instead of SteamOS, ensure that your system is fully updated and optimized with the latest drivers. You can also enable virtual memory paging to help stabilize performance, especially in memory-intensive scenarios.

Conclusion

Optimizing EA Sports FC 25 for the Steam Deck doesn’t take long, and the results are well worth it. By following these recommendations, you’ll be able to enjoy fluid gameplay without significant frame drops, ensuring that your football matches feel as immersive and fast-paced as they should. The Steam Deck proves once again that it’s capable of handling modern AAA titles with the right tweaks and adjustments.

So, tweak your settings, hit the pitch, and enjoy your FC 25 experience on the go! If you have Steam Deck you can also follow our guide to Maximize FPS for FC 25.