Third party mod enables 120 Hz refresh on the new Steam Deck OLED

Valve recently released the second major revision of the Deck handheld console that adds an OLED screen option. By default, the new screen works at 90 Hz, but that is not the maximum supported refresh rate. The OLED screen can be forced to run at 120 Hz through a small third party mod, which could prove beneficial for competitive first person shooters.

Apparently, Valve did not include a way to activate 120 Hz as it could reduce battery life. However, users who already tried the mod report that the uptime is not affected too much. On the other hand, color accuracy seems to fluctuate above 110 Hz, with gamma and brightness issues being reported by some users.

The release notes mention that the mod has only been tested on SteamOS 3.5.7 with BOE OLED panels that have a theoretical limit of 133 Hz. From what users were able to gather, there are BOE and Samsung OLED screen versions, but the latter has not been tested by the mod creator. It looks like the Samsung version can only go up to 100 Hz in theory, and that may explain the gamma and brightness issues.

In addition to the higher refresh rate on OLEDs, the mod also enables 70 Hz on the original LCD screens that run at 60 Hz by default.

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