Apex Legends Optimized Settings 2024: All Graphics Options Benchmarked

Apex Legends remains one of the most popular Battle Royale games with over 300K concurrent players on Steam. Although the game launched back in 2019, it can be a little taxing if you are running it on a notebook or an iGPU. In this post, we look at the various graphics settings available in the game and figure out which ones cost the most.

Our Test Bench

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D.
• Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix X670E-F.
• Cooler: Lian Li Galahad 360.
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
• Memory: 16GB x2 DDR5-6000 CL30.
• Power Supply: Corsair RM1000e.

Given that our testbench is quite beefy, we decided to test the game at 5K to eliminate any CPU bottlenecks. First, we tested Apex with all settings maxed out. This was then used as the reference point to calculate the performance impact of individual graphics options.

System Settings to Optimize

Enable Resizable BAR (SAM)

Resizable BAR was enabled on most x86 motherboards and GPUs following the adoption of the PCIe Gen 4 standard. Traditionally, the CPU and GPU have communicated through a narrow BAR (a 256 MB window), constantly moved around to allow the CPU to access different parts of the graphics memory. Resizable BAR allows the CPU full access to the GPU’s memory bus rather than a small portion.

Intel’s 10th Gen CPUs and newer support Resize BAR, while AMD’s Ryzen 3000 chips and onward also support it. On the GPU side, NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 series and newer feature Resizable BAR support. The Radeon RX 6000 cards were the first to enable it on the opposite side.

Enabling Resizable BAR usually involves turning on two PCIe technologies from the motherboard BIOS: Above 4G Decoding, and Resizable BAR support. The ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI motherboard guides are linked for further instructions.

Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling and Windowed Optimizations

Next, ensure you have “Optimizations for windowed games” enabled in your Windows settings as this will help with latency and thread priorities. To get there, open System Settings (Right-click on the Windows logo and click settings) -> Display -> Graphics -> Default graphics settings and enable both options.

Enable XMP/EXPO Memory Profile

XMP profiles (EXPO for AMD Ryzen platforms) are a set of predetermined memory clocks and timings known to run stably on a given memory die. They’re a shortcut to overclocking your memory without testing every frequency and timing.

Most motherboard BIOSes include this setting on the BIOS homepage, under one of the following: Extreme Memory Profile, AI Overclock Tuner, Load XMP Profile, EXPO, A-XMP, or DRAM Profile. Further instructions are linked.

Apex Legends: Textures, Lighting, and Anti-Aliasing

The texture quality (streaming budget) is usually set per the GPU buffer size. Apex recommends a 2GB VRAM buffer for “Very Low” and 4GB or higher for “Medium.” However, if you’re running the game on an iGPU lacking discrete memory, you might want to set the texture budget to “None.” This confers a 5-10% performance uplift over higher quality levels.

Disabling TAA (Temporal Anti-aliasing) improves 1% lows by 15%. Depending on whether you like smooth or sharp textures, you might want to enable and disable it.

Volumetric Lighting can have a substantial impact on visual quality. But you probably won’t notice the difference in a fast-paced Battle Royale like Apex Legends. Disabling it grants a 12% uplift in lows.

If texture detail or sharpness means anything to you, then “Anisotropic Filtering” is necessary. Luckily, 4x to 8x tends to be enough without being much of a drain on performance. Trilinear filtering is 16% faster than 16x AF, while 2x AF is 8% faster. Even 8x AF is ~8% quicker than 16x if you only consider the lows.

Ambient occlusion is used to implement soft shadows without the complexity of global illumination. Going from High to Off improves frame rates by ~19%, while Medium and Low have a much more modest impact.

Level of Detail (LOD)

Level of Detail (LOD) sets the polygon complexity of 3D objects in a scene. Higher values add more depth and shape to otherwise banal structures. “Model Detail” subtly impacts game performance, reducing frame rates by 4-5% at Medium and 8-9% at High.

“Effects Detail” is similar, except it controls the resolution of special effects like explosions, fireworks, and sparks. Like “Model Detail,” it has a nominal impact on performance, except in this case, you probably won’t even notice it.

Shadow Quality: Sun, Spot, and Dynamic

Apex Legends features three different implementations of shadows: Sun, Spot, and Dynamic. The first one is self-explanatory. Spot shadows are the shadows cast by static objects and are stationary or baked-in. Dynamic shadows are cast by moving objects such as the player or enemy character.

“Sun Shadow Coverage” has the most noticeable impact on performance, reducing frame rates by up to 20%. “Sun Shadow” and “Spot Shadow Detail” increase frametimes by up to 10%, while “Dynamic Spot Shadows” barely have an impact.

“Spot Shadow Detail” has five options: Off, Low, High, Very High, and Ultra. Anything other than the highest preset will run about as smoothly as the lowest setting. Focus on the lows here as the averages are well above 144 FPS.

Apex Legends VRAM Usage

We tested the game at 5K, so keep that in mind. The VRAM consumption at 1080p and 1440p will be substantially lower, but this will give you an idea of how far apart the different quality presets are:

Apex Legends uses over 10 GB of graphics memory at the highest “Texture Streaming Budget” at 5K. High reduces it to 9.53 GB, while Medium further brings it down to 9.15 GB. Low and Very Low consume 8.77-8.86 GB, and None uses just over 8.5 GB. For 1080p and 1440p, a 6 to 8 GB graphics card will be sufficient.

Optimized Settings for Apex Legends

Since Apex is an old game that runs well on newer hardware, our definitions of the three tiers are different from usual:

Apex Legends: Best Steam Deck Graphics Settings

Here’s a detailed guide explaining the below settings.