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Ark Survival Ascended PC Optimization: Best Settings & Commands for FPS

Ark Survival Ascended is a remake of Evolved using the Unreal Engine 5. Featuring cutting-edge visuals, including Lumen GI, Nanite geometry, and Virtual Shadows, it’s a lofty upgrade over the original. Unfortunately, the performance is far from ideal, requiring frame generation for playable framerates on even the fastest PCs. Furthermore, the shadows are prone to artifacting, the lighting isn’t proper, and upscaling/frame generation options are far from ideal. Here’s our optimization guide for Ark Ascended, with console commands at the end.

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.

Ark: Survival Ascended PC Requirements

Min

  • OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit.
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-6800K|Ryzen 5 2600X.
  • GPU: Nvidia GTX 1080|AMD RADEON RX 5600 XT.
  • Memory: 16 GB.
  • Storage: 70 GB (SSD).

Rec

  • OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit.
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-10600K|Ryzen 5 3600X.
  • GPU: Nvidia RTX 3080|AMD RADEON RX 6800.
  • Memory: 32 GB.
  • Storage: 70 GB (SSD).

Ark Survival Ascended: Resolution & Graphics Presets

Ark Ascended performs miserably on even the fastest GPUs, averaging a paltry 38 FPS on our GeForce RTX 4090 at 4K “Epic.” Switching to 1440p improves the framerates to 57 FPS, while 1080p produces an average of 68 FPS at the highest quality preset. A mere 20% scaling from QHD to FHD indicates some sort of bottleneck.

Test Setup

Ark Ascended exhibits decent scaling across the four graphics quality presets, averaging 53 FPS, 59 FPS, 69 FPS, and 83 FPS at Epic, High, Medium, and Low, respectively. This indicates sufficient room for tweaking and optimization.

Ark Survival Ascended (at the time of publishing) comes with AMD Frame Generation enabled on all platforms. It can’t be disabled from the settings, but a simple command does the trick. Open the command line using the “`” button, and type the following:

  • r.FidelityFX.FI.Enabled 0
  • Hit the enter key.
  • This disables AMD FSR 3 Frame Generation which can cause frame pacing issues on certain systems.
  • Unless explicitly mentioned, all our tests were conducted with FSR 3 FG disabled.

Advanced Graphics & View Distance

Advanced Graphics control multiple effects, notably Volumetric Fog, Distant Shadows, Atmospheric Lighting, and grass. Understandably, this has a drastic impact on performance, reducing framerates by up to 10% at the epic quality settings. Distant shadows are enabled at the highest setting, while atmospheric lighting and fog are disabled at the lowest option.

View Distance sets the LOD or render distance of different objects in the scene. It primarily affects foliage, vegetation, terrain, rocks, and the wave/ripple detail on the surface of water bodies. It mildly impacts performance, ranging from 4-5% at the higher quality options. It’s best left at high or epic.

Post Processing & General Shadows

Post Processing adjusts various late-pipeline shaders, including ambient occlusion, depth of field, vignette, and other blur-based effects. At higher quality settings, it can reduce performance by 6-8% and is best left at high or epic.

General Shadow Quality sets the Virtual Shadow Map Samples and shadow penumbra (SMRT ray count) for the in-game shadows. Reducing the quality makes the shadows less defined, with medium producing noisy edges. The lowest option disables soft shadows in favor of sharp, blocky placeholders.

Ark Survival Ascended leverages Unreal Engine 5’s Virtual Shadows which can be quite effective in rendering contact hardening soft shadows. Unfortunately, this implementation suffers from severe flickering and artifacting. It can be disabled using the command, “r.Shadow.Virtual.Enable 0.” General Shadows can reduce your framerates by 7-9% while disabling Virtual Shadows grants a 4% FPS boost.

Global Illumination & Cinematic Lighting

Ark Ascended utilizes Lumen GI like many popular Unreal Engine 5 games. However, it’s only enabled at the epic quality setting, leaving the lower-quality options with screen-space global illumination. The epic quality setting (Lumen) can reduce your framerates by 12-15%, while high and below cost almost nothing. The visual impact is quite pronounced, especially in interiors and low-light scenes.

Cinematic Lighting increases the Lumen GI quality (either by increasing the distance field resolution or voxel density) at the cost of reduced performance. Our RTX 4090 dropped by 25% (53 FPS->40 FPS) with cinematic lighting enabled. Visually, it improves light scattering across the world, better illuminating vegetation, foliage, and occluded areas, including interiors. That said, the difference is minimal. More image comparisons here.

Effects & Foliage Quality

Effects Quality enabled additional lighting shaders, including atmospheric, auto-exposure, etc. Sky Lighting is downgraded at medium, while low curbs most shaders, resulting in relatively bland visuals. This setting reduces the game’s performance by 4-6%, and it’s best to stick to high.

Foliage Quality sets the density and frequency of grass, pebbles, and rocks on the surface. It can bring down your framerates by up to 10% at 4K. Luckily, anything higher than the lowest option looks good enough. Medium is a good choice if you’re running low on FPS.

Foliage Interaction Distance

Foliage Interaction enables physics for grass, bushes, and trees. The foliage interaction distance multiplier, distance limit, and quantity limit adjust the range and amount of foliage-related physics simulations in the game. This includes the parting or bending of vegetation when you pass through it and the knocking over of trees by large dinos.

Out of the three settings, the distance multiplier is particularly detrimental to performance. Reducing it to 1 grants a 5% FPS boost, and you retain most nearby foliage interactions. The other two don’t impact performance much and can be left at 3 or higher.

Upscaling & Frame Generation

Ark Survival Ascended (at the time of posting) features only DLSS upscaling. Users on AMD and Intel GPUs can use the resolution slider to enable some form of temporal upscaling which isn’t much worse. Upscaling grants moderate gains, with the balanced and performance presets being 29% and 46% faster than native 4K.

AMD FSR 3 Frame Generation can disabled/enabled using the “r.FidelityFX.FI.Enabled 0/1″ command. It grants a 60-70% FPS boost at 4K at the cost of imperfect frame pacing. Nonetheless, the game is playable for those running 60 FPS displays as long as you enable V-Sync.

Ark Survival Ascended: VRAM Usage

Ark Ascended is quite the VRAM hog, courtesy of Nanite, Virtual Shadows, and Frame Generation. The game uses over 18 GB of VRAM at 4K and 17 GB at 1440p/1080p using the epic quality preset (without upscaling or frame generation).

Enabling DLSS reduces the VRAM usage to ~13 GB at 4K while scaling down the texture quality brings it down to 10 GB. Using frame generation and cinematic lighting increases the VRAM usage to a whopping 21 GB. Finally, some competition for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Ark Survival Ascended: CPU Bottlenecks

Like most Unreal Engine 5 titles, Ark Ascended is well-optimized for modern multi-core CPUs. The game remained GPU-bound even at 1080p with a Busy deviation of under 5%. Enabling frame generation can produce strange results as the frame-pacing is off the charts.

1080p Epic FG Off

Ark Survival Ascended Performance Summary

  • Foliage Interaction Multiplier: Reduce it to 1 for a 4-5% FPS boost at no visual cost.
  • Global Illumination: Reduce it to high which disables Lumen, granting a 10% uplift.
  • General Shadows: Disable Virtual Shadows using the below command, and reduce it to high for a 10% performance gain.
  • Foliage: Reduce it to medium quality for a 7-8% FPS improvement.
  • Advanced Graphics: Reduce it to medium for a 6-7% increase. Consider last.

Ark Survival Ascended PC Optimization Commands

  • r.FidelityFX.FI.Enabled 0
    • Disables FSR 3 Frame Generation. Useful if enabling V-Sync doesn’t smoothen out your frame pacing, and reduce VRAM usage.
  • r.Shadow.Virtual.Enable 0
    • Disables Virtual Shadows which can cause flickering, and slightly improves performance (+4 to 6%).
  • r.Lumen.Reflections.Allow 0
    • Disables Lumen-based reflections, granting an 8-10% FPS boost near water bodies.
  • r.VolumetricCloud 0
    • Disables volumetric clouds, granting a massive 15%+ performance boost.

Optimized Settings for Ark Survival Ascended PC (2025)

Graphics SettingsHigh-endMidrangeLow-end PC
Resolution4K (3480 x 2160)1440p (2560 x 1440)1080p (1920 x 1080)
FPS Target60 FPS60 FPS60 FPS
Frame GenerationOnOnOff
V-SyncOnOnOff
DLSS QualityBalancedBalancedBalanced
Advanced GraphicsEpicEpicEpic
View DistanceEpicEpicEpic
TexturesEpicEpicHigh
Post ProcessingEpicEpicEpic
General Shadows*EpicHighHigh
Global IlluminationEpicEpicHigh
EffectsEpicEpicEpic
FoliageEpicEpicEpic
Foliage & Fluid InteractionOnOnOn
FI Distance Multiplier411
FI Distance Limit444
FI Quantity Limit333
Disable HLODOnOnOn
Cinematic LightingOnOffOff
*Disable Virtual Shadows
CPUCore i7-13700K|Ryzen 7 7700XCore i5-12600K|Ryzen 5 7600 Core i5-12400
AMD Ryzen 5 3600
GPUGeForce RTX 4080 SuperGeForce RTX 4070 SuperRTX 3060|RTX 4060
Memory32GB (dual-channel)16GB (dual-channel)Less than: 16GB (dual-channel)

Areej Syed

Processors, PC gaming, and the past. I have been writing about computer hardware for over seven years with more than 5000 published articles. Started off during engineering college and haven't stopped since. Find me at HardwareTimes and PC Opset.
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