Best The Alters Settings for PC & Optimization Guide

The Alters is a well-optimized game, requiring a recent hex-core or octa-core CPU for 60 FPS at high settings (Ryzen 7 5800X/Core i7-8700K). A GeForce GTX 1660 (or Radeon RX 5600 XT) is sufficient for the same scenario. High-quality graphics require a newer GPU, such as the GeForce RTX 2070 or the Radeon RX 6600 XT.

The Alters: PC Optimization Brief

• Upscaling provides a massive performance boost of over 50% on all PCs. DLSS for RTX users, and TSR or FSR for the rest.
• Reflection Quality can be reduced to high for a ~20% FPS boost at minimal visual disparity.
• Effects Quality can be dropped to medium for a 13% frame rate gain without too much of a quality loss.
• Model Quality might need to be reduced to the lowest on older and lower-end PCs. This boosts the game’s performance by over 20% at the cost of reduced geometric detail.

The Alters: Resolution Scaling & Graphics Presets

The Alters scales remarkably well with resolution. The game averages 55 FPS at 4K, 102.5 FPS at 1440p, and 145 FPS at 1080p using the ultra quality graphics settings. These numbers indicate a GPU-bound workload that should benefit greatly from upscaling.

The graphics presets show similar scaling, with the averages varying from 57 FPS at the highest to 127 FPS at the lowest. 4K UHD yielded the following frame rates:

• Ultra: 57 FPS.
• High: 72.8 FPS.
• Medium: 87 FPS.
• Low: 127 FPS.

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.

Anti-Aliasing & Post Processing Quality

The Alters features temporal anti-aliasing, which can’t be completely disabled. Lowering the quality barely impacts the image quality, while slightly improving the performance (+3.5%). It is automatically disabled when using DLSS, FSR, TSR, or XeSS.

Post Processing enables several late-stage shaders, including bloom, auto-exposure, tonemapping, eye adaptation, etc. High reduces the intensity, while medium and low disable most filters.

• Medium is 3.5% faster than Ultra.
• Low is 5% faster than Ultra.

Shadows & Reflection Quality

Shadow Quality adjusts the quality of secondary ambient shadows overlapping shadow maps. Higher quality options produce darker silhouettes with richer micro-shadows along edges, ridges, and curved geometry. Reducing the shadow quality grants minimal FPS gains (+2-3%).

Reflection Quality mainly adjusts the resolution of diffuse reflections, producing increased ambient shadow detail at higher presets. This is achieved using distance field ambient occlusion to calculate the shadow contribution of reflected light.

• Ultra produces the best quality, reflecting the most light and producing high-quality occlusion. However, it tanks the frame rates by over 20%.
• High reduces the resolution and accuracy of reflections. It’s nearly 18% faster than Ultra, and the sweet spot for most PCs.
• Medium reduces the detail of ambient shadows cast by reflected light. It performs the same as High.
• Low disables specular AO, removing most of the finer shadows. It’s 26% faster than ultra, and 7% faster than the medium and high quality options.

Effects & Ambient Occlusion Quality

Effects Quality sets the detail of volumetric clouds, fog, water, color filters, and certain material surfaces. It’s one of the most taxing settings in the game, reducing frame rates by up to 16% at the highest quality.

• High is 3% faster than the ultra quality.
• Medium is 13% faster than the ultra quality, and the sweet spot for most PCs.
• Low is 19% faster than the ultra, but reduces water textures to transparent blobs.

Ambient Occlusion sets the quality of distance field ambient occlusion and global illumination. DFAO is similar to Lumen GI, but simpler and more performant. Higher quality options improve diffuse lighting at a slight performance drop (~3%).

Model Quality: Nanite?

The Alters likely uses Nanite geometry at medium and higher quality options, drastically improving the scene detail. However, it’s the most taxing setting in the game, dropping frame rates by up to 22%.

• Low might be required for older and lower-end PCs.
• Medium and High look and perform about the same.

Upscaling & Frame Generation

The Alters includes NVIDIA DLSS 4, AMD FSR 3, Intel XeSS 2, and Unreal’s TSR upscaling technologies. The quality upscaling mode is considerably faster than native, boosting frame rates by up to 80% at 4K. Balanced mode increases the lead to 108%, while performance mode is 137% faster than native 4K.

Strangely, DLAA performs the same as the DLSS “Ultra Quality” mode. Like XeSS’ Ultra Quality Plus mode, it scales the resolution by 1.3x, down from 1.5x using quality mode.

The Alters includes DLSS and FSR-based frame generation. However, we couldn’t enable the former on the GeForce RTX 4090 (it was greyed out). The FSR 3 implementation is broken, leading to ghosting and frame-pacing artifacts.

The Alters: VRAM Usage & CPU Bottlenecks

The Alters uses up to 8 GB of graphics memory at the highest quality settings at 4K. Switching to 1440p reduces the VRAM usage to 6.9 GB, while 1080p limits it to under 6.5 GB. However, reducing the texture quality hardly impacts it, with the lowest quality option using over 7 GB at 4K.

The Alters is completely GPU-bound even on midrange CPUs like the Ryzen 7 7700X and the Core i7-12700K. We were fully GPU-limited through the course of our testing.

The Alters PC: Optimized Settings

Best Settings for “The Alters”: RTX 3060 & 4060

The Alters performs well enough on the GeForce RTX 4060 laptop GPU (Alienware x15). The game averages 65 FPS at 1440p and 85 FPS at 1080p using the “Ultra” quality preset with balanced upscaling.