Elden Ring, the spiritual successor to the Dark Souls franchise remains among the most popular PC games in 2024. The release of its latest expansion pack “Shadow of the Erdtree” will only strengthen its position as the most popular RPG on Steam. At the time of writing, the game has over 200K concurrent players with a 24-hour peak of 254K. Below, you’ll find a detailed breakdown of all the graphics settings available in Elden Ring and their performance metrics.
Windows/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
Turn on “Optimizations for windowed games” 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 “Hardware Accelerated GPU scheduling.”
Xbox Game Bar and Game Mode
Go to Windows settings->Gaming tab-> Game Mode. Ensure Game Mode is enabled.
The Windows power plan is best set to “High Performance” or equivalent. Furthermore, if you’re playing on a laptop, keep it plugged in unless that’s not an option.
Finally, open the NVIDIA or AMD companion app and ensure the latest graphics drivers are installed.
Overclock your Graphics Card
Overclocking GPUs is a fairly safe and easy process. If done right, it won’t void your warranty and can boost your gaming performance by at least 5-10%. Unlike CPUs, you don’t have to mess with the BIOS or worry about BSODs. All you need is MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision X (they work with GeForce and Radeon cards regardless of the AIB):
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 1-click memory overclocks that save you the trauma of testing every frequency and timing.
Via G.Skill
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.
Elden Ring System Requirements
Elden Ring has modest system requirements, with a GTX 1070 8 GB or an RX Vega 56 8 GB recommended for 1080p “High.” A hex-core Intel i7-8700K or an AMD Ryzen 5 3600X should be sufficient in most cases, backed by 16 GB of main memory, and 80 GB of storage.
Accordingly, 1440p “Maximum” will require a GeForce RTX 2080/RTX 3070, while 4K is best tackled with an RTX 4070 Ti/4070 Ti Super. Any 12th or 13th Gen Core i5 or a Ryzen 5 7600X should fulfill the CPU requirements at these settings.
Test Bench
CPU: Intel Core i9-13900K.
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero.
Cooler: Lian Li Galahad 360.
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
Memory: 16GB x2 DDR5-6000 CL30.
Power Supply: Corsair RM1000e.
Unlocking the 60 FPS Framerate Limit
Elden Ring features a 60 FPS framerate limit on PC, regardless of your monitor’s refresh rates. This can be unlocked using the “Elden Ring FPS Unlocker and More.” You can download the tool from this GitHub link.
Before you run the tool, you need to enforce “V-Sync Off” from the NVIDIA control panel.
In the NVIDIA control panel, open “Manage 3D Settings” and select Elden Ring from the drop-down list.
Scroll to the bottom of the game profile, and set “V-Sync” to off.
Run the FPS Unlocker to set your desired frame rate limit, and launch the game using the included button.
The game will disable online mode whenever you’re running this tool, but everything else will run as intended without any glitching or artifacts.
Elden Ring: Resolution Scaling & Graphics Presets
Elden Ring averaged 133 FPS at 4K “maximum” settings on our GeForce RTX 4090/Core i9-13900K rig, with lows of 100.6 FPS. The 1080p and 1440p averages aren’t much higher, both falling short of 140 FPS with 1% lows of 112 FPS. There’s a clear CPU bottleneck at lower resolutions which we’ll look at closer to the end.
There is a mere 16% performance difference between the maximum and low graphics settings, with an average delta of 5-10% between two consecutive presets. Luckily, the RTX 4090 manages over 130 FPS at maximum settings, climbing up to 154 FPS at the lowest.
Elden Ring Ray Tracing Performance
Elden Ring features ray tracing, improving rasterized ambient occlusion and shadows. Unfortunately, the impact on visual fidelity is subtle, unlike the performance. The game is 40% slower with ray tracing set to maximum, versus traditional rasterization. The medium, low, and high-quality presets perform roughly the same, producing 32-35% lower framerates than “Off”.
Ray tracing has a varying degree of impact on performance, varying from 40% at 4K to 14% at 1440p, and 10% at 1080p. More pixels mean more rays, and therefore a higher frametime penalty.
Antialiasing and Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)
Elden Ring leverages temporal anti-aliasing to improve the quality of thin objects and smoothen edges. It has an unnoticeable impact on performance, chipping off barely one or two FPS off the average.
Screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) is used for darkening corners, crevices, and isolated surfaces, thereby adding depth to the scene. Like anti-aliasing, it has a negligible impact on framerates, reducing the average FPS by 1-2 FPS at 4K.
Volumetrics and Reflection Quality
Volumetrics adjusts the quality of volumetric lighting rays and/or fog in areas obscured from the sun. Going from maximum to low grants a 4-5% performance uplift, though it may be higher in more foggy regions.
Reflections significantly impact performance, but since there aren’t many shiny or reflecting objects in Elden Ring, we see a minimal FPS dip of less than 4% going from maximum to low.
Grass and Effects Quality
Grass quality sets the render distance (from the player) at which grass is rendered in the game world. Lower settings mean frequent pop-ins and barren lands in the distance. It doesn’t significantly impact performance in Elden Ring. Our framerates increased from 136.4 FPS to 140.4 FPS or 3% upon switching from maximum to medium.
Effects adjust the quality of special effects like smoke, embers, fire, etc. Like grass, it subtly impacts performance, reducing framerates by 3% at maximum quality (versus low).
Shader and Lighting Quality
Shader quality sets the fidelity of in-game shaders, affecting how different textures and objects react to light. This setting has an insignificant impact on performance, costing a mere frame or two at 4K. Water surface quality adjusts water detail and similarly impacts framerates.
Lighting quality adjusts the fidelity of direct and pre-baked lighting. Like most other settings, it has a nominal (2-3%) effect on performance.
Shadows and Global Illumination Quality
Shadow quality sets the resolution of shadow maps which adjusts the detail of in-game shadows. It doesn’t much affect the FPS, with the maximum being 2 FPS slower than the lowest.
Global illumination calculates the indirect or diffuse lighting. It doesn’t impact performance, reducing the 1% lows by a paltry ~2 FPS.
Elden Ring VRAM Usage
Elden Ring goes easy on graphics memory, using less than 8 GB of VRAM at 4K “Maximum” with ray-tracing enabled and set to “Maximum.” QHD or 1440p uses slightly over 5 GB, while 1080p requires less than 5 GB of VRAM at the same settings.
At 4K, the lowest quality preset uses 5.76 GB VRAM, while “medium” and “high” utilize up to 6.5 GB. The highest quality settings take up to 7.5 GB.
Elden Ring CPU Bottleneck
Elden Ring can be surprisingly CPU-bound at 1080p “maximum” settings. We observed a GPU-busy deviation of 40% at this resolution.
1080p Max
The CPU bottleneck persists at 1440p with a GPU-busy deviation of 29%. Enabling ray-tracing or setting the resolution to 4K shifts the load to the GPU, almost (completely) eliminating the CPU bottleneck.
1440p Max
Optimized Settings for Elden Ring in 2024: Low-end and High-end PCs
XDefiant is Ubisoft’s foray into the free-to-play competitive PvP FPS market, pulling in factions, characters, and maps from its established game universes (Splinter Cell, The Division, and Watch Dogs). Released this year on May 21st, the game utilizes Ubisoft’s gorgeous Snowdrop engine, their most advanced engine powering games like Avatar, The Division 2, and the upcoming Star Wars Outlaws.
Currently Ubisoft’s biggest launch in history according to unique player count statistics, XDefiant is poised to be the “next Call of Duty” killer with the very first Season planned to launch on July 2nd. In this guide, we’ll go through every graphics setting and benchmark every option, to recommend the best graphics settings for XDefiant on PC.
The recommended options you can pick based on your PC’s power level (defined near the end of the article) and your FPS target (60, 144, or 240) will be showcased at the end.
Let’s start by looking at the official PC requirements. The following tests were conducted in the “Practice Zone” Map by running, gunning, and shooting flames through the Assault Course repeatedly, using the “Cleaner” class while benching it.
XDefiant PC Specs
To run the game at the “Low” preset settings at 1080p 60 FPS you require at least an Intel Core i7-4790K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (If you’re using an ARC GPU however, you’ll need Intel Core i3-10105F or the AMD Ryzen 3 3100). Pair that with at least an Intel ARC A380 (6GB with ReBar ON), NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti (4GB) or the AMD RX 5500 XT (4GB). Finish it with at least 8 GB of Dual Channel RAM and 35 GB of storage space, preferably an SSD.
Pushing it up to the recommended settings, corresponding to a “High” preset level at 1080p 60 FPS, you need an Intel Core i7-4790K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600, (Intel Core i3-10105F or the AMD Ryzen 3 3100 for Intel ARC GPU) paired with the Intel ARC A750 (8GB with ReBar ON), NVIDIA GTX 1060 (6GB) or the AMD RX 5500 XT (8GB) or higher. Top it off with 16 GB of Dual Channel RAM and 35 GB of storage space.
The game also offers specs for higher settings:
“Enthusiast” for 1440p 60 FPS High Graphics Preset
Before we dive into optimizing the game, we recommend configuring certain Windows and Display settings for the best performance before we even boot in. This should be standard for every game. First, make sure all unnecessary applications are closed.
Use “Ctrl + Shift + Esc” to open up Task Manager and turn off any applications you’re not using. Things like WhatsApp or Epic Games, etc tend to run in the background, shut them down. Do not touch the ones under “Windows Processes” though.
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.
Xbox Game Bar
Now go into the “Gaming” Setting from the sidebar. Click on Game Mode and make sure it is turned on. Next, in the “Captures Setting,” turn off all the options if you don’t intend to take screenshots or record the game.
If you’re playing on a laptop, make sure the power plan is turned to “High Performance” or equivalent and the correct GPU is selected, either in the Windows settings or the inbuilt app (such as the Alienware app). And always keep it plugged in while gaming unless that’s not an option. Finally, open the NVIDIA or AMD companion app and make sure the latest drivers are installed.
With that out of the way, let’s proceed to the display and graphics settings within the game. We’ll analyze each setting under the “Graphics” tab. The other tabs do not affect the performance. We’ll start with the “Basic” Options.
Overclock your Graphics Card
Overclocking GPUs is a fairly safe and easy process. If done right, it won’t void your warranty and can boost your gaming performance by at least 5-10%. Unlike CPUs, you don’t have to mess with the BIOS or worry about BSODs. All you need is MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision X (they work with GeForce and Radeon cards regardless of the AIB):
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.
Via G.Skill
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.
Note: You can turn on the “FPS Display” and a few other metrics over in the “Gameplay & UI” menu in the Settings. Make sure to keep this on if you don’t have any other overlays and want to check the FPS you are getting while optimizing and turn it off later if needed.
Display Mode
Keep this at “Fullscreen“. This ensures the game gets maximum performance and other apps do not distract from it. Other display modes can lead to stutters and unwanted FPS drops.
Resolution Scaling: 1080p vs. 1440p vs. 4K Benchmarks
Note: The “Max” setting is everything in the graphics options set to the maximum possible value. By default, even the game’s “Ultra” setting doesn’t max out every setting, plus enables V-Sync by default which we disabled for the testing processes. We’ll use this “Max” option as the reference preset.
Changing resolutions is the first thing to do when optimizing a game. You should use the resolution that matches your monitor’s. But it also depends on your system. As a thumb-rule, a higher-end system should target 4K, mid-range 1440p, and low-end 1080p. However, if you are playing competitively, you will want to prioritize frames over resolution and try keeping it closer to 1080p (or even lower if needed).
We benched our highest preset, “Max”. Switching from 4K to 1440p, the performance increases by 95%, and from 4K to 1080p, it increases by 188%. From 1440p to 1080p, that’s a 48% increase. The age-old adage is of course true, lower resolution means better frames. Keep it at your monitor’s resolution and only change it if all else fails.
Other “Video Settings”
Refresh Rate: Keep this at the maximum possible value for your monitor.
Display Monitor: Choose the primary monitor that you use for gaming.
Brightness: Personal Preference
Contrast: Personal Preference.
Best Graphics Preset for XDefiant
Once the target resolution has been selected, we can start with optimizations to increase our frames. We’ll look at the “Resolution Scale” option near the end as that is something only to be touched when all else fails. The HDR options are also personal preferences and don’t impact performance.
XDefiant has four presets going from “Low”, “Medium”, “High” and “Ultra”. As mentioned, “Max” is our preset with every setting maxed out for reference. Let’s see how they stack up.
The GeForce RTX 4080 Super (and the Core i7-14700KF) manage an average of 139.8 FPS at the 4K “Ultra” setting in XDefiant. The following are the presets ranked in percentage gains going down from the “4K Ultra” preset to the “4K Low” Preset:
Max: None
High:49%
Medium:82%
Low:187%
Try out the preset that nets your target frames (be it 60, 144, or 240) and we’ll proceed to toggle each option to maximize frames while maintaining visual fidelity and a competitive advantage in the coming sections.
V-Sync Mode and Framerate Limit
V-Sync helps synchronize frames with your monitor’s refresh rate to help prevent screen-tearing, at the cost of added latency. Only turn this on if you’re getting noticeable screen tears, otherwise, keep this “off” to get an uncapped refresh rate and lower latency.
Framerate Limit helps prevent jitters due to framerate fluctuations to achieve consistent graphics and network performance. Keep this “off“, unless you’re getting constant stutters. In that case, turn it on and keep it slightly above your monitor’s refresh rate to get the best experience possible. This only goes up to 200, and won’t help with 240 Hz or higher refresh rates.
Shadow Quality
Shadow Quality controls the resolution and quality of the shadow maps used in-game. This setting controls both the dynamic shadows for objects and characters as well as the sun-casted shadows. Going from Very High to Low decreases the resolution and quality of shadow maps, but dynamic shadows from players are maintained at any setting to provide fair play, and hence can’t be turned off.
Going down from Max, the gains are:
High:0%
Medium:0%
Low:1.3%
We see barely any difference between the high-end options, while Low brings us an FPS boost.
Visual Fidelity: “High“, there’s no benefit to turning it down here.
Competitive: “Low“. As mentioned before, player shadows are still maintained and you get the maximum FPS boost, plus like in Spot Shadows, lesser environmental shadows mean the players are easier to notice in darker areas or hiding in corners of buildings for easier pickings.
Spot Shadows
Spot, or spotlight shadows, sets the number of spotlight shadows that can appear onscreen. These are shadows cast by individual static light sources, so more shadows being cast gets more taxing on the GPU.
Going down from the High Spot Shadows settings, we get the following gains:
Medium:0.9%
Low:1.1%
Visual Fidelity: Stick with “Medium“.
Competitive: “Low“. A lack of spot shadows means the enemies are easier to see, as areas won’t get darkened. Remember, none of these settings affect the player shadows to keep it fair, and only affect environmental object shadows.
Spot Shadow Resolution
This setting adjusts the resolution of the shadow maps The low and medium settings contain artifacts and look jagged.
Going down from Max, the gains are:
High:1.5%
Medium:1.6%
Low:2.2%
Visual Fidelity: “High” to get a healthy FPS boost while avoiding jagged edges in shadows.
Competitive: “Low” to get the maximum FPS boost.
Contact Shadows
Contact shadows improve the shadow quality and accuracy, and are similar to ambient occlusion except not baked in but real-time. They calculate the screen space lighting on a per-pixel and per-light basis, helping objects feel grounded rather than floating. Consequently, it’s more taxing in areas with more light sources.
Here, the “Off” setting removes all contact shadows, “Sun Low” keeps only the contact shadows from the sunlight, “All Low” keeps contact shadows from all light sources but at a lower resolution while “All High” keeps it all high res.
As before, this does not impact any player shadows to keep it fair. Going down from “All High”, we get:
All Low:0.3%
Sun Low:2%
All Off:2.6%
Visual Fidelity: Keep this at “All Low” for the perfect balance of all contact shadows and some frames.
Competitive: “Off“. No contact shadows? The enemy is more exposed! Also, huge frames.
Particle Detail
This setting adjusts the particle density and the quality of particle effects emitted by particle systems, such as the ones from bullets, grenades, fires, etc. The higher the setting, the more particles present in the scene.
As seen above, Ultra and High lie in a similar range, while Medium and Low lie in their range with a significant FPS boost. Going down from Ultra, the gains here are:
High:0.3%
Medium:1.1%
Low:1%
Visual Fidelity: “High” to account for extra dips due to more explosions etc while maintaining a healthy particle density and quality.
Competitive: “Low” as there’ll always be instances where particle counts abruptly increase and we want the least impact possible.
Volumetric Fog
This setting modifies the resolution and quality of volumetric fog to create clearer light shafts and fog effects, noticeable in places where a bulb or the sun shines through the foggy areas.
As seen above, this setting has a massive impact on frames compared to the other settings. Going down from Ultra we get the following benefits:
High:8%
Medium:16%
Low:18%
Visual Fidelity: “Medium” for a significant FPS increase while maintaining a decent fog cover.
Competitive: “Low” to get the highest frames. Additionally, no fogginess means easier enemy detection. This does not affect smokes and other player-made effects.
Global Reflection Quality
Global Reflection Quality controls the reflection details in the environment by setting the rendering frequency and resolution of global scene reflections produced by large objects, such as tall buildings and scenery. At low and above, we get access to cube maps in the reflections. (No ray tracing is available in this game)
As seen above, you get a slight FPS increase in turning it down, by around 0.6%. This setting does not affect player reflections.
Visual Fidelity: “Medium” for a significant FPS increase while maintaining a healthy reflection amount.
Competitive: “Low” to get the highest frames and least environmental reflections as distractions.
Local Reflection Quality
Local Reflection Quality is similar to the previous setting, except instead of larger objects, this is for nearby smaller objects and screen space reflections in puddles, etc. The lowest “Off” setting disables all reflections here, including player reflections.
Going down from “Very High” to “Off” we get the following gains:
High:8.5%
Medium:10.4%
Low:12.1%
Off:19.2%
Visual Fidelity: “Medium” for a significant FPS increase while maintaining a healthy reflection amount.
Competitive: “Low” to keep player reflections intact. Turning this “Off” is an option if you feel player reflections will not affect your competitive ability as there’s a big FPS jump of 6%.
Vegetation Quality
The vegetation quality setting in this game doesn’t seem to affect the vegetation density or pop-in distance, but rather just the resolution and ambient occlusion levels.
Visual Fidelity: “High” to keep that grass green and frames unchanged.
Competitive: “Low” just to stay on the safer side of the holy frames.
Sub-Surface Scattering
Controls the transmission of light through translucent objects, such as skin or plastics.
There’s a surprising 1.2% increase in frames upon turning this off. It’s recommended to keep this “Off” in visual fidelity and competitive scenarios as you won’t notice it in regular gameplay.
Ambient Occlusion
Ambient occlusion is the soft shadows and indirect lighting from the environment, typically using Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO). In this game, it enhances the quality of the ambient shadows through shadow resolution scaling and there’s no setting to turn it off.
Turning down AO has a significant FPS boost, in the following ranges:
High:4%
Medium:8%
Low:9%
Visual Fidelity: “Medium” to get a healthy FPS boost while maintaining decent AO.
Competitive: “Low” for max FPS boost as players or their shadows are not affected by this.
Object Detail
This setting controls the level of detail by changing the polygon count in the meshes of the objects in the game. This affects the 3D depth detail of items, which is different from texture quality. The higher the setting, the more detailed the object’s geometry, and the higher the CPU load.
As seen above, going down from 100 doesn’t grant any notable gains.
Visual Fidelity: “Between 100 to 60“
Competitive: “Between 50 to 10” as going too low will result in low poly objects and improper shadowing, resulting in a disadvantage.
Extra Streaming Distance
This setting controls the distance at which objects will get rendered or drawn into view. A lower setting means a nearer render distance, which means faraway objects will not be rendered and will pop in more. An important thing to note is that this does not affect the distance at which you can see players.
This setting is mainly memory intensive (VRAM and RAM both), so lowering this is only necessary if there are memory limitations.
Visual Fidelity: “Between 6-10” depending on your memory budget.
Competitive: “Between 0-5“, having this at 0 has no drawbacks and will save maximum memory.
Water Quality
This setting changes the level of water simulation physics and realistic translucency.
The Practice Zone doesn’t have much water, yet we saw a slight performance increase. It’ll be only more noticeable on the other maps.
Visual Fidelity: “Medium“
Competitive: “Low or Medium” depending on how much you can use water physics such as from footsteps for a competitive advantage.
Terrain Quality
This one adjusts the “fidelity” or quality of the terrain. This means uglier rocks that jut out more against sand with lower-resolution textures.
This setting doesn’t impact performance.
Visual Fidelity: “High“
Competitive: “Medium“
Sharpening, Lens Flare, Chromatic Aberration
Sharpen makes everything, well, sharper. This means that blurriness induced due to anti-aliasing and other factors can be eliminated, and enemies can be easier to spot. But this ultimately comes down to personal preference. Stick to what you prefer.
Lens Flare turns on/off the simulation of the internal reflections and scattering of light caused by a camera lens’s non-uniform optical characteristics.
In other words, the shiny circle things we see when looking at the sun, etc. No performance impact at all.
It’s recommended to keep it “Off” to avoid unnecessary flashes, but it’s a personal preference.
Chromatic Aberration has no FPS impact either and is purely a personal preference.
DirectX Version and CPU bottlenecks
XDefiant includes DX11 and DX12.
At first glance, it may appear DX 11 is giving us higher frames here. Let’s have a deeper look.
DX 12DX 11
The yellow lines indicate the “GPU-Busy Deviation”, which says how long the GPU had to wait for the CPU to hand it data, representing a CPU bottleneck. In DX12, we have a consistent “15%” GPU-Busy Deviation, while DX 11 only has a mere “1%.” We also noticed significantly less VRAM and RAM usage with DX11 on our systems.
DX12DX11
The results may vary from system to system, but we recommend using “DX11” (ie keep DX12 off) for the best performance and FPS boost with lesser memory usage. However, if you experience stutters with DX11, switch back to DX12 as it is supposed to be more stable on modern systems.
Resolution Scale
Resolution scaling is a way to massively increase performance at the cost of resolution (added blurriness in upscaling). We’ve kept this at the end since it is always recommended to play at native. If you are still struggling with frames after trying out all the optimized settings above, it is time to try upscaling.
By default, the game starts at a Render Scale of “100”, which means it is rendering at the native resolution. Going down from 100 we get the following boosts:
85:23%
75:42%
50:100%
So if you’re struggling with performance after all the previous optimizations, reduce it to 85. If you need higher framerates still, reduce it to 75 and 50 and check your FPS Do note that you want to keep this as high as possible and find the sweet spot that nets you your target FPS. Too low will be too blurry and a disadvantage.
Triple Buffering, Reduced Latency, NVIDIA Reflex
Triple Buffering improves framerate stability but adds a small amount of input latency. In our tests, the FPS improvement was not worth the loss of latency, so keep this “Off“
Reduced Latency is supposed to reduce input latency at the cost of frames. Turning this off resulted in a minor FPS increase but a much bigger CPU bottleneck. Keep this “On“
We got a “28%” GPU-Busy Deviation on turning Reduced Latency Off, compared to “15%” when on.
Reduced Latency Turned Off
NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency is an NVIDIA GPU-only solution similar to the last option. This further reduces input latency. “On + Boost” increases GPU power draw by optimizing latency even in CPU-bound cases. In our tests, turning this off led to the least CPU bottleneck of 1%, On gave us 7% and On+Boost gave us 15%. The FPS had no changes either. Keep this at “On + Boost” or at least “On” if you have an NVIDIA GPU.
Additional Settings
Under Documents -> My Games -> XDefiant there should be a file named “bc_gfx_settings_unauthenticated” which can be opened with Notepad.
This file contains information on the current graphics settings which can be changed beyond the in-game menu. The game automatically recreates this file every time it’s launched, so there’s no need for a backup. The trick is to right-click, go into properties, and change it to “read-only” after you’re done. That way, the game cannot change it on launch.
In our testing, changing “fog = 2” to “fog = 0” and “parallax mapping2″ to false helped slightly increase frames. We tried lowering the shadow qualities but that resulted in a buggy experience.
Interestingly, we find here the settings for “rtgi” (ray-traced global illumination), “rtreflections“, and “rtshadows“, all turned off by default. Turning this on here appears to enable ray tracing in the game. Feel free to play around with it, however, we recommend keeping it off to avoid glitches and better performance.
Best PC Settings for XDefiant in 2024?
Here are the optimized settings for high-end and low-end PC configurations targeting 60 to 240 FPS:
High-end
Midrange
Low-end
Resolution & FPS Target
4K 144 FPS 1440p 240 FPS
1440p 144 FPS 1080p 240 FPS
1080p 144 FPS
Display Mode
Fullscreen
Fullscreen
Fullscreen
Refresh Rate
Highest
Highest
Highest
Triple Buffering
On
Off
Off
Reduced Latency
On
On
On
NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency
On + Boost
On + Boost
On + Boost
DX12 Renderer
On
Off
Off
V-Sync
Disabled
Disabled
Disabled
Framerate Limit
Off
Off
Off
Shadow Quality
Ultra
High
Low
Spot Shadows
High
Medium
Low
Spot Shadow Resolution
High
Medium
Low
Contact Shadows
All High
All Low
Off
Particle Detail
High
Medium
Low
Volumetric Fog
High
Medium
Low
Global Reflection Quality
High
Medium
Low
Local Reflection Quality
High
Medium
Low
Vegetation Quality
High
High
Low
Sub-Surface Scattering
On
Off
Off
Ambient Occlusion
Very High
Medium
Low
Object Detail
100
60-100
10-50
Extra Streaming Distance
10
6-10
0-5
Water Quality
High
Medium
Medium/Low
Terrain Quality
High
High
Medium
Sharpening
Personal Choice
Personal Choice
Personal Choice
Lens Flare
Personal Choice
Personal Choice
Personal Choice
Chromatic Aberration
Personal Choice
Personal Choice
Personal Choice
Resolution Scale
100%
100%
85% or lower
Here are our definitions of High-end, Midrange, and Low-end PCs:
Cyberpunk 2077 has had a roller-coaster of a journey. An unoptimized, broken game at launch to becoming one of the best-performing ray-traced titles, followed by an overhaul of the gameplay mechanics a year later. The Phantom Liberty DLC was incredibly well-received, winning awards, and brought the game back onto the most-played charts. Here’s how Cyberpunk 2077 (2.0) performs in 2024, and the best graphics settings for your PC.
Windows/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
Turn on “Optimizations for windowed games” 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 “Hardware Accelerated GPU scheduling.”
Xbox Game Bar and Game Mode
Go to Windows settings->Gaming tab-> Game Mode. Ensure Game Mode is enabled.
The Windows power plan is best set to “High Performance” or equivalent. Furthermore, if you’re playing on a laptop, keep it plugged in unless that’s not an option.
Finally, open the NVIDIA or AMD companion app and ensure the latest graphics drivers are installed.
Overclock your Graphics Card
Overclocking GPUs is a fairly safe and easy process. If done right, it won’t void your warranty and can boost your gaming performance by at least 5-10%. Unlike CPUs, you don’t have to mess with the BIOS or worry about BSODs. All you need is MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision X (they work with GeForce and Radeon cards regardless of the AIB):
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 1-click memory overclocks that save you the trauma of testing every frequency and timing.
Via G.Skill
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.
Cyberpunk 2077 Fantom Liberty: System Requirements (RT Off)
Minimum for 1080p “Low” at 30 FPS:
Processor: Core i7-6700 or Ryzen 5 1600.
Graphics card: Geforce GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 580 8GB or Arc A380.
VRAM: 6 GB.
Memory: 12GB. Storage: 70 GB SSD.
Recommended for 1080p “High” at 60 FPS:
Processor: Core i7-12700 or Ryzen 7 7800X3D.
Graphics card: Geforce RTX 2060 Super or Radeon RX 5700 XT or Arc A770.
VRAM: 8 GB.
Memory: 16 GB.
Storage: 70 GB SSD.
For 4K “Ultra” at 60 FPS:
Processor: Core i9-12900 or Ryzen 9 7900X.
Graphics card: Geforce RTX 3080 or Radeon RX 7900 XTX.
VRAM: 12 GB.
Memory: 20 GB.
Storage: 70 GB NVME.
Cyberpunk 2077 Fantom Liberty: Ray Tracing System Requirements (RT On)
Minimum for 1080p “Ray Tracing Low” at 30 FPS:
Processor: Core i7-9700 or Ryzen 5 5600.
Graphics card: Geforce RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 6800 XT or Arc A750.
VRAM: 8 GB.
Memory: 16 GB.
Storage: 70 GB SSD.
Recommended for 1080p “Ray Tracing Ultra” at 60 FPS:
Processor: Core i9-12900 or Ryzen 9 7900X.
Graphics card: Geforce RTX 3080Ti or Radeon RX 7900 XTX.
VRAM: 12 GB.
Memory: 20 GB.
Storage: 70 GB NVME.
For 4K Overdrive (Path Tracing) at 60 FPS:
Processor: Core i9-12900 or Ryzen 9 7900X.
Graphics card: Geforce RTX 4080.
VRAM: 16 GB.
Memory: 24 GB.
Storage: 70 GB NVME.
DLSS Frame Generation enabled.
Cyberpunk 2077: GPU Benchmarks
Cyberpunk 2077 runs better on AMD Radeon GPUs, at least when ray-tracing is disabled. The RX 7900 XTX soundly beats the RTX 4080 Super while the RX 7800 XT is well ahead of the RTX 4070 Ti Super at 1080p. Meanwhile, the RX 7700 XT is nearly as fast as the RTX 4070 and the RX 7600 handily beats the RTX 4060.
1440p and 4K aren’t any different. The GeForce RTX 4090 remains the fastest GPU, followed by the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and the RTX 4080 Super at #2 and #3, respectively. The RTX 4070 Ti Super edges past the RX 7800 XT at 1440p, beating even the 7900 GRE at 4K. The RX 7700 overtakes the RTX 4070, while the 7600 closes in on the 4060 Ti.
Ray tracing flips the tables on the Radeons. The RX 7900 XTX is only as fast as the RTX 4070 at 1080p (RT Ultra), while the 4060 Ti performs as well as the 7800 XT.
Increasing the resolution to 1440p slightly improves the placing of the AMD cards, but it’s nowhere near enough. The RX 7900 XTX, the fastest Radeon, manages to beat the RTX 4070 but is considerably slower than the 4080 Super.
Cyberpunk 2077: CPU Benchmarks
Cyberpunk 2077 runs well on Intel and AMD Ryzen CPUs. However, it performs slightly better on the 13th Gen Raptor Lake processors, versus the Ryzen 7000/7000X3D parts. The discrepancy is mostly observed in rasterization and disappears (or minimalizes) when ray tracing is enabled. Quite ironic.
Test Bench
CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K.
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero.
Cooler: Lian Li Galahad 360.
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
Memory: 16GB x2 DDR5-6000 CL30.
Power Supply: Corsair RM1000e.
The reference “4K Ultra” preset was used for comparison.
Cyberpunk 2077 scales from 159.5 FPS at 1080p “Ultra” to 69.9 FPS at 4K “Ultra” and 40.2 FPS at 4K “Ray tracing Ultra.” QHD or 1440p averages 80.8 FPS and 145.8 FPS with and without ray tracing, respectively.
The game averaged 150.4 FPS at 4K “Low,” 110.7 FPS at “Medium,” 89.4 FPS at “High,” and 69.9 FPS at “Ultra.” The lowest ray-tracing preset reduces the FPS to 62.5 FPS, while medium and ultra barely manage an average of 40 FPS.
Shadow Quality and Performance
Cyberpunk 2077 offers six shadow settings to tweak the shadow-casting meshes, resolution, distance, and cascading quality. These are “Local Shadow Mesh Quality,” “Local Shadow Quality,” “Cascaded Shadow Resolution,” “Cascaded Shadows Range,” and “Distant Shadow Resolution.”
“Contact Shadow Quality” controls the quality of the shadows’ edges.
“Local Shadow Mesh Quality” controls the detail of the shadow-casting meshes. Higher settings produce more detailed object meshes, enhancing the shadow complexity.
“Cascaded Shadows” reduce shadow aliasing by rendering higher resolution depth textures near the viewer and lower far away. They are usually used for shadows cast by the sun over a large terrain.
Fortunately, all these shadow techniques have a negligible impact on performance, reducing frame rates by less than 1 FPS, even with all set to the lowest quality setting.
Volumetric Fog and Cloud Quality
Volumetric Fog is among the more taxing graphics technologies used in Cyberpunk 2077. Going from “Ultra/High” to Medium/Low” boosts framerates by approximately 10-12%.
Volumetric Clouds don’t affect in-game performance, though that might change depending on your location and ambient weather.
Texture Filtering, Decals, Crowds, and Screen Space Reflections
Anisotropy (texture filtering) notably impacts texture quality, especially in the wilderness, but didn’t tank frame rates on our system. The same can be said for “Dynamic Decal Quality,” “Improved Facial Lighting Geometry” and “Crowd Density.”
Screen Space Reflections is the most taxing non-RT graphics setting in Cyberpunk 2077. Going from “Off” to “Psycho” reduces framerates by nearly 3x, from 112 FPS to 42.8 FPS. “Ultra” is 60% slower, averaging 69.9 FPS, while “High” and “Medium” are 29% and 15% slower, respectively.
Mirror Quality, Color Precision, and Subsurface Scattering
Level of Detail (LOD), subsurface scattering, and mirror quality don’t affect the performance, although LOD may behave differently in the outskirts of Night City and the wilderness.
Color precision quality improves performance by 5% at the “low” setting. The visual impact is negligible.
Ambient Occlusion Performance
Ambient Occlusion dramatically affects in-game realism by rendering ambient shadows while moderately impacting the performance. Cyberpunk 2077 is up to ~10% faster with ambient occlusion switched off (versus “Ultra”).
Ray Tracing and Path Tracing Performance
The performance impact of ray tracing greatly varies from the settings used and the in-game resolution. Ray-traced reflections/shadows are (much) less taxing than ray-traced lighting, which calculates indirect/diffused lighting. Ray-traced reflections and local shadows reduce framerates by ~10% (each), while sun shadows are 14-15% slower.
Ray-traced lighting reduces FPS by nearly 40% in Cyberpunk 2077, with a slight difference between “Medium” and “Ultra.” “Psycho” is 47% slower than the base non-RT “Ultra” quality preset. Enabling all ray-tracing settings with RT-lighting at “Ultra” and “Psycho” nets average framerates of 39 FPS and 36 FPS.
Path tracing (overdrive mode) is less scary with frame generation and ray reconstruction (supported on all GeForce RTX GPUs). In 4K “Overdrive” mode, the RTX 4090 averages less than 20 FPS. Frame generation “DLSS Quality” pushes the frame rates up an average of 75 FPS, with the balanced and performance presets posting 88.6 FPS and 107 FPS, respectively.
Upscaling and Frame Generation Performance
Upscaling and frame generation are quite useful in Cyberpunk 2077, especially if you plan to use ray tracing or path tracing. DLSS “Quality” is ~90% faster than 4K native, while “Balanced” produces 2.25x higher frame rates. The “Performance” preset is 2.64x faster, averaging 95.4 FPS at the RT “Psycho” settings.
FSR 2.2 is slightly slower than DLSS due to ray reconstruction, which improves performance (and quality) on the RTX GPUs.
DLSS 3 “Quality” and frame generation make Cyberpunk 2077 2.75x faster than 4K native, “Balanced” mode increases the lead to 3.30x, while “Performance” is a whopping 3.80x faster.
Cyberpunk 2077: VRAM Usage
Cyberpunk 2077 uses up to 8 GB of VRAM (graphics memory) at 1080p “Ultra,” 1440p ups it to 8.7 GB, while 4K peaks at 9.64 GB. Enabling ray-tracing significantly increases the VRAM usage across three resolutions. We’re looking at 10 GB at 1080p, 10.6 GB at 1440p, and 15 GB at 4K.
At 4K, the graphics memory consumption varies from 7.4 GB at “Low” to 9.64 GB at “Ultra” and ~15 GB at “Ray tracing Ultra.”
Cyberpunk 2077: CPU Bottlenecks
Cyberpunk 2077 is GPU-bottlenecked at 1440p and 4K, with a slight CPU bottleneck at 1080p (non-RT). We observed a GPU-busy deviation (frame time/GPU-busy time) of 30% at 1080p “Ultra.”
1080p Ultra1080p RT Ultra
Enabling ray-tracing makes the game more GPU-limited, with a GPU-busy deviation of 10%.
1440p Ultra
Higher resolutions produce lower GPU-busy figures (lower still with ray-tracing).
Best Settings for Cyberpunk 2077 in 2024: Low-end and High-end PCs
Optimized Settings
High-end PC
Mid-Range PC
Low-end PC
Resolution
4K (3840 × 2160)
1440p (2560 x 1440)
1080p (1920 x 1080)
Target FPS
60 FPS+
60 FPS+
60 FPS+
Field of View
100
100
90
Motion Blur
Up to you
Up to you
On
Depth of Field
Up to you
Up to you
On
Texture Quality
Ultra
Ultra
6 GB GPUs: High 8 GB GPUs: Ultra
Texture Filtering
AF 16x
AF 16x
AF 8x
LOD
High
High
High
Contact Shadows
On
On
On
Improved Facial Lighting
On
On
On
Local Shadow Mesh Quality
High
High
High
Local Shadow Quality
High
High
High
Cascaded Shadows Range
High
High
High
Cascaded Shadows Resolution
High
High
High
Distant Shadow Resolution
High
High
High
Volumetric Cloud Resolution
Ultra
Ultra
Ultra
Volumetric Fog Quality
Ultra
Ultra
Medium
Maximum Dynamic Decals
Ultra
Ultra
Ultra
Screen Space Reflections Quality
Psycho
Ultra
Medium
Subsurface Scattering Quality
Ultra
Ultra
Ultra
Ambient Occlusion
Ultra
Ultra
Ultra
Color Precision
High
High
High
Mirror Quality
High
High
High
Upscaling
DLSS/FSR Quality
DLSS/FSR Balanced
DLSS/FSR Balanced
FPS Gains on disabling/lowering each graphics setting, versus 4K Ultra: Settings not included didn’t impact framerates
Best Ray Tracing Settings for Cyberpunk 2077 + Overdrive Mode
Ray Tracing Settings
High-end PC
Mid-Range PC
Low-end PC
Ray-traced Reflections
On
On
On
Ray-traced Local Shadows
On
On
On
Ray-traced Sun Shadows
On
On
On
Ray-traced Lighting
Psycho
Ultra (Medium for Radeon GPUs)
Ultra (Off for Radeon GPUs)
Path Tracing
Only with FG
Only with FG
Only with FG
Frame Generation (for Overdrive Mode)
DLSS FG “Quality”
DLSS FG “Balanced”
DLSS FG “Balanced”
FPS Gains on enabling only one ray tracing setting at a time, versus 4K RT Max “Psycho”
Radeon users are advised to disable ray-traced lighting and path tracing. GeForce RTX 40 series players can max out the ray-tracing settings as frame generation provides an ample performance boost.
High-end (4K)
Mid-range (1440p)
Low-end (1080p)
CPU
Core i7-13700K/Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Core i5-13600K/Ryzen 5 7600X
Less than: Core i5-12400/Ryzen 5 3600
GPU
RTX 4070 Ti Super/RX 7900 XT
RTX 4070/RX 7800 XT
Less than: RTX 4060/RX 7600
Memory
32GB (dual-channel)
16GB (dual-channel)
Less than: 16GB (dual-channel)
Cyberpunk 2077: Best Steam Deck Graphics Settings
For an in-depth look at the performance of Cyberpunk 2077 on the Steam Deck.
PUBG: Battlegrounds, or PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, is the original granddaddy of Battle Royale games and the progenitor of this genre in gaming. Released in 2017, the game is still going strong 7 years later if numbers on the official Steam player count are anything to go by. PUBG ranks among the top 3, only beaten by Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2.
The game is old enough to run on most PCs, but in this guide, we’ll go through every graphics setting and benchmark every option, to objectively decide the best graphics settings for PUBG: Battlegrounds on PC. The recommended options you can pick based on your PC’s power level (defined near the end of the article) and your FPS target (60, 144, or 240) will be showcased at the end.
Let’s start by looking at the official PC requirements. The following tests were conducted in the “Erangel” Map by dropping near the “Mansion” area multiple times dodging death as we benched it, part of the currently running “Season 29” of PUBG: Battlegrounds.
PUBG 2024 Official PC System Requirements
To run the game at the “Very Low” settings, you require at least an Intel Core i5-4430 or AMD FX-6300, both CPUs released way back around 2012-13. Pair that with at least an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 (2GB) or the AMD Radeon R7 370 (2GB), which are fairly newer GPUs compared to the CPUs. Finish it with at least 8 GB of RAM and 40 GB of storage space, preferably an SSD.
Pushing it up to the recommended settings, corresponding to a “Medium” settings level, you need an Intel Core i5-6600K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600, paired with the NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060 (3GB) or the AMD Radeon RX 580 (4GB) or higher. These cards came out around the same time as the game. Top it off with 16 GB of RAM and 50 GB of storage space.
Our Test Bench
CPU: Intel Core i7-14700KF.
Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z790 Gaming X AX.
Cooler: Asus ROG Strix LC II 360.
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super.
Memory: 16GB x2 DDR5-6000 CL36.
Power Supply: Antec HCG 850W.
Windows/ System Settings to Optimize
Before we dive into optimizing the game, we recommend configuring certain Windows and Display settings for the best performance before we even boot in. This should be standard for every game. First, make sure all unnecessary applications are closed.
Use “Ctrl + Shift + Esc” to open up Task Manager and turn off any applications you’re not using. Things like WhatsApp or Epic Games, etc tend to run in the background, shut them down. Do not touch the ones under “Windows Processes” though.
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.
Xbox Game Bar
Now go into the “Gaming” Setting from the sidebar. Click on Game Mode and make sure it is turned on. Next, in the “Captures Setting,” turn off all the options if you don’t intend to take screenshots or record the game.
If you’re playing on a laptop, make sure the power plan is turned to “High Performance” or equivalent and the correct GPU is selected, either in the Windows settings or the inbuilt app (such as the Alienware app). And always keep it plugged in while gaming unless that’s not an option. Finally, open the NVIDIA or AMD companion app and make sure the latest drivers are installed.
With that out of the way, let’s proceed to the display and graphics settings within the game. We’ll analyze each setting under the “Graphics” tab. The other tabs do not affect the performance. We’ll start with the “Basic” Options.
Overclock your Graphics Card
Overclocking GPUs is a fairly safe and easy process. If done right, it won’t void your warranty and can boost your gaming performance by at least 5-10%. Unlike CPUs, you don’t have to mess with the BIOS or worry about BSODs. All you need is MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision X (they work with GeForce and Radeon cards regardless of the AIB):
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.
Via G.Skill
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.
NVIDIA Highlights Auto Capture
Like the “Captures Settings” we turned off in the Windows optimizations, this can be “Disabled“. Unless you are looking forward to the game automatically capturing any highlights, such as kills or chicken dinners.
Display Mode
Keep this at “Fullscreen“. This ensures the game gets maximum performance and other apps do not distract from it. Other display modes can lead to stutters and unwanted FPS drops.
Resolution Scaling: 1080p vs. 1440p vs. 4K Benchmarks
Changing resolutions is the first thing to do when optimizing a game. You should use the resolution that matches your monitor’s. But it also depends on your system. As a thumb-rule, a higher-end system should target 4K, mid-range 1440p, and low-end 1080p. However, if you are playing competitively, you will want to prioritize frames over resolution and try keeping it closer to 1080p (or even lower if needed).
We benched the highest preset, “Ultra”. Switching from 4K to 1440p, the performance increases by 99%, and from 4K to 1080p, it increases by 186%. From 1440p to 1080p, that’s a 44% increase. The age-old adage is of course true, lower resolution means bigger frames. Keep it at your monitor’s resolution and only change it if all else fails.
Other “Display Settings” Under Basic
Keep the Lobby FPS Cap and In-Game FPS Cap “Unlimited“.
Smoothed Frame Rate: “Disable“.
Brightness is your personal preference.
Universal Brightness for All Maps recommended: “Enable“.
Best Graphics Preset for PUBG 2024
Once the target resolution has been selected, we can start with optimizations to increase our frames. We’ll look at the “Render Scale” option near the end as that is something only to be touched when all else fails. The FPP Camera FOV is also a personal preference and has no noticeable impact.
PUBG: Battlegrounds has five presets going from “Very Low”, “Low”, “Medium”, “High” and “Ultra”. Let’s see how they stack up. The GeForce RTX 4080 Super (and the Core i7-14700KF) manage an average of 106.9 FPS at the 4K “Ultra” setting in PUBG: Battlegrounds. The following are the presets ranked in percentage gains going down from the “4K Ultra” preset to the “4K Very Low” Preset:
High:25%
Medium:51%
Low:77%
Very Low:166%
Try out the preset that nets your target frames (be it 60, 144, or 240) and proceed to toggle each option to maximize frames while maintaining visual fidelity and a competitive advantage in the coming sections.
Anti-Aliasing Quality
Anti-aliasing is used to smoothen jagged edges, most noticeable on the borders of objects as “jaggies”. Turning it on helps smoothen those edges out and makes the image look more cohesive at the expense of a slight blurriness. Going down from Ultra to Very Low on Anti-Aliasing (AA), we get the following FPS:
High:1.8%
Medium:1.9%
Low:5.6%
Very Low:6.5%
The performance impact here is negligible.
For Visual Fidelity: “Ultra“
For competitive advantage: “Medium“. Makes things less blurry and gives a tiny uplift in FPS. Keeping it too low will make everything jaggy and you’ll confuse a bush for an enemy because they both look like triangles from far away.
Post-Processing
PUBG has combined a host of post-processing options into a single slider, which is a little annoying if you wish to change things individually. But as it stands, it controls bloom, ambient occlusion (SSAO), and lens flare effects.
Ultra has all the bells and whistles.
High removes the bloom effect from lights. Bloom is the luminous glow of certain objects in the game world.
Medium removes the lens flare effects.
Low seems to remove some lighting filters.
Very Low eliminates Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO). It removes the soft shadows and indirect lighting from the light sources in the environment.
Going from Ultra to Very Low
High:5%
Medium:9.2%
Low:9.4%
Very Low:34.3%
Visual Fidelity: Stick with “Medium” if you don’t mind losing the bloom and lens flare effects for a 9% boost.
Competitive: “Very Low“. Ambient Occlusion doesn’t matter when you’re trying to hit enemies. A lack of occlusion shadows means the enemies will pop out better, plus a huge FPS gain of 34%
Shadows
Shadow controls the resolution and quality of the shadow maps used in-game. This setting controls both the dynamic shadows for objects as well as the sun-casted environmental shadows. Going from Ultra to Very Low decreases the resolution and quality of shadow maps, but dynamic shadows from players are maintained at any setting to provide fair play, and hence can’t be turned off.
Ultra to Very Low
High: 6.5%
Medium: 9.1%
Low: 9.4%
Very Low: 11%
Visual Fidelity: “Medium“, game looks practically the same with a healthy FPS boost.
Competitive: “Very Low“. As mentioned before, player shadows are still maintained and you get the maximum FPS boost, plus like in SSAO, lesser environmental shadows mean the players are easier to notice in darker areas or hiding in corners of buildings for easier pickings.
Textures (And VRAM Usage)
Texture quality determines how detailed an object looks on the surface by changing the resolution of the loaded textures. This determines how much VRAM (GPU’s memory) is needed. Usually, this has negligible impact on FPS as it’s purely a VRAM-dependent issue, although certain factors such as PCIe bus speeds or a game’s optimization can cause outliers.
Task Manager -> Performance -> GPU.
As a rule of thumb for PUBG, if you have anything higher than 6 GB of VRAM, you can use “Ultra“. “High” is for 4 GB, “Medium” for 3 GB, and “Low” for 2 GB. Avoid “Very Low” unless you want to look at potato graphics.
The FPS gains are negligible compared to the loss in visual fidelity. Low polygon textures don’t help in competitiveness either, as you won’t be able to distinguish between an enemy and the potato-like car behind them.
Visual Fidelity: “Ultra” if you have 6 GB or higher VRAM.
Competitive: Also “Ultra” if you have 6 GB or higher VRAM.
Effects
Effects control the quality of gameplay elements, such as reflections, dynamic lights, quality of smoke, and particle effects (gunshots, muzzle flashes, etc). Once again, since it’s all combined into one setting, we can’t change these individually.
Going down from Ultra to Medium decreases the dynamic lighting quality and number of particles rendered.
Going further down to Low removes reflections (seen mostly on water surfaces) and makes the smoke look more pixelated.
Very Low makes the smoke look even worse and has the least number of particles.
Turning down effects does offer significant FPS boosts. This was recorded in a non-combat area without gunfire. At times of active combat, you’ll see even higher benefits to turning this down. Going down from Ultra, we get:
High:14%
Medium:18%
Low:20%
Very Low:25%
Visual Fidelity: Keep this at “Medium” for the perfect balance of particles, reflections, and frames. Any lower, and you lose reflections.
Competitive: “Very Low“. Lack of reflections can mean people underwater can be seen easily. Low-quality smoke allows for good frames and also to see enemies quickly. However, if you hate how pixelated smoke looks and want to see more density, “Medium” is also fine since you still get an 18% boost in FPS.
Foliage
This setting controls the density and the distance at which foliage (trees, bushes, etc) pops in. Lower quality means lower foliage density and nearer render distance, which means faraway foliage will not be rendered and will pop in more.
Curiously this setting did not affect the FPS
The “Ultra” foliage setting even nets higher frames than “Medium” and “High”. Similar results were seen on repeated tests. I suspect that the reason is that this is a CPU-intensive process, and scaling the foliage options didn’t change the load on the GPU which was the bottleneck here. If you have a weaker CPU, the changes should be more noticeable.
Visual Fidelity: “Ultra” if your CPU is modern enough and you see no dips.
Competitive: “Low/Very Low“, because having lesser foliage means you can see the enemies much easier in the distance and pick them out if they’re trying to hide in a bush that doesn’t exist on your end.
View Distance
This setting controls the level of detail of distant objects and changes their render distance, similar to the foliage option. A lower setting means far away objects are not rendered. An important thing to note is that this does not affect the distance at which you can see players, including vehicles.
Similar to foliage, this setting is more CPU-intensive. Since our bottleneck was the GPU instead, we noticed barely any difference in our tests, but you might experience higher differences on a lower-end CPU.
Visual Fidelity: “Ultra” if your CPU can handle it. Otherwise, turn it down as per personal preference of render distance.
Competitive: “Medium“. Going too low makes objects not appear, and even though players are visible, they could be hidden behind objects not rendered. If your CPU can handle it, push for High or Ultra since there is minimal FPS penalty.
Sharpen, V-Sync, Motion Blur
Sharpen makes everything, well, sharper. This means that blurriness induced due to anti-aliasing and other factors can be eliminated, and enemies can be easier to spot. But this ultimately comes down to personal preference. Stick to what you prefer.
V-Sync helps synchronize frames with your monitor’s refresh rate to help prevent screen-tearing, at the cost of added latency. Only turn this on if you’re getting noticeable screen tears, otherwise, keep this off to get an uncapped refresh rate and lower latency.
Motion Blur in a game like PUBG is highly recommended to be kept disabled. This is because motion blur introduces blurring on movement to help blend frames together, but this means even enemies will get blended into that mess and you won’t see them.
DirectX Version
PUBG includes DX11, DX11 Enhanced, and DX 12. DX12 is still in “beta” in this game.
DX12 gave us worse frames than the other options. DX11 was almost the same as the Enhanced version. This varies from PC to PC, but we recommend keeping this at “DirectX 11 Enhanced“ for a mix of stability and frames.
Render Scale
Render scaling is a way to massively increase performance at the cost of resolution (added blurriness in upscaling). We’ve kept this at the end since it is always recommended to play at native. If you are still struggling with frames after trying out all the optimized settings above, it is time to try out upscaling.
PUBG features a spatial upscalar instead of FSR 2 or DLSS
By default, the game starts you off at a Render Scale of “120“, which means it is rendering above the selected resolution and downscaling it, making it look sharper but also impacting performance.
Going from “120” to “100” (ie native rendering) gives us a 39% increase in FPS.
The minimum value of “70” gives us a whopping 140% increase in FPS, but then the game looks blurry.
So if you’re struggling with performance after all the previous optimizations, reduce it to 100. If you need higher framerates still, reduce it by 5 at a time and check your FPS. Do note that you want to keep this as high as possible and find the sweet spot that nets you your target FPS.
PUBG 2024: CPU Bottleneck
If you’re playing PUBG: Battlegrounds at 4K “Ultra”, you’ll likely be completely GPU-bound. Bringing it down to 1440p or 1080p introduces a negligible CPU bottleneck of 3-4%. Reducing the graphics settings to “Very Low” or “Medium” similarly impacts the CPU-GPU dynamics, with the GPU-Busy deviation not crossing 6%.
4K Ultra1440p Ultra1080p Ultra
PUBG: Battlegrounds was notorious for not being optimized back in the day, but it appears modern computers can crunch through it and it runs pretty well in 2024 on at least the “Erangel” map. Let us know if you’re facing any stutters on your PC in any other scenarios.
Additional Settings
Under the “Gameplay” tab of the options, “Disabling”Inventory Character Render will further aid your frames. This is your character’s 3D render in the inventory menu each time you open it. If you like how it looks, leave it on, otherwise disable it as mentioned, especially for competitive games.
Under the “Audio” tab, make sure “Weapon Sound Effects” is set to “Remastered” and “HRTF” enabled. These help you pinpoint your enemies more easily in spatial audio.
Best PC Settings for PUBG in 2024?
Here are the best graphics settings for PUBG in 2024 for low-end and high-end PCs:
F1 24 (F1 2024) is out on Steam, EA, Xbox, and Epic Games for $70. It can also be played using Game Pass or the EA Access pass for a limited duration. We tested F1 24, including all the graphics settings, resolution, and upscaling technologies, and have compiled our findings below. We’ll highlight the best settings for F1 24 depending on your PC specs and configuration, for an optimal 60 FPS experience. Here are the official system requirements, followed by the ray tracing performance.
The reference “4K RT Ultra” preset was used for comparison, with DLSS set to DLAA.
Windows/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.
Xbox Game Bar and Game Mode
Now go into the “Gaming” Setting from the sidebar. Click on Game Mode and make sure it is turned on. Next, in the “Captures Setting,” turn off all the options if you don’t intend to take screenshots or record the game.
If you’re playing on a laptop, make sure the power plan is turned to “High Performance” or equivalent and the correct GPU is selected, either in the Windows settings or the inbuilt app (such as the Alienware app). And always keep it plugged in while gaming unless that’s not an option. Finally, open the NVIDIA or AMD companion app and make sure the latest drivers are installed.
Overclock your Graphics Card
Overclocking GPUs is a fairly safe and easy process. If done right, it won’t void your warranty and can boost your gaming performance by at least 5-10%. Unlike CPUs, you don’t have to mess with the BIOS or worry about BSODs. All you need is MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision X (they work with GeForce and Radeon cards regardless of the AIB):
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.
Via G.Skill
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.
F1 24 Resolution Scaling & Graphics Presets
F1 24, like its predecessors, is wholly GPU-bound at 4K regardless of the graphics settings used. Our GeForce RTX 4090 produced an average of 305 FPS at 4K “Lowest,” 226.5 FPS at 4K “Low,” 206 FPS at 4K “Medium,” 166 FPS at 4K “High,” and 81 FPS at 4K “Ultra.”
From 80.9 FPS at 4K “Ultra,” the game nets 136 FPS at 1440p and 174 FPS at 1080p using the same graphics settings.
In conclusion, F1 24 scales exceptionally well with the display resolution and the graphics quality settings.
F1 24: Ray Tracing Performance
F1 24 doesn’t feature a separate ray tracing preset. However, it does include a set of ray-tracing technologies, including ray-traced reflections, shadows, ambient occlusion, and DDGI (Dynamic Diffuse Global Illumination or diffuse lighting). Unsurprisingly, reflections cost the most. Together with transparent reflections, ray-traced reflections reduce the average framerates by 56%.
Ray-traced ambient occlusion, shadows, and diffuse global illumination have a much more modest impact on performance, reducing framerates by 7.5%, 7.7%, and <1%, respectively. With all five ray-tracing settings disabled, F1 24 runs a whopping 91% faster, the averages going from 80 FPS to 153 FPS.
Lighting and Shadow Settings
Lighting and shadow quality have a negligible impact on performance, mainly reducing the lows by a few FPS. F1 24 employs a combination of rasterization and ray tracing lighting, each shading different regions of the race track.
Disabling RT doesn’t worsen the performance impact of rasterized lighting techniques either. Like their ray-traced counterparts, lighting and shadows have a minimal effect on framerates.
PostFX and Particle Quality
PostFX or postprocessing sets the visual quality of late-stage filters such as motion blur, depth of field, and other motion-based effects. It doesn’t impact the performance by a noticeable degree.
Particle quality impacts the fidelity of sparks, smoke, dust, and other particulate matter. Turning off particles grants a 3-4% performance boost in F1 24.
Reflection Quality and Performance
F1 24 employs “Screen Space Reflections” or SSR for mirror and car reflections. Like many of the above graphics settings, it has a negligent impact on the average framerates but reduces lows by up to ~10% at 4K.
Weather Detail, Vegetation Quality, and Crowds
Weather detail controls the intensity of weather effects, such as rain droplets on the race track and cars. We measured a paltry 6% reduction in performance at the ultra preset, compared to medium/low.
Crowd quality is another graphics setting with almost no performance penalties. We observed slightly lower lows at ultra, but that’s about it.
Ground cover and tree quality set the visual fidelity of trees and other ground vegetation outside the track. The performance impact varies from track to track but in our case (Japan) it was within the margins of error.
Ambient Occlusion, Texture Filtering, and Variable Rate Shading
F1 24 features three ambient occlusion implementations, including HBAO+, CACAO, and ASSAO. Horizon-based Based Ambient Occlusion+ (HBAO+) uses a physically based algorithm that calculates the ambient shadows with depth buffer sampling. This increases the number of samples per pixel, and the coverage of the AO. HBAO+ is an optimization of HBAO and doubles the shading detail while reducing the render time by a third.
Adaptive Screen Space Global Illumination (ASSAO) is implemented similarly to HBAO+ but is built on an open-source framework. Combined Adaptive Compute Ambient Occlusion (CACAO) is an open-source implementation developed by AMD for the RDNA graphics architecture. All three implementations perform roughly the same.
Anisotropic filtering, skidmarks, high-quality hair, and variable rate shading are settings that have a negligible impact on framerates and are best left enabled.
F1 24: Upscaling and Frame Generation
Finally, we have upscalers and frame generation. F1 24 features DLSS 3, AMD FSR 2, and Intel’s XeSS. Unfortunately, frame generation is only available with DLSS 3, limiting it to RTX 40 series GPUs.
Aside from that, upscaling and frame generation run incredibly well, especially at higher resolutions like 4K. From just 80 FPS, DLSS Balanced pushes the average framerates to 143 FPS (+79%), while the performance preset nets 156 FPS (+95%). DLSS Frame Generation nets an average of 176.9 and 199 FPS using balanced (+200%) and performance (+250%) presets, respectively.
F1 24 VRAM Usage and CPU Bottlenecks
At the Ultra quality preset, F1 24 requires an 8 GB graphics card for 1080p, 9.5 GB for 1440p, and 11.5 GB for 4K.
At 4K, F1 24 uses ~12 GB, 10 GB, 8.6 GB, and 8 GB of graphics memory at the Ultra, High, Medium, and Low quality preset.
4K Ultra
F1 24 is well-optimized, showing no CPU limitations at 4K, regardless of the graphics preset. 1440p tends to be fairly CPU limited, with a GPU-Busy Deviation of 50-60%. Much of this is due to the ray-traced reflections and lighting, which you should disable if you have a lower-end CPU.
4K
At 1080p, the GPU-Busy Deviation drops to 33% largely due to the lower pixel count directly affecting ray tracing performance. You can bring this down to 10% or less by disabling some or all of the ray-tracing settings.
1440p1080p
F1 24 Optimized Settings for High and Low-end PC
Optimized Settings
High-end PC
Mid-Range PC
Low-end PC
Resolution
4K
1440p
1080p
Texture Streaming Quality
Ultra
Ultra
High (Ultra if your GPU has 8 GB VRAM)
Lighting Quality
Ultra
Ultra
High
Shadow Quality
Ultra
Ultra
High
Post Processing
Ultra
Ultra
Low
Particle Quality
Ultra
Ultra
Off
Reflection Quality
Ultra
Ultra
High
Car Reflections
Ultra
Ultra
High
Mirror Reflections
Ultra
Ultra
High
Weather Detail
Ultra
Ultra
Medium
Crowd Quality
Ultra
Ultra
Low
Ground Cover
Ultra
Ultra
High
Tree Quality
Ultra
Ultra
Medium
Ambient Occlusion
HBAO+
HBAO+/CACAO
HBAO+
Variable Rate Shading
On
On
On
Texture Filtering
16x AF
16x AF
16x AF
HQ Hair
On
On
On
Skidmarks
Ultra
Ultra
Ultra
Ray Traced Reflections
On
On
Off
Ray Traced Transparent Reflections
On
On
Off
Ray Traced Shadows
On
On
Off
Ray Traced Ambient Occlusion
On
On
Off
Ray Traced DDGI
On
On
Off
Ray Tracing Quality
High
High
Off
Upscaling
DLSS (DLAA)
DLSS/FSR 2 (Balanced/Quality)
FSR 2/DLSS (Quality)
High-end (4K)
Mid-range (1440p)
Low-end (1080p)
CPU
Core i7-13700K/Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Core i5-13600K/Ryzen 5 7600X
Less than: Core i5-12400/Ryzen 5 3600
GPU
RTX 4070 Ti Super/RX 7900 XT
RTX 4070/RX 7800 XT
Less than: RTX 4060/RX 7600
Memory
32GB (dual-channel)
16GB (dual-channel)
Less than: 16GB (dual-channel)
F1 24: Best Settings for Low-End PC
Here’s a detailed analysis of the game’s performance on a low-end PC (Radeon RX 6600).
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is out on Xbox and PC (GamePass & Steam), and we’re ready with our first optimization guide for high-end, midrange, and low-end PCs. Hellblade 2 is built atop Unreal Engine 5 and looks drop-dead gorgeous with generous use of Nanite and Lumen. It is intensive but makes up for it with highly detailed geometry, lighting, and weather effects. Fret not, for our optimized settings look almost as good as high.
Hellblade 2: Official PC Specs
Hellblade 2 has relatively steep system requirements on the GPU side. The CPU specs are fairly modest, thanks to the use of DirectX12, and its closer-to-metal capabilities. For 1440p “High” you’ll need a Core i7-10700K or AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600X. 4K drives the CPU requirements up to a Core i5-12600K or a Ryzen 7 5700X, both several-year-old processors.
On the GPU side, you’ll need a GeForce RTX 2070 or an AMD RX 5700 XT for 1080p “Medium,” and an RTX 3080 or AMD RX 6800 XT for 1440p “High.” 4K “High” demands a GeForce RTX 4080 or a Radeon RX 7900 XTX.
Hellblade 2 demands at least 6GB of VRAM at 1080p “Low,” 8GB at 1080p and 1440p “High,” and 12GB at 4K “High.” The system memory requirements are fixed at 16GB across the board along with 70GB of SSD storage.
Test Bench
CPU: Intel Core i9-13900K.
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero.
Cooler: Lian Li Galahad 360.
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
Memory: 16GB x2 DDR5-6000 CL30.
Power Supply: Corsair RM1000e.
To remove the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, add the following lines (without bullets) at the end of the “engine.ini” file located in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Hellblade2\Saved\Config\WinGDK:
[SystemSettings]
r.NT.AllowAspectRatioHorizontalExtension=0
r.NT.EnableConstrainAspectRatio=0
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.
Overclock your Graphics Card
Overclocking GPUs is a fairly safe and easy process. If done right, it won’t void your warranty and can boost your gaming performance by at least 5-10%. Unlike CPUs, you don’t have to mess with the BIOS or worry about BSODs. All you need is MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision X (they work with GeForce and Radeon cards regardless of the AIB):
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.
Via G.Skill
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.
Hellblade 2 PC Benchmark Tests
Hellblade 2 runs equally well on NVIDIA and AMD hardware. At 1080p, the GeForce RTX 4080 Super posts an average of 93.6 FPS, while the Radeon RX 7900 XTX nets 92.3 FPS. The RTX 4090 is 17% faster with an average framerate of 110 FPS. At the bottom of the chart, the RTX 4070 holds firm with 60 FPS, while the 4060 finishes with 37 FPS.
At 1440p, the RTX 4080 Super and the RX 7900 XTX average 70.2 FPS and 69.4 FPS, respectively. The 4090 retains its crown with a 16.5% advantage over the former. The RX 7900 XT averages 62 FPS, followed by the RTX 4070 with 41 FPS.
At 4K, the framerates drop below 45 FPS across the board. The RTX 4080 records its first notable win over the RX 7900 XTX (41 FPS vs. 35 FPS). The RTX 4090 is limited to 45 FPS, while the RX 7900 XT holds the fourth spot with 31 FPS.
Below testing was conducted using the RTX 4090 without the black bars.
Resolution Scaling & Graphics Preset Performance
Hellblade 2 shows extensive performance scaling with resolution, soaring from a mere 37 FPS at “4K High” to 93.6 FPS at “1080p High.” 1440p or QHD sits in between with a healthy 65.5 FPS.
The three graphics presets show similar differences in performance. From 37 FPS at “4K High,” the framerates get bumped to 70 FPS at “4K Low.” Medium produces an average of 57.5 FPS with lows of 50 FPS. Very stable indeed.
Post-processing adds various filters such as depth of field (DOF), motion blur, and certain hallucinatory effects felt by Senua throughout the game. We prefer to keep these off, but it’s a matter of personal preference as the performance hit is negligible. The same applies to “Effects Quality.”
Shadows and Reflection Quality
Shadows have a varying impact on performance (and quality). In the starting area, much of the shadowing is implemented using “Global Illumination” or Lumen, and hence this setting doesn’t much affect the performance at the start. High is 6-7% faster than Low.
The shadow quality setting has a subtle effect on shadows. At Low, the edges of the shadows become blurry and low-res, while High maintains a more defined shape. The latter also produces darker shadows that better retain their silhouettes in bright areas.
Reflections in Hellblade 2 are rendered using different techniques, producing mild to moderate detail (on and off-screen). As is usually the case with reflections, the performance hit is severe. “High” is 24% slower than “Low,” while “Medium” is 15% faster than the former, but 8% slower than the latter.
Hellblade 2 uses Unreal 5’s Lumen to implement global illumination (diffuse lighting, the lighting from indirect light sources such as shiny objects). In the starting area of the game, the performance impact of indirect lighting or GI is minimal, losing a handful of FPS going from “Low” to “High.”
Global illumination implements diffuse lighting, making the scene properly lit. The effect is very subtle which most players won’t notice.
Global Illumination: Image Comparisons (Click here)HighLow
Volumetrics sets the quality of volumetric rays (godrays), fog, clouds, etc. It mainly controls the density and resolution of fog and clouds in the first segment of the game.
“Medium” and “Low” performed similarly, while “High” was nearly 10% slower.
View Distance or LOD controls the distance (from the PC) at which objects disappear from view. Consequently, it affects the CPU and GPU workload. In the stormy starting sequence of the game, this setting didn’t have any notable impact on performance or visual fidelity. Primarily because most of the rocky terrain is generated using the highly efficient Nanite engine.
Foliage is usually quite taxing, but Hellblade 2 exhibited zero performance difference upon tweaking this option since we didn’t encounter any vegetation during our testing. We’ll update this section as we explore more of the game.
Foliage Quality: Image Comparisons (Click here)HighMediumLowFoliage quality controls the culling distance of vegetation and sets the grass density
DLSS, FSR & XeSS: Anti-aliasing, Upscaling and Frame Generation
Hellblade 2 features NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 (upscaling and frame generation), FSR 3 (upscaling), Unreal’s TSR (Temporal Super Resolution), and Intel XeSS (upscaling).
DLSS performed the best on our GeForce RTX 4090 and produced the highest-quality image output. The “Quality” preset was 52% faster than “Native + DLAA,” while “Performance” was twice as fast. FSR and TSR yielded similar numbers.
Unfortunately, Hellblade 2 only supports “Frame Generation” on the GeForce RTX 40 series cards. DLSS Frame Generation with “Quality” upscaling is 2.24x faster than native, while “Performance” nets 2.7x higher framerates. Frame Generation without upscaling is 53% faster than 1440p native.
Hellblade 2 CPU Bottlenecks
Hellblade 2 is mildly CPU-limited, with the bottleneck increasing with resolution. This is the opposite of what we usually see, implying that the resolution is linked to terrain LOD (nanite?). Higher resolutions (and higher upscaling qualities) render more detailed geometry in the distance.
1440p High4K High1080p High
The GPU-Busy deviation varies from 8% at 1080p to 16% at 1440p, and 26% at 4K. This explains why the CPU requirements for 4K “High” are higher than 1440p “High.”
Hellblade 2 VRAM Usage
Hellblade 2 requires 8GB of VRAM for 1080p and 1440p “High.” 4K pushes the requirement to 10GB. Lower presets reduce the graphics memory usage to 6-6.5GB at lower resolutions.
Hellblade 2 Optimized Settings for Low-end, Midrange, and High-end PCs
Below you’ll find the best graphics settings for Hellblade 2 for different PC configurations:
Graphics Settings
High-End PC
Midrange PC
Low End PC
Resolution
4K
1440p
1080p
Texture Quality
High
High
High (8GB VRAM)
Shadow Quality
High
High
High
Reflection Quality
High
Medium
Low
Draw Distance
High
High
High
Global Illumination
High
High
High
Foliage Quality
High
High
High
Volumetrics
High
High
Medium
Upscaling
DLSS/FSR 3 B
DLSS/FSR Q
DLSS/FSR B
High-end (4K)
Mid-range (1440p)
Low-end (1080p)
CPU
Intel Core i7-13700K/AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Intel Core i5-12600K/AMD Ryzen 5 5600
Less than: Intel Core i5-11400/AMD Ryzen 5 3600
GPU
NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti Super/AMD RX 7900 XT
NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti/AMD RX 7700 XT
Less than: NVIDIA RTX 4060/AMD RX 7600
Memory
32GB (dual-channel)
16GB (dual-channel)
Less than: 16GB (dual-channel)
Hellblade 2 Best Settings for Low End PC: RTX 3060, RTX 4060, RTX 4060 Laptop GPU
Here’s our add-on guide for low-end and entry-level PCs.
Ghost of Tsushima has launched on PC with a long list of graphics options for you to tweak. Developed by Nixxes, it’s another well-optimized port integrating the latest upscaling and frame generation technologies from AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel. We took the port for a spin across several systems, and have compiled our performance optimization guide below. It’s still being updated, so please be patient.
Test Bench
CPU: Intel Core i9-13900K.
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero.
Cooler: Lian Li Galahad 360.
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
Memory: 16GB x2 DDR5-6000 CL30.
Power Supply: Corsair RM1000e.
Ghost of Tsushima: Official PC Specs
Ghost of Tsushima has modest CPU requirements, demanding the three-year-old Core i5-11400 or the Ryzen 5 5600 for “Very High” settings.
Preset
Very Low
Medium
High
Very High
Avg performance
720p 30 FPS
1080p 60 FPS
1440p 60 FPS/ 4K 30 FPS
4K 60 FPS
Processor
Intel Core i3-7100 AMD Ryzen 3 1200
Intel Core i5-8600 AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Intel Core i5-11400 AMD Ryzen 5 5600
Intel Core i5-11400 AMD Ryzen 5 5600
Graphics
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 4GB AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 AMD Radeon RX 6800
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT
Memory
8 GB
16 GB
16 GB
16 GB
Storage
75 GB HDD space (SSD recommended)
75 GB SSD space
75 GB SSD space
75 GB SSD space
OS
Windows 10 64-bit
Windows 10 64-bit
Windows 10 64-bit
Windows 10 64-bit
On the GPU side, you need the GeForce RTX 3070 or the Radeon RX 6800 for High at 1440p 60 FPS or 4K 30 FPS. The highest quality preset requires a GeForce RTX 4080 or the Radeon RX 7900 XT, little extreme considering how old this game is.
You’ll need 16GB of main memory (preferably dual-channel) and 75GB of SSD storage for optimal load time in Ghost of Tsushima. The download size is a bit under 50GB.
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.
Overclock your Graphics Card
Overclocking GPUs is a fairly safe and easy process. If done right, it won’t void your warranty and can boost your gaming performance by at least 5-10%. Unlike CPUs, you don’t have to mess with the BIOS or worry about BSODs. All you need is MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision X (they work with GeForce and Radeon cards regardless of the AIB):
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.
Via G.Skill
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.
Ghost of Tsushima: Resolution Scaling & Graphics Presets
Ghost of Tsushima scales remarkably well with resolution. From 80 FPS at 4K “Very High,” we observed 159 FPS at 1080p “Very High” on our GeForce RTX 4090/Core i9-13900K configuration. QHD or 1440p performed closer to 1080p with an average of 133.5 FPS and 113.5 FPS lows.
At 4K, the framerates varied from 117.5 FPS to 80 FPS average, going from the “Very Low” to “Very High” quality presets. “High” performs 18% faster than “Very High” while “Medium” is only 5% faster than “High.”
Similarly, going from “Low” to “Very Low” grants a 5% performance uplift, and “Low” is 12% faster than “Medium.”
Texture filtering has a subtle impact on performance and quality. Trilinear and Anisotropic 16x are only a few FPS apart. Increasing the field of view (FOV)by 25 similarly has a negligible reduction in performance.
Texture Filtering: Image Comparisons (Click here)
Shadow Quality and Ambient Occlusion
Shadow Quality sets the resolution of shadow maps in the game. Generally, anything above Medium is good enough, but seeing the minimal performance hit, I’d recommend “Very High” to most gamers. Ultra is a cut above the rest and needs to be enabled individually.
Ghost of Tsushima features four different Ambient Occlusion techniques. Screen Space Ambient Occlusion Quality (Full Resolution), Screen Space Ambient Occlusion Performance (Half Resolution), Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion or HBAO+ (Half Resolution), and Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion (GTAO).
Shadow Quality: Image Comparisons (Click here)
GTAO provides the best coverage but is the most taxing of the bunch. SSAO Quality offers the best balance between quality and performance.
Ambient Occlusion: Image Comparisons (Click here)
Screen Space Reflections and Screen Space Shadows
Screen Space Shadows complement Ambient Occlusion, adding shadows for foliage and vegetation usually missed by shadow maps. Despite a nominal performance hit, they significantly improve visual fidelity in the dark.
Screen Space Shadows: Image Comparisons (Click here)
Screen Space Reflections render reflections for on-screen objects. These are low-fidelity reflections that have a subtle impact on gameplay. SSR is one of the most taxing settings in Ghost of Tsushima. They reduce frame rates by 8-9% on “Very High” and 4% on “High.”
Screen Space Reflections: Image Comparisons (Click here)
Level of Detail and Terrain Quality
Level of Detail controls the distance at which objects disappear from view and lose geometric detail. LOD has a subtle impact on performance, but can significantly alter your view in a given scene. “Low” is a mere 6% faster than “Very High.”
LOD: Image Comparisons (Click here)
Terrain quality sets the visual fidelity of the terrain, often by use of tesselation. The “Medium” and “High” settings perform roughly the same, while “Low” is 2-3 FPS faster.
Terrain Quality: Image Comparisons
DLSS, FSR & XeSS: Anti-aliasing, Upscaling, and Frame Generation
Ghost of Tsushima features several anti-aliasing techniques, including SMAA, SMAA T2x (temporal SMAA), TAA, DLAA, and more. SMAA, SMAA T2x, and DLAA were the fastest on our setup, while XeSS AA and FSR 3 Native AA were the slowest.
FSR 3 Frame Generation was the fastest upscaler + frame generator, followed by DLSS 3.5 using the “Performance” quality preset. DLSS 3.5 FG “Quality” was slower than DLSS upscaling using the “Performance” preset.
DLSS upscaling was faster than FSR 3 and XeSS on NVIDIA hardware which isn’t surprising, but the performance delta compared to the rest was minimal.
Ghost of Tsushima is mostly GPU-bound at “Very High” settings. Drop down to “High” or “Medium” and you’ll be CPU-limited instead.
1080p Very HighHigh
At 1440p “Low,” we were CPU-limited with a GPU-Busy Deviation of 66%. If you find yourself CPU-bound at your chosen settings, enable “Frame Generation.”
Low
Ghost of Tsushima: GPU VRAM Usage
Ghost of Tsushima uses close to 8GB of VRAM at 4K “Very Low.” Increasing the settings to “Medium” ups the graphics memory usage to 8.5GB, while “High” pushes it to 9.3GB. “Very High” peaks at 10GB. It’s a little higher than I’d have liked as this game looks average.
Ghost of Tsushima Optimized Settings for Low-end, Midrange, and High-end PCs
Graphics Settings
High-End PC
Midrange PC
Low End PC
Resolution
4K
1440p/4K
1080p/1440p
Texture Quality
Very High
Very High
Very High (8GB VRAM)
Texture Filtering
16x AF
16x AF
16x AF
Anti-Aliasing
DLAA/FSR 3
DLAA/FSR 3
FSR 3
Screen Space Shadows
Ultra
Very High
Very High
Screen Space Reflections
Very High
Very High
Very High
Terrain Quality
High
High
High
Level of Detail
Very High
Very High
Very High
Shadow Quality
Ultra
Ultra
Ultra
Ambient Occlusion
GTAO
SSAO Q
SSAO Q
Upscaling
DLSS/FSR 3 Q
DLSS/FSR Q
DLSS/FSR B
High-end (4K)
Mid-range (1440p)
Low-end (1080p)
CPU
Intel Core i7-13700K/AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Intel Core i5-12600K/AMD Ryzen 5 5600
Less than: Intel Core i5-11400/AMD Ryzen 5 3600
GPU
NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti Super/AMD RX 7900 XT
NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti/AMD RX 7700 XT
Less than: NVIDIA RTX 4060/AMD RX 7600
Memory
32GB (dual-channel)
16GB (dual-channel)
Less than: 16GB (dual-channel)
Ghost of Tsushima: Optimized Settings for the Steam Deck
Below, you’ll find the optimal settings for the Steam Deck, tweaked to grant you a stable 40-45 FPS at 720p in Ghost of Tsushima. More details here.
Graphics Settings
Steam Deck
Resolution
720p
Texture Quality
Medium
Texture Filtering
8x AF
Anti-Aliasing
FSR 3 (Quality)
Screen Space Shadows
Low
Screen Space Reflections
Low or Off
Terrain Quality
Medium
Level of Detail
Medium
Shadow Quality
Medium
Ambient Occlusion
SSAO Performance
Upscaling
FSR 3 (Quality)
Ghost of Tsushima: Optimized Settings for RTX 3060/4060 Laptop GPU
Graphics Settings
RTX 4060 Laptop GPU
RTX 3060 Laptop GPU
Resolution
1080p/1440p
1080p
Texture Quality
Very High
Very High
Texture Filtering
16x AF
16x AF
Anti-Aliasing
DLAA
DLAA
Screen Space Shadows
Very High
Very High
Screen Space Reflections
Very High/(Off at 1440p)
Off
Terrain Quality
High
High
Level of Detail
Very High
Very High
Shadow Quality
Very High
Very High
Ambient Occlusion
SSAO Q
SSAO Q
Upscaling
DLSS Q/DLSS B
DLSS Q
Ghost of Tsushima Optimized Settings for Low-end PCs
We found the following graphics settings optimal on lower-end PCs running Ghost of Tsushima. More details here.
Fallout 4 is among the best open-world post-apocalyptic RPGs of our time. Launched in November 2015 as Bethesda’s most anticipated title, the game has seen renewed action following the Fallout TV show. It is among the most played games on Steam with over 90K concurrent players this week. We returned to the wasteland to see how Fallout 4 holds up on modern GPUs (and CPUs) and recommend the best graphics settings for low-end, midrange, and high-end PCs.
Our Test Bench
CPU: Intel Core i9-13900K.
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero.
Cooler: Lian Li Galahad 360.
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
Memory: 16GB x2 DDR5-6000 CL30.
Power Supply: Corsair RM1000e.
The game was tested in and the around wilderness surrounding Concorde.
Be sure to disable “Weapon debris” or you’ll be greeted by never-ending crashes.
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.
Via G.Skill
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.
Fallout 4: Resolution Scaling and Graphics Presets
Fallout 4 scales incredibly well on high-end hardware. The game averaged 146 FPS at 4K, 296 FPS at 1440p, and 310 FPS at 1080p using the “Ultra” quality preset. A CPU bottleneck is likely limiting higher framerates at 1080p.
We see even wider deficits between the four graphics quality presets at 4K. While “Low” yields 362 FPS, “High” averages 224 FPS, while “Ultra” fails to hit 150 FPS.
As you’ll soon see, only a few settings are the primary drain on performance.
Volumetric Rays (Godrays) and Lighting Quality
Part of NVIDIA’s GameWorks library, godrays (or volumetric lighting) is the most intensive graphics setting in Fallout 4. Merely switching from “Ultra” quality to “High” grants you a 51% uplift in performance. “Medium” and “Low” perform roughly the same, delivering 72% higher framerates than “Ultra.” Completely turning off godrays improves your framerates by 87%.
Medium is the sweet spot, though high and ultra should do well on modern GPUs too
Lighting quality controls the direct lighting in Fallout 4. “UItra” tanks performance by ~12%, while “Medium” and “High” perform the same.
Lighting quality has a modest impact on performance
Ambient Occlusion and Shadow Quality
Ambient occlusion is a critical component of modern 3D graphics. Without it, most games look bland and 2-dimensional. SSAO and HBAO+ are about as taxing, both impacting frame rates by 14-15%.
HBAO+ provides better coverage and is as fast as base SSAO
Fallout 4 offers two settings to control shadow quality and range. Shadow Distance affects the distance (from the player) at which shadows are culled/not rendered, while Shadow Quality sets the resolution/level of detail of in-game shadows.
Shadow Distance modestly impacts performance, reducing frame rates by 15% at “Ultra” versus “Medium” which is as fast as “High.”
High-Medium Shadow quality won’t demean your performance
Shadow Quality affects performance and VRAM consumption. “Ultra” is 35% slower than “Low,” while “Medium” and “High” deliver similar frame rates, about 13% slower than “Low.”
Decals and Reflections
Decals are as taxing at “High,” and “Medium,” as when disabled. “Ultra” reduces your performance by 13% versus “High.”
Screen Space Reflections have a limited impact on visual fidelity in games like Fallout 4. If you’re strapped for frames, it’s better to disable it for a 16% boost in performance.
Distant Object Detail and Object Detail Fade
DOD or Distant Object Detail controls just that. The “Ultra” quality is 12% slower than “High” which is as fast as “Low” and “Medium.”
ODF or Object Detail Fade sets the distance at which objects are culled/removed from view. Like most other settings, the “Ultra” quality is 13% slower than the rest.
Anti-aliasing and Texture Filtering
Fallout 4 was designed with TAA in mind. Disabling it leads to an unreasonable amount of shimmering. Temporal anti-aliasing reduces your frame rates by 15% on average.
Anisotropic filtering is another essential of modern 3D graphics. The 8x is only 5% slower than “Off,” while 16x reduces your performance by 18%. The two look almost similar.
Object, Item, Grass, and Actor Fade
Object/Item/Grass/Actor Fade are the only four settings that can be tweaked in-game. The rest are configured from the Fallout 4 launcher. These control the distance at which characters (ally and enemy), clutter, crafting materials, in-game objects, and grass start to fade from view.
The maximum value (100%) is 10-15% slower than the lowest (0%), while the ones in between have a nominal impact on framerates.
I recommend keeping these settings at 70 or higher to reduce texture/mesh pop-ins and excessive culling.
Fallout 4 CPU Bottlenecks
Fallout 4 is fairly CPU-bound at 1080p. However, this won’t be the case if you have a low-end or midrange GPU that can’t hit more than 100 FPS on average.
1080p Ultra1440p Ultra
Ultra HD (4K) and QHD are mildly CPU-bound with a GPU-Busy Deviation of 8-11%. Reducing the graphics settings, unsurprisingly reduces the CPU bottlenecks.
HighLow
At High, we observed a GPU-Busy Deviation of 5%, which fell to a mere 3% at “Low.” Settings that reduce the draw distance of objects, characters, shadows, and vegetation reduce the CPU workload. Interestingly, the highest “Godrays” setting also impacts this metric.
Fallout 4 VRAM Usage
Fallout 4 uses less than 6GB of VRAM even with the ~60GB “High Resolution” texture pack. And that too at 4K “Ultra.” Graphics memory usage should be lower at 1080p and 1440p.
Fallout 4 Optimized Settings for Low-End, Midrange, and High-End PCs
Graphics Settings
High-End PC
Midrange PC
Low End PC
Resolution
4K
1440p/4K
1080p
Texture Quality
Ultra
Ultra
Ultra (6GB VRAM, or High)
Lighting Quality
Ultra
Ultra
Ultra
Anti-Aliasing
TAA
TAA
TAA
Volumetric Lighting (Godrays)
Ultra
High
Medium
Screen Space Reflections
On
On
On
Decals Quality
Ultra
Ultra
Ultra
Shadow Distance
Ultra
Ultra
Ultra
Shadow Quality
Ultra
Ultra
Ultra
Ambient Occlusion
HBAO+
HBAO+
HBAO+
Object Detail Fade
Ultra
High
High
Distant Object Detail
Ultra
High
High
Object/Item/Grass/Actor Fade
100%
100%
100%
Texture Filtering
16x AF
8x AF
8x AF
High-end (4K)
Mid-range (1440p)
Low-end (1080p)
CPU
Intel Core i7-13700K/AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Intel Core i5-12600K/AMD Ryzen 5 5600
Less than: Intel Core i5-11400/AMD Ryzen 5 3600
GPU
NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti/AMD RX 7900 XT
NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti/AMD RX 7700 XT
Less than: NVIDIA RTX 4060/AMD RX 7600
Memory
32GB (dual-channel)
16GB (dual-channel)
Less than: 16GB (dual-channel)
Fallout 4: Best Settings for RTX 3060/4060 Laptop GPU
Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of my favorite games of all time. The sheer replayability, dialogue, hidden areas, quests, and varied outcomes easily make it a 1000-hour adventure (multiple playthroughs). BG3 is a big step up from Larian’s previous project (Divinity Original Sin 2), playing more like a third-person RPG than a tabletop. While the initial areas are forgiving on most PCs, the third and final act set in Baldur’s Gate (the city) can be brutal on even high-end computers. Let’s look at the different graphics settings in Baldur’s Gate 3 and how they affect performance.
Baldur’s Gate 3 PC System Requirements
Baldur’s Gate 3 has fairly modest PC system requirements. On the lower-end, you need Intel’s 10-year-old Core i5-4690 or AMD’s Bulldozer-based FX 8350 CPU alongside the Maxwell-era GTX 970 or the RX 480 with 4GB or higher VRAM. You’ll also need 8GB of system memory and 150GB of SD storage for a smooth experience and quick loading times.
The recommended system requirements include the Core i7-8700K or AMD’s Ryzen 5 3600 and the GeForce RTX 2060 Super or the RX 5700 XT. The system memory requirements rise to 16GB and the graphics memory to 8GB.
We tested Baldur’s Gate 3 in Act 3 in the “Lower City” section near one of the ports with all 10+ companions in the party.
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.
Overclock your Graphics Card
Overclocking GPUs is a fairly safe and easy process. If done right, it won’t void your warranty and can boost your gaming performance by at least 5-10%. Unlike CPUs, you don’t have to mess with the BIOS or worry about BSODs. All you need is MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision X (they work with GeForce and Radeon cards regardless of the AIB):
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.
Via G.Skill
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.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is heavily CPU bottlenecked even on a powerful computer like ours. The Ultra quality setting nets roughly the same average frame rates at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K (just short of 100 FPS). The 1% lows are, however, notably lower at 4K.
Interestingly, the performance difference between 4K Ultra and 4K Low is only 10-12%. We’re likely CPU-limited considering how many NPCs roam the streets of Baldur’s Gate.
Models, Distance, and Level of Detail
Baldur’s Gate 3 has four different graphics settings that control the level of detail (LOD) of the NPCs and the game world. This usually involves increasing or decreasing the polygon count, and the CPU workload.
Model Quality is one of the most taxing graphics settings of Baldur’s Gate 3. The High option reduces performance by 10-15%, but “Medium” barely impacted the framerates in our case.
While “Model Quality” controls the mesh complexity of character models, “Detail Distance” and “Instance Detail” control how far different objects are visible in the game world and at what distance they disappear from your view. Both have a mild to moderate impact on performance, with “High” being 5-6% slower than “Low.”
“Animation Level of Detail” controls the complexity of character animations. Higher quality options make the interactions more intricate and elaborate. It has a nominal impact on performance, tanking the framerates by only 5% at “High.”
Shadow Quality, Ambient Occlusion, and God Rays
Shadow Quality is another setting that has a modest impact on performance. Going from “Ultra” to “Low” granted us just 3 additional FPS, while “Medium” performs similarly to “High.”
Dynamic crowds make the in-game NPCs more diverse, Ambient Occlusion (AO) applies soft shadows to crevices, edges, and corners, while God Rays adds volumetric light shafts to windows and other light sources.
“Dynamic Crowds” is the most taxing of these three settings, chipping 4-5 FPS off your framerates. Ambient occlusion costs roughly 1-2 FPS similar to “God Rays,” slightly lowering the lows.
Texture Filtering, Clouds, and Fog Quality
Texture filtering improves the clarity and detail of textures in the distance and oblique to the screen. Anisotropic Filtering 16x is 4-5% slower than the lowest options (2x and Trilinear). Like many other settings, the lows are more affected than the averages.
Cloud Quality is one of the settings that won’t much affect your experience in Baldur’s Gate 3. Higher quality options make the clouds more dynamic and 3D, while their lower counterparts make them seem blocky and 2D. The “Ultra” quality option reduces performance by 4-6%, while “High”, “Medium” and “Low” perform roughly the same.
The impact of “Fog” depends on your location in the game world. In most areas, the performance impact varies from 4-6% at “Ultra.”
Anti-aliasing, DLSS, FSR, and Upscaling
Baldur’s Gate 3 features AMD FSR 1, FSR 2, and NVIDIA DLSS 2. The first is a spatial upscaling technology that uses on-frame data to boost performance. The other two utilize temporal frame data (across different frames) to reconstruct lower-resolution images. Frame upscaling isn’t useful in Act 3 as you’re heavily CPU bottlenecked due to the sheer NPC density.
SMAA (Subpixel Morphological AA) is the most efficient, barely affecting performance but fails to smooth our thin objects like character hair, weapons, and vegetation. TAA and DLAA perform similarly but the latter is better at retaining detail.
Baldur’s Gate 3 CPU Bottlenecks
Unsurprisingly, Baldur’s Gate 3 is heavily CPU bottlenecked with a GPU-Busy Deviation of 26% at 4K “Ultra.”
4K Ultra TAA4K Medium TAA
High and Medium exhibit similar figures, but the “Low” preset increases the GPU-Busy deviation to ~41%. This implies that the frametimes are 41% higher than the GPU-Busy times.
4K Low TAA1440p Ultra TAA
The CPU bottleneck intensifies at 1440p and 1080p, increasing the GPU-Bust deviation to 52% and 58%, respectively. In case you were wondering, “Model Quality” and “Cloud Quality” have the highest impact on CPU usage.
1080p Ultra TAA
Baldur’s Gate 3 VRAM Usage
Baldur’s Gate 3 uses up to 8GB of graphics memory at 4K Ultra. The same settings utilize <7GB at 1440p and 1080p. Lowering the settings to “Medium” reduces the memory usage to <6GB, while “Low” consumes just over 5GB.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Optimized Settings for Low-End, Midrange, and High-End PCs
Optimized Graphics Settings
High-End PC
Midrange PC
Low End PC
Resolution
1440p/4K
1440p
1080p
Texture Quality
Ultra (for 12GB)
Ultra (for 8GB)
Ultra (for 6GB+)
Model Quality
High
Medium
Medium
Anti-Aliasing
TAA/DLAA
TAA/DLAA
SMAA/FSR 2/DLSS
Instance Distance
High
High
Medium
Distance Detail
High
High
Medium
Animation Detail
High
High
Medium
Fog Quality
Ultra
High
Low
Cloud Quality
Ultra
Medium
Low
Ambient Occlusion
On
On
On
God Rays
On
On
On
Shadow Quality
High
High
Low
Dynamic Crowds
On
On
Off
Texture Filtering
16x AF
8x AF
2x AF
High-end (4K)
Mid-range (1440p)
Low-end (1080p)
CPU
Core i7-13700K/Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Core i5-12600K/Ryzen 5 5600
Less than: Core i5-11400/Ryzen 5 3600
GPU
RTX 4070 Ti /RX 7900 XT
RTX 4060 Ti/RX 7700 XT
Less than: RTX 4060/RX 7600
Memory
32GB (dual-channel)
16GB (dual-channel)
Less than: 16GB (dual-channel)
Baldur’s Gate 3 Best Settings for Low-end PC: RTX 3060/Radeon RX 6600
Here’s a look at how Baldur’s Gate 3 performs on low-end GPUs such as the RX 6600, and the RTX 4060 mobile.
Optimized Graphics Settings
i5-12400F/RX 6600
Resolution
1080p
Texture Quality
Ultra
Model Quality
High
Anti-Aliasing
FSR 2 Quality
Instance Distance
Medium
Distance Detail
Medium
Animation Detail
Medium
Fog Quality
Low
Cloud Quality
Low
Ambient Occlusion
On
God Rays
On
Shadow Quality
Medium
Dynamic Crowds
On
Texture Filtering
8x AF
Baldur’s Gate 3 Best Settings for RTX 3060/RTX 4060 Laptop GPU
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.
Via G.Skill
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:
Texture Streaming Budget
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
Graphics Settings
Low End PC
Midrange PC
High-End PC
Resolution
1080p
1080p/1440p
1440p
Adaptive Resolution
0
0
0
Adaptive Supersampling
Off
Off
Off
Anti-Aliasing
Off
TAA
TAA
Texture Streaming Budget
Low
High
Very High
Texture Filtering
2x AF
8x AF
16x AF
Ambient Occlusion
Low
Medium
High
Sun Shadow Coverage
Low
Low
High
Sun Shadow Detail
Low
High
High
Spot Shadow Detail
Low
High
Very High
Volumetric Lighting
Off
Off
On
Dynamic Spot Shadows
Enabled
Enabled
Enabled
Model Detail
Low
High
High
Effects Detail
Low
High
High
Settings like “FOV,” “Sprint View Shake,” and “Ragdolls” are left to personal preference.
Since Apex is an old game that runs well on newer hardware, our definitions of the three tiers are different from usual:
