Best Elden Ring Nightreign Settings PC & Optimization Guide

Elden Ring Nightreign is out on Steam and consoles. Despite being yet another crappy PC port, it has already amassed over 300K concurrent players on Steam. It lacks native v-sync, upscaling, >60 FPS, and other baseline PC features. Nightreign is a raw console port that runs well even on older systems. Here’s a look at its different graphics settings and how their performance impacts.

Windows/System Settings to Optimize

• Enable Resizable BAR.
• Turn on Game Mode.
• Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) and Windowed Optimizations.
• Use the Windows “High Performance” power profile and set your GPU power management mode to the same.
• Overclock your GPU if you’re narrowly missing the 60 FPS mark.
• Ensure you use the proper XMP/EXPO memory profile (if available).
• Here’s a guide with more detailed instructions.

Elden Ring Nightreign PC Specs

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Elden Ring Nightreign PC Optimized TLDR

If you’re facing performance issues, reduce the following graphics settings in order:

• Shadow Quality can be reduced to high without any notable quality loss (+4%)
• Volumetric Lighting can be reduced to the lowest without impacting visuals (+3-5%).
• SSAO can be disabled without drastically impacting the image quality (+5%).
• If you’re still experiencing low frame rates, you can reduce shadow or grass quality a notch. This induces a notable drop in fidelity.

Test Setup

• CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K @ 5.3 GHz.
• Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420.
• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT.
• Motherboard: MSI PRO Z790-P WIFI.
• Memory: 16 GB x2 @ 6000 MT/s CL30.
• Elden Ring Nightreign’s 60 FPS cap makes testing the game’s resolution scaling hard. We’ll add it as soon as a mod fix is available.

Elden Ring Nightreign Resolution Scaling

Elden Ring Nightreign scales decently across the three popular resolutions. We recorded an average of 80 FPS at 4K, 104 FPS at 1440p, and 114 FPS at 1080p using the maximum quality graphics preset. You can remove the 60 FPS cap using this guide.

Graphics Quality Presets

Elden Ring Nightreign exhibits ample performance scaling across its four graphics presets. AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 XT averaged the following at 5K (5120×2880):

• Maximum: 43 FPS (0%).
• High: 47 FPS (+9%).
• Medium: 57 FPS (+32.5%).
• Low: >60 FPS (+40%).

Antialising & SSAO

Elden Ring Nightreign features some form of temporal anti-aliasing, which reduces the average frame rates by 4-5%:

• Low enables temporal antialiasing at the cost of a single FPS drop.
• High adds a sharpening filter to tackle the associated blurring.

SSAO or screen space ambient occlusion enables self-contained shadows along edges, crevices, corners, and other occluded surfaces:

• Disabling it grants a 4-5% FPS boost.
• Anything higher performs the same.
• Medium enables baseline console-grade occlusion.
• High upgrades the AO coverage and intensity.
• Maximum further upgrades the range.

Depth of Field & Motion Blur

Turning off motion blur and depth of field provides a nifty 4-5% performance improvement, and should be the first thing you disable.

Shadow & Lighting Quality

Shadow Quality is the second-most intensive graphics setting in Elden Ring Nightreign. Reducing it to the lowest improves frame rates by up to 8%:

• Low disables most shadows, retaining only the larger silhouettes, often causing flickering.
• Medium subtly increases the shadow coverage and resolution (-1%).
• High marks a dramatic quality upgrade, enabling foliage shadows, covering intricate geometry, and eliminating artifacts (-4.5%).
• Maximum provides minor improvements, mainly for vegetation and finer terrain (-8%).

Lighting Quality adds shadows for artificial light sources, including candles, fires, and shiny spells. It doesn’t impact the performance or fidelity out in the wilderness, and costs only 1-2% FPS.

Effects & Volumetric Lighting Quality

Effects Quality sets flame detail, including magic flames, candle flames, and wildfire. Medium and higher quality options add bloom and light bleeding. Low is 4% faster than the higher options.

Volumetric Lighting adds additional shadows cast by the sun or moonlight. Higher quality options subtly increase shadow intensity and detail, most apparent with foliage. It costs only 1-2% FPS.

Reflection & Water Surface Quality

Reflection Quality sets the detail and casting distance of onscreen object reflections. These are low-resolution reflections cast on water and glossy surfaces:

• Disabling reflections boosts frame rates by 6%.
• High reduces the reflection detail (clarity).
• Low reduces the draw distance as well.
• Only applicable around water or glass surfaces.

Water Surface Quality sets the detail of ripples and waves on water surfaces, negligibly affecting the game’s performance.

Shader & Global Illumination Quality

Shader Quality improves indirect lighting quality from artificial sources. It’s mainly relevant indoors and doesn’t notably impact frame rates.

Global Illumination implements indirect lighting and additional shadows for the sun and moonlight. It doesn’t affect the performance:

• Medium only adds diffuse shadows.
• High brightens certain surfaces as well.

Grass Quality

Grass Quality is the most taxing graphics setting in Elden Ring Nightreign, reducing the game’s performance by 8-9% at higher quality options:

• Medium replaces all the tall, dense grass patches with smaller ones.
• High and maximum are pretty much the same, with the latter likely increasing the draw distance.

Elden Ring Nightreign: VRAM Usage

Elden Ring Nightreign uses under 7 GB of graphics memory at 1080p and 1440p, rising to 7.5 GB at 4K. Even 5K doesn’t exceed 9 GB, with lower quality options allocating slightly over 8 GB.

Like most From Software games, Elden Ring Nightreign doesn’t properly utilize high-end CPUs. The 60 FPS cap makes it hard to determine the GPU-Busy deviation.

Elden Ring Nightreign PC Optimized Settings

Graphics Options	High-end	Midrange	Low-end PC
Resolution	5K or 4K	4K or 1440p	1440p or 1080p
Texture Quality	Max	Max	Max
Antialiasing	High	High	High
SSAO	Max	Max	Max
Depth of Field	Max	Max	Off
Motion Blur	High	High	Off
Shadow Quality	Max	Max	High or Max
Lighting Quality	Max	Max	Max
Effects Quality	Max	Max	Max
Volumetric Lighting	Max	Max	High or Max
Reflection Quality	Max	Max	High or Max
Water Surface Quality	High	High	High
Shader Quality	High	High	High
Global Illumination	High	High	High
Grass Quality	Max	Max	High or Max

	High-end (4K)	Mid-range (1440p)	Low-end (1080p)
CPU	Core i7-13700K|Ryzen 7 7700X	Core i5-12600K|Ryzen 5 7600	Core i5-12400 AMD Ryzen 5 3600
GPU	GeForce RTX 4080 Super	GeForce RTX 4070 Super	RTX 3060|RTX 4060
Memory	32GB (dual-channel)	16GB (dual-channel)	Less than: 16GB (dual-channel)