Farming Simulator 25 Optimization: Best Settings for PC

Farming Simulator 25 landed on Steam last month to a massive audience largely pleased with the release. It attained a peak concurrent player count of 136K, settling around 75K a month after the novelties had worn off. Although the game runs decently on most PCs, it suffers from several performance issues that limit framerates on low and high-end systems. Let’s have a look.

Windows/System Settings to Optimize

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

Farming Simulator 25: PC System Requirements

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Test Setup

• CPU: Intel Core i7-14700K.
• Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420.
• GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4090 FE.
• Motherboard: MSI PRO Z790-P WIFI.
• Memory: 16 GB x2 @ 6000 MT/s CL30.

Farming Simulator 25: Resolution & Graphics Preset Performance

Farming Simulator 25 suffers from a severe CPU bottleneck that hinders scaling across resolutions. Consequently, we obtained roughly similar framerates at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K at the “Ultra” quality preset on our Core i7-14700K machine.

Fortunately, the graphics settings produce better scaling, averaging 179 FPS at the lowest and 112 FPS at the highest quality “Ultra” graphics preset at 4K. Plenty of room for optimization.

Object, Foliage & Terrain Draw Distance & LOD

Object Draw Distance determines the distance from the player at which objects are culled from view. Reducing this setting can improve performance by over 10% at 4K. Most users are advised to set this to 100 or lower.

Foliage Draw Distance sets the render distance of grass and other ground vegetation. Setting it to the lowest quality can improve your performance by up to ~10%. It’s best set to 100 or lower.

LOD Distance sets the distance at which objects are reduced in geometric detail and replaced by low-polygon placeholders or culled from view. It affects everything from trees, buildings, terrain, and clutter. Reducing it can grant a 10% or higher FPS boost. We suggest setting it to 100 or lower.

Terrain LOD subtly impacts the visual fidelity of distant landscapes by adjusting various shaders including shadows, ambient occlusion, and lighting. Lower values disable all three for far-off regions. It only nominally impacts the game’s performance.

Shader Quality & Shading Rate

Shader Quality sets the intensity of various lighting shaders, including shadows, ambient occlusion, and global illumination. It also controls the tessellation or bump mapping shaders that alter the appearance of certain ground textures. Since the game is CPU-limited, it doesn’t have a notable impact on performance.

Shading Rate adjusts the frequency at which shaders are applied. Its impact is mostly evident in motion in the form of blurry shadows and missing ambient occlusion. The performance hit isn’t noticeable.

Screen Space Reflections & Shadows

Screen Space Reflections render low-resolution reflections of onscreen objects on visible glossy objects. Usually, this setting drastically reduces performance but in Farming Simulator 25, it doesn’t do much (likely due to the game being CPU bottlenecked).

SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion) renders ambient shadows along the ends, edges, and boundaries of objects. Like many of the other settings, it doesn’t notably impact performance.

Screen Space Shadows complement SSAO by rendering additional ambient shadows along foliage, vegetation, and crevices that aren’t covered by other settings. It reduces performance by 4-5% when enabled.

Atmosphere, Fog & Clouds

Atmosphere Quality enables high-quality 3D clouds with various layers. It doesn’t notably impact the game’s performance.

Volumetric Fog adjusts the resolution of in-game fog. Higher settings produce denser fog with higher draw distance than the corresponding lower-quality options.

Cloud Shadows enable/disable sun shadows cast directly by natural light. It drastically impacts the visual fidelity, but not the game’s performance.

Lighting & Shadow Quality

Light quality enables shadows and global illumination produced (primarily) by artificial light. At lower settings, many of the shadows are culled or replaced by low-resolution placeholders, while also disabling the dispersal of light. Reducing this setting can grant a 5% FPS boost at 4K.

Shadow Quality sets the resolution of bre-baked shadow maps, while Shadow Distance adjusts how far shadows are rendered from the player character. Disabling the former grants a 10% FPS bump, massively improving the lows (by +37%). Disabling them isn’t ideal as it makes the game unnatural.

• Soft Shadows enable soft, contact-hardened shadows. Disabling them produces unrealistic shadows with sharp silhouettes even on an otherwise bright sunny day.
• Shadow Map Filtering produces smoother shadows with lesser aliasing or artifacts. Neither of these settings impact performance.

Foliage Shadows enable low-quality shadows for grass and other ground vegetation. They subtly impact quality but substantially drain the framerates (+7%).

Max Shadow Lights determines the number of artificial lights casting shadows in the scene. It trivially impacts the performance and visual fidelity.

Mirrors, Terrain & Tire Tracks

Max Mirrors sets the number of reflecting mirrors (when you’re in a tractor or other vehicle) in the scene. It dramatically reduces the game’s performance at the higher quality settings (+12%).

Terrain Quality improves geometric detail by employing tessellation. It rapidly sub-divides existing geometry into finer meshes, removing any blocky surfaces. It minimally impacts performance.

Mesh Tessellation Volume sets the amount of tessellation applied to meshes (3D geometry) to improve the perceived detail. It doesn’t impact performance.

Max Tire Tracks sets the number of concurrent tracks produced by vehicles on deformable fields. It doesn’t notably reduce the game’s performance.

Upscaling & Frame Generation

Farming Simulator 25 is severely CPU-limited. Hence, upscaling doesn’t improve the game’s performance even at 4K. Fortunately, there are alternatives.

Frame Generation doubles the game’s performance at 4K, and is a necessity even if you’re running a high-end PC. We saw our framerates increase from 103 FPS to 204 FPS at 4K “Maximum” quality settings.

Farming Simulator 25: VRAM Usage

Farming Simulator 25 isn’t much of a VRAM hog. The game uses 6 GB and ~8 GB of graphics memory at 1080p and 1440p “Ultra,” respectively. At 4K, that number increases to 9 GB even with all the settings maxed out.

Farming Simulator 25: CPU Bottlenecks

Farming Simulator 25 is heavily CPU-bottlenecked, with a GPU-Busy deviation of 49% at 1080p “Ultra.” That implies a GPU utilization of just 50% during real-time gameplay.

QHD or 1440p “Ultra” exhibits a GPU-Busy deviation of 36% which increases to 50% or more if the graphics settings are lowered to High or less.

4K UHD reported an average deviation of 23% at the maximum quality settings. This figure also increases to over 35% if the graphics settings are reduced below Very High or High.

Farming Simulator 25: Performance Summary

Farming Simulator 25 is limited by its CPU bottleneck. The performance impact of different graphics settings will vary from PC to PC, depending on the CPU performance. Regardless, here are the most taxing settings from our testing:

• Object Draw Distance: This can grant a 15% performance boost. Moderately CPU tanking.
• Foliage Draw Distance: Can improve framerates by up to 10%. Moderately CPU intensive.
• LOD Distance: Provides a 10-12% FPS bump at the lowest setting.
• Shadow Quality: Can significantly improve your 1% lows. CPU demanding.
• Shadow Distance Quality: Can moderately improve your 1% lows.
• Foliage Quality: Increases framerates by 6-8% without much quality loss.
• Max Mirrors: Can improve FPS by 12% or more in-vehicle.

Farming Simulator 25: Optimized Settings for PC

Graphics Setting	High-end	Midrange	Low-end PC
Resolution	4K	1440p	1080p
FPS Target	180 FPS	144 FPS	90 FPS
Object Draw Distance	200	200	100-150
Foliage Draw Distance	200	200	100-150
LOD Distance	200	200	~100
Terrain LOD	200	200	200
Shader Quality	Very High	Very High	Very High
Shading Rate	High	High	High
Screen Space Reflections	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Screen Space Shadows	On	On	On
SSAO	Very High	Very High	Very High
Atmosphere Quality	Very High	Very High	Very High
Volumetric Fog	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Cloud Shadows	On	On	On
Lighting Quality	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Shadow Quality	High	High	Low
Shadow Distance Quality	High	High	Low
Soft Shadows	On	On	On
Shadow Map Filtering	On	On	On
Foliage Shadows	On	On	Off
Max Shadow Lights	10	10	10
Max Mirrors	7	7	1-2
Max Tire Tracks	400	400	400
Texture Quality	High	High	High
Terrain Quality	Very High	Very High	Very High
Mesh Tess Volume	200	200	200
Upscaling	DLSS|FSR Quality	DLSS|FSR Quality	DLSS|FSR Quality
Frame Generation	On	On	On

CPU	Core i9-14900K/Ryzen 7 7800X3D	Core i7-13700K/Ryzen 7 7700X	Core i5-12600/ Ryzen 5 5600
GPU	GeForce RTX 4080	GeForce RTX 4070 Super/Radeon RX 7900 GRE	GeForce RTX 3060/3060 Ti/4060
Memory	32GB (dual-channel)	16GB (dual-channel)	Less than: 16GB (dual-channel)
	High-end	Midrange	Low-end PC