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Flintlock The Siege of Dawn Optimization: Every Graphics Setting

The best settings for Flintlock: Seige of Dawn, benchmarks & image quality comparisons

Flintlock: Seige of Dawn is out on Steam, Xbox Game Pass, and consoles. Despite being an average-looking game (without ray-tracing), it is quite intensive on modern GPUs. Even the mighty GeForce RTX 4090 averages less than 40 FPS at 4K “Best” quality settings. Our optimization guide for Flintlock details the performance and quality impact of each graphics option on the game.

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.

Flintlock The Siege of Dawn: PC System Requirements

The base specifications for Flintlock are modest, requiring a quad-core Ryzen 3 3300X and a GeForce GTX 1060/Radeon RX 580 (6 GB+). The memory and storage requirements are also minimal at 8 GB and 30 GB, respectively. These are probably for achieving 30 FPS at 1080p “Low” quality settings.

The recommended specs include a Ryzen 5 3600X and a GeForce RTX 2060 Super or a Radeon RX 5700 (8 GB+). The memory requirement climbs up to 16 GB. This specification aims for 60 FPS at 1080p “High.”

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.

Flintlock Siege of Dawn: Resolution & Graphics Quality Presets

Flintlock: Siege of Dawn is highly GPU-intensive, going from 159 FPS at 1080p to 112 FPS at 1440p, and 38 FPS at 4K using the “Best” quality settings. A 4x decrease in performance on switching between 2 million (FHD) and 8 million pixels (UHD) sounds fair. Still, the framerate deficit between 4 million pixels (QHD) and 8 million pixels (UHD) is on the high side at about 3x.

This (likely) concerns geometry scaling with Nanite and perhaps other Unreal Engine 5 technologies.

The “Low” quality graphics preset is 90% faster than “Best,” with the performance deficit between two consecutive presets generally varying from 10-15%. Going from “High” to “Ultra” quality has the largest framerate penalty, with a 40% drop.

View Distance & Foliage Distance: LOD Scaling

View Distance sets the render distance of in-game objects and characters. Flintlock: Siege of Dawn also adjusts the range of various shading technologies, including but not limited to ambient occlusion, global illumination, and vegetation density. Interestingly, it mildly affects performance, reducing frame rates by 6-8% at the “Best” quality setting (versus “Low”).

LOD Scaling
Click here for distance scaling image comparisons

Foilage Distance is similar to view distance, except it only controls the density and rendering distance of vegetation, including grass, trees, and bushes. The ambient shadows and lighting affected by foliage are also scaled with it. Like view distance, foliage distance has a nominal impact on performance.

LOD Scaling
Click here for foliage distance comparisons

Post-processing & Effects Quality

Post-processing sets the quality of various late-stage effects, including motion blur, depth of field, bloom, lens flare, eye adaptation, and tone mapping. It has a mild to moderate impact on performance, with “Low” running 7-8% faster than “Best.”

Postprocessing
Click here for postprocessing comparisons

Effects Quality controls several graphics settings, including screen space reflections (SSR), refractions, material quality, ambient occlusion, and magic and fire effects. Flintlock: Siege of Dawn revolves around gunpowder and magic combat. Consequently, it drastically impacts performance, reducing framerates by up to 21% at the “Best” setting.

 Effects Quality
Click here for effects quality comparisons

Shadow Quality

Shadow Quality is the most intensive graphics setting in Flintlock: Siege of Dawn, reducing framerates by up to 62% at the highest setting. The performance drops from 158 FPS at “Low” to 98 FPS at the “Best” setting.

Shadow Quality
Click here for shadow quality comparisons

Upscaling & Frame Generation: DLSS & XeSS

Upscaling becomes necessary to play Flintlock at the highest-quality graphics settings. The game features Intel XeSS and NVIDIA DLSS in addition to frame generation. The DLSS “Quality” preset improves performance by 2.4x, while “Performance” is 3.4x faster than 4K native (~40 FPS).

Upscaling & Frame Generation

XeSS is slower than DLSS, at least on NVIDIA hardware, but features the “Ultra Quality” preset which can be slightly superior to DLSS “Quality.” DLSS Frame Generation is 4.5x and 3.45x faster than 4K native, averaging 180.5 FPS and 137.7 FPS at the “Performance” and “Quality” presets, respectively. The framerate deficit between higher upscaling and lower frame generation presets is negligible.

Click here for DLSS and XeSS upscaling comparisons

Field of View Scaling

Flintlock: Siege of Dawn lets you modify the third-person field of view from 60 to 105 degrees. We recommend (at least) 90 degrees, as anything below it can hinder immersion. Regardless, the performance impact of FOV is nominal.

Field of View Scaling
Click here for FOV comparisons

Flintlock Siege of Dawn: CPU Bottlenecks

Flintlock: Siege of Dawn is predominantly GPU-bound, with a GPU busy deviation of 8% and 5% at 1080p and 1440p “Best” quality settings. Reducing the graphics settings increases this value to 10% at 4K, but that’s the upper limit.

Flintlock Siege of Dawn: CPU Bottleneck
1080p Best
Flintlock Siege of Dawn: CPU Bottleneck
1440p Best

Flintlock Siege of Dawn: Textures & VRAM Usage

The game uses close to 10 GB of graphics memory (VRAM) at the “Best” quality settings at 4K. Reducing the settings to “High” and “Low” reduces the peak VRAM consumption to 8 GB and 6 GB, respectively.

Flintlock Siege of Dawn VRAM Usage

QHD or 1440p uses up to 7.3 GB of graphics memory, while 1080p peaks under 6.5 GB at the “Best” quality settings.

Flintlock Siege of Dawn VRAM Usage

Best Graphics Settings for Flintlock: Siege of Dawn

Optimized SettingsHigh-end PCMid-Range PCLow-end PC
Resolution4K (3840 × 2160)1440p (2560 x 1440)1080p (1920 x 1080)
Target FPS120 FPS144 FPS120 FPS
FOV10510590
Texture QualityBestBestBest
Anti-aliasingOffOffOff
Shadow QualityBestBestHigh
View DistanceBestBestBest
Foilage DistanceBestBestBest
Post ProcessingBestBestBest
Effects QualityBestBestHigh
UpscalingDLSS BalancedDLSS QualityDLSS Quality
Best Graphics Settings for Flintlock: Siege of Dawn
High-end (4K)Mid-range (1440p)Low-end (1080p)
CPUCore i9-12900K/Ryzen 7 7700XCore i5-12600K/Ryzen 5 5600Less than: Core i5-12400/Ryzen 7 3700X
GPURTX 4070 Ti Super/RX 7900 XTRTX 4070/RX 7800 XTRTX 3060/RTX 3060 Ti/RX 6600
Memory32GB (dual-channel)16GB (dual-channel)Less than: 16GB (dual-channel)

Areej Syed

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