Guides

FragPunk PC Optimization: Best Graphics Settings for 240-360 FPS

Areej Syed Follow on X Send an email March 19, 2025

FragPunk is the second recent Unreal Engine 5 title to drop its signature technologies, including Lumen, Virtual Shadows, and Nanite. Lo and behold, it’s one of the most optimized games based on Epic’s latest game engine. We achieved framerates of nearly 500 FPS using the highest quality settings at 4K after mild tweaking. Curious? Here’s our optimization guide for FragPunk.

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.

FragPunk PC Specs

Min

  • 1080p 60 FPS @ Low
  • OS: Windows 10 64-bit.
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-4790|AMD Ryzen 3 3100.
  • RAM: 8 GB.
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti|AMD RX 550|Intel Arc A380.
  • Storage: 40 GB.

Rec

  • 1440p 144 FPS @ Epic.
  • OS: Windows 10 64-bit.
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-10700K|AMD Ryzen 5 5600X.
  • RAM: 16 GB.
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060|AMD RX 5700XT|Intel Arc A750.
  • Storage: 40 GB

FragPunk: Graphics & Resolution Scaling

FragPunk runs incredibly well on PC. The game shows remarkable scaling across resolutions and presets: From 160 FPS at 4K to 329 FPS at 1440p and a whopping 406 FPS at 1080p. It would seem that the key to optimizing Unreal 5 lies in ditching its flagship technologies.

We recorded an average of 112 FPS using the maximum quality settings (+ray tracing) and 160 FPS without ray tracing at 4K. The epic (265 FPS), high (317 FPS), medium (420 FPS), and low-quality (454 FPS) presets exhibited up to 4x scaling!

Frame rates range from 112 FPS at maximum and 454 FPS at the lowest quality settings (4K)

DirectX 11 vs. DirectX 12

FragPunk features DirectX 11 and DirectX 12. Ideally, the latter should perform better on lower-end CPUs due to improved multi-core scaling. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. As evident below, DX11 is 10-15% faster than DX12 across all scenarios.

Interestingly, upscaling produces slightly smoother lows (1%) on the DirectX 12 port. Either way, the differences are minimal, so it’s up to you. On the plus side, DX12 includes ray tracing, but the implementation is sub-optimal as you’ll soon see.

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Frame pacing is slightly smoother with DX12

Ray Tracing & SSGI

FragPunk features ray-traced shadows, reflections, ambient occlusion, and global illumination. Unfortunately, there’s a massive caveat. Ray tracing introduces a CPU overhead that limits you to ~150 FPS, regardless of resolution. Consequently, upscaling is redundant with RT on higher-end GPUs.

RTGI vs. SSGI
  • Ray-traced shadows are broken and the option to enable them does nothing.
  • Individually disabling Global Illumination or Reflections doesn’t improve performance.
  • RT Ambient Occlusion is the only setting that grants an FPS boost (of 20%) when disabled.
RTAO vs. SSGI

SSGI or Screen Space Global Illumination is a rasterization-based GI technique that works well enough but is costly. It’s nowhere as good as RTGI and cuts frame rates by nearly 15% at 4K. SSGI is disabled by default and isn’t controlled by the global graphics preset.

Make sure to disable SSGI if using RTGI
Ray Traced Reflections

Ray Tracing substantially improves shadow/reflection precision and detail and accounts for offscreen objects.

Mesh & Shadow Quality

Mesh Quality adjusts the geometric detail of the scene. It nominally impacts performance, simplifying object LOD at lower quality options. Leave it at the highest setting.

Mesh Quality

Shadow Quality adjusts the shadow range, resolution, and contact hardening. The highest quality option is 8% slower than the lowest. High offering a balance between quality and performance.

  • Epic includes detailed contact hardening and volumetric shadows.
  • High reduces contact hardening quality and volumetric intensity. Optimal performance (2% slower)
  • Medium further reduces contact hardening quality, and almost disables volumetric.
  • Low disables contact hardening and dynamic (character) shadows.
Shadow Quality

Post Processing & Effects Quality

Post Processing enables late-stage pipeline effects, including ambient occlusion, glare, lens flare, tone mapping, exposure, and other blur effects. It trivially impacts performance (3-4%), and should be left at high or epic.

Post Processing Quality

Effects Quality sets the detail of particle effects, dust, debris, and decals. It reduces performance by 25-30% at higher-quality options, but reducing it to medium or low disables object decals which can drastically alter scene fidelity.

Effects Quality

Screen Space Reflections

Screen Space Reflections enable low-resolution on-screen reflections at a dramatic performance overhead, especially at the highest quality option.

  • Epic costs 7% frame rates.
  • Ultra can drain your framerates by up to 30% (even though it doesn’t look much better).
Epic
High
Off
RT
Ultra
Screen Space Reflections

Upscaling & Frame Generation

FragPunk features DLSS 4, XeSS 2, FSR 3, and FSR 4. DLSS 4 includes CNN and Transformer models for the former. Both are available across all RTX GPUs, but the latter is only recommended for the RTX 40 and 50 series. FSR 4 is exclusive to the Radeon RX 9070 GPUs.

  • CNN (Prioritize Speed) is slightly faster.
  • Transformer (Prioritize Quality) produces sharper visuals with increased detail for distant geometry but it’s not noticeable.
Ray tracing limits you to ~150 FPS, so it’s a no-go for folks with 240 Hz or 360 Hz displays.
DLSS P (Speed)
DLSS P (Quality)
FSR 3 P
XeSS 2 P

Upscaling grants lofty performance bumps, buoying the GeForce RTX 4090 to 215 FPS (+34%) using quality mode and 343 FPS (+2.14x) using performance mode:

Frame Generation bumps the average to 200 FPS with ray tracing, a (Prioritize Quality) increase over the upscaled 4K frame rates. 200 FPS is the upper limit with ray tracing using frame generation.

Frame generation produces nominal gains with rasterization, granting a 20% uplift over DLSS “Quality” and 7% over DLSS “Performance” at 4K.

FragPunk: VRAM Usage

FragPunk efficiently uses graphics memory (unlike certain Unreal Engine 5 games). It uses up to 10 GB at 4K, 8.7 GB at 1440p, and 7.9 GB at 1080p using the maximum quality settings (+RT).

VRAM usage drops to ~9 GB at the epic and 8 GB at the high-quality preset at 4K. Ergo, you only need an 8 GB GPU for optimal performance.

FragPunk: CPU Bottlenecks

FragPunk can be moderately CPU-bound in DirectX 11 mode at 1080p with a deviation of 21% using the highest quality settings. This drops to <10% at 1440p and 4K but can be higher in busier scenes.

1080p Epic DX11

The game is fully GPU-bound in DirectX 12 with a deviation of ~0% across all our benchmarks.

FragPunk Performance Summary

If you’re struggling to attain your frame rate target, consider reducing the following graphics settings:

  • Ray Tracing: Ray tracing limits you to an average of ~150 FPS in FragPunk. Disable it if you have a 240 Hz or 360 Hz display. Users with older CPUs should do the same.
  • Shadows: High-quality shadows offer a healthy balance of quality and performance.
  • Screen Space Reflections: Regardless of your configuration, switch to epic quality. It improves performance by 20% or more without affecting visuals.
  • Effects Quality: If the above isn’t enough, drop this to medium. Note that you’ll lose object decals and finer particle effects.

Optimized Graphics Settings for FragPunk

We’re considering the 5% percentiles (higher than 5% of the lowest values) for the following, as they’re a good indication of intensive matches.

Graphics SettingsHigh-endMidrangeLow-end PC
Resolution4K1440p1080p
FPS Target144 FPS240 FPS144 FPS360 FPS144 FPS240 FPS
Upscaling QualityQuality (Prioritize Quality)Performance (Prioritize Speed)Balanced (Prioritize Quality)Balanced (Prioritize Speed)Balanced (Prioritize Quality)Balanced (Prioritize Speed)
Frame GenerationOffOffOffOffOffOff
Mesh QualityEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpic
Shadow QualityEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicHigh
Post ProcessingEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpic
Texture QualityEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpic
Effect QualityEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicHigh
Screen Space ReflectionEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicOff
Ray TracingOnOffOnOffOnOff
RTGIOnOffOnOffOnOff
RTAOOnOffOnOffOffOff
RT ReflectionsOnOffOnOffOnOff
RT ShadowsOnOffOnOffOnOff
SSGIOffOnOffOffOffOff
High-end (4K)Mid-range (1440p)Low-end (1080p)
CPUCore i7-13700K|Ryzen 7 7700XCore i5-12600K|Ryzen 5 7600 Core i5-12400
AMD Ryzen 5 3600
GPUGeForce RTX 4080 SuperGeForce RTX 4070 SuperRTX 3060|RTX 4060
Memory32GB (dual-channel)16GB (dual-channel)Less than: 16GB (dual-channel)
Graphics SettingsRTX 4090RTX 4080 SuperRTX 4070 TiRTX 4070 SuperRTX 4070
Resolution4K1440p4K1440p4K1440p4K1440p4K1440p
FPS Target144 FPS360 FPS144 FPS300 FPS+144 FPS300 FPS+144 FPS300 FPS+144 FPS300 FPS+
Upscaling Quality (DLSS)BalQualPerfBalPerfBalPerfBalPerfBal
Frame GenerationOffOffOffOffOffOffOffOffOffOff
Mesh QualityEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpic
Shadow QualityEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicHigh
Post ProcessingEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpic
Texture QualityEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpic
Effect QualityEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicHigh
Screen Space ReflectionEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicOff
Ray TracingOnOffOnOffOnOffOnOffOnOff
RTGIOnOffOnOffOnOffOnOffOnOff
RTAOOnOffOnOffOnOffOnOffOffOff
RT ReflectionsOnOffOnOffOnOffOnOffOnOff
RT ShadowsOnOffOnOffOnOffOnOffOnOff
SSGIOffOnOffOnOffOnOffOnOffOn

FragPunk Settings for Low-end PC

Graphics SettingsRTX 3060RTX 3060 TiRTX 4060
Target1080p
300 FPS		1440p
200 FPS		1080p
300 FPS		1440p
240 FPS		1080p
300 FPS		1440p
200 FPS
Upscaling QualityBalanced (Prioritize Speed)Performance (Prioritize Quality)Balanced (Prioritize Speed)Performance (Prioritize Quality)Balanced (Prioritize Speed)Performance (Prioritize Quality)
Frame GenerationOffOffOffOffOffOff
Mesh QualityEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpic
Shadow QualityEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicHigh
Post ProcessingEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpic
Texture QualityEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicEpic
Effect QualityEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicHigh
Screen Space ReflectionEpicEpicEpicEpicEpicOff
Ray TracingOffOffOffOffOffOff
RTGIOffOffOffOffOffOff
RTAOOffOffOffOffOffOff
RT ReflectionsOffOffOffOffOffOff
RT ShadowsOffOffOffOffOffOff
SSGIOnOffOnOffOnOn

Areej Syed Follow on X Send an email March 19, 2025

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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