God of War Ragnarok Optimization Guide: Best Graphics Settings for PC with Benchmarks

God of War: Ragnarok is out on Steam and Epic Games as the latest PS5 exclusive to hit the versatile PC platform. There aren’t any notable visual upgrades over its predecessor, and the game runs smoothly on most modern PCs. The performance, although, stable, will vary greatly as you travel from realm to realm. We tested the game across the first two (Midgard and Svartalfheim) worlds, so the first half of your walkthrough should be sorted. Let us know if you observe any irregularities in one of the other realms.

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.

God of War Ragnarok: PC System Requirements

God of War: Ragnarok comes with modest PC system requirements. Any hex-core CPU released in the last 4 years will do. On the GPU side:

• You need a GeForce RTX 2060 Super or a Radeon RX 5700 for a decent 60 FPS at 1080p “Medium.”
• The GPU requirement increases to an RTX 3070 or an RX 6800 for 60 FPS at 1440p “High.”
• And 4K “Ultra” requires an RTX 4070 Ti or an RX 7900 XT.

The memory requirements start at 8 GB at the minimum, and double to 16 GB for most configurations. The storage space needed is a whopping 190 GB, a staple for AAA games lately.

Testing Methodology

• The “Ultra” quality graphics preset was chosen as the reference point at 4K with DLAA enabled.
• Benchmarks were conducted in Svartalfheim which features ample vegetation, water bodies, and rocky terrain.
• An overview of benchmarks:
  1. Resolution and upscaling.
  2. Graphics quality presets.
  3. Model quality & texture filtering.
  4. Lighting & reflection quality.
  5. Shadows & ambient occlusion.
  6. Atmospherics & tessellation.
  7. Frame generation.
  8. VRAM usage.
  9. CPU bottlenecks.
  10. Optimized graphics settings for PC.
• Hardware setup used:
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
  • Cooler: Lian Li Galahad 360 AIO.
  • GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4090 FE.
  • Motherboard: MSI MPG X670E Carbon WiFi.
  • Memory: 16 GB x2 @ 6000 MT/s CL30.

God of War Ragnarok: Resolution & Upscaling Performance

God of War: Ragnarok scales well with resolution, averaging 83 FPS at 4K, 131 FPS at 1440p, and 158 FPS at 1080p using the highest quality graphics preset. The near-doubling of framerates from 4K to 1080p indicates a purely GPU-bound workload as the pixel count drops from 8 to 2 million.

God of War: Ragnarok includes four upscaling methods, namely NVIDIA DLSS 3.7, AMD FSR 3, Intel XeSS 1.3, and an in-house temporal upscaler resembling FSR. Apart from XeSS, the upscalers scale by 1.5x, 1.7x, and 2x at the quality, balanced, and performance presets.

Unsurprisingly, DLSS offered the best quality and performance on our GeForce RTX 4090, marginally beating FSR, XeSS, and TAAU at the three scaling factors. Interestingly, the TAA filter at 4K “native” is 11% faster than DLAA and 14% faster than FSR native AA. The results may vary on the RTX 30/20 and Radeon RX 7000 GPUs.

XeSS 1.3’s Ultra Quality, Quality, and Balanced presets are comparable to the three DLSS/FSR modes. Ultra Quality Plus sits between Ultra Quality and Native AA with a slight FPS boost for when you’re narrowly missing the 60 FPS mark. Unfortunately, XeSS performs worse than DLSS and FSR across all three presets.

God of War: Ragnarok Graphics Presets

God of War: Ragnarok features four graphics presets, namely low, medium, high, and ultra. Switching from “Medium” to “Low” grants a 23% performance boost accompanied by a palpable loss in visual fidelity. Going to “High” and “Ultra” costs a more reasonable 13-14% drop in average framerates, increasing detail on each switch.

Model Quality (LOD) & Texture Filtering

Model quality sets the geometric detail of objects, including terrain, vegetation, and concrete structures. The highest quality (Ultra) reduces performance by up to 8% while “High” and “Medium” cost a mere 2-3 FPS.

Texture filtering is best left at the highest setting (or High) as the performance drain is hardly noticeable. It keeps textures crisp and detailed, especially those further away from the camera.

Lighting and Reflection Quality

Lighting quality can be used to adjust the resolution of direct/indirect lighting, drastically improving visual fidelity in poorly lit areas, including indoors. The performance impact ranges from subtle to mild, though that may change depending on the locale.

Reflection quality controls the fidelity of Screen Space Reflections (SSR), mostly cast on water bodies, mirrors, and other metallic/glassy surfaces. It is fairly taxing, reducing the average FPS by 8% at the highest setting. If you’re running low on framerates, it’s best left at the lowest.

Shadow Quality & Ambient Occlusion

Shadow quality sets the resolution of shadow maps, producing softer, more defined shadows at higher settings versus sharper, blocky ones at low that don’t cover grass and other complex vegetation. Going from “Low” to “Ultra” grants a 20% boost in average framerates with a questionable drop in quality.

Ambient Occlusion adds more depth to the scene by shading the edges, corners, and crevices of objects in the game world. It’s highly performant, reducing averages by 1 FPS drop on our RTX 4090 at 4K.

Atmospherics & Tessellation Quality

Atmospherics adjust the quality of fog and other volumetric effects. Usually, the performance hit is subtle, but certain areas like Niflheim may see much larger drops due to the increased fog density.

Tesselation produces additional detail by subdividing existing polygons, making low-quality objects more presentable. It enhances terrain detail by making the ground bumpier and more protruding. It has a negligible impact on performance.

God of War Ragnarok: Frame Generation

God of War: Ragnarok features frame generation implemented using DLSS 3.7 and FSR 3. Strangely, the former didn’t work on our setup, so we paired FSR frame generation with DLSS upscaling. This is thanks to the ability to decouple upscaling and frame generation, allowing the use of XeSS, TAA, and DLSS with FSR 3’s open-source frame generator.

When used with upscaling, frame generation pushes the RTX 4090 past 144 FPS. On its own, frame interpolation grants an average of 110 FPS on the Ada Lovelace flagship.

God of War Ragnorok: VRAM Usage

God of War: Ragnorok uses over 14 GB of graphics memory at 4K “Ultra.” Reducing the texture quality reduces the VRAM usage to 12 GB, 11.4 GB, and 10.5 GB at “High,” “Medium,” and “Low.”

Dropping the resolution to 1440p and 1080p reduces the GPU VRAM consumption to 11 GB and 10.6 GB, respectively. Since the official hardware requirements include 8 GB of graphics memory, the game likely streams textures in and out of the buffer as needed.

God of War Ragnorok: CPU Bottlenecks

God of War: Ragnarok is fully GPU-bound regardless of the resolution and graphics settings. We observed a GPU-Busy deviation of 0-1% across all our tests, so CPU bottlenecks should only occur on the lowest-end systems.

God of War Ragnarok: Performance Summary

Best Graphics Settings for God of War: Ragnarok

Link to Hi-resolution 4K screenshots (G-Drive)

Best Settings for God of War Ragnarok: Low-end PC

Here’s our dedicated guide for low-end PCs featuring 60-class GPUs.

God of War Ragnarok: Best Steam Deck Graphics Settings

Here’s an in-depth look at how the game performs on the Steam Deck OLED.