Honkai: Star Rail (HSR) is developer miHoYo’s (aka HoYoverse globally) hugely successful take on the turn-based RPG combat genre within a sci-fi setting, with over a 100 million downloads achieved in just over a year. Honkai: Star Rail was released on April 26th 2023 for PC, iOS, Android and PS5. The game employs Unity engine as with their other entries, featuring striking 3D cel-shading techniques to deliver the smooth visually stunning anime look with fluid animations.
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.
Changing resolutions is the first thing to do when optimizing a game. You should use the resolution that matches your monitor’s. But it also depends on your system. As a thumb-rule, a higher-end system should target 4K, mid-range 1440p, and low-end 1080p.
Honkai: Star Rail scales well across the resolutions, gaining 128% from 4K to 1440p and 174% from 1440p to 1080p. We rendered it internally at twice the resolution as the FPS cap of 120 cannot be changed in-game and we had to see results within that range.
Resolution Presets: 4K (3840 x 2160) -> 1440p (2560 x 1440) -> 1080p (1920 x 1080)
Best Graphics Preset for Honkai: Star Rail
Once the target resolution has been selected, we can start with optimizations to increase our frames. We’ll look at the “Rendering Quality” option near the end as that is something only to be touched when all else fails. Honkai: Star Rail has five presets going from “Very Low”, “Low”, “Medium”, “High” and “Very High”. Let’s see how they stack up.
The RX 6600 and the Core i7-12700F manage an average of 77.4 FPS at the 4K “Very High” setting in HSR. The following are the presets ranked in percentage gains going down from the “4K Very High” preset to the “4K Very Low” Preset:
Graphics Quality Presets: Very High -> High -> Medium -> Low -> Very Low
Vertical Sync and FPS
Vertical Sync helps synchronize frames with your monitor’s refresh rate to help prevent screen-tearing, at the cost of added latency. Only turn this on if you’re getting noticeable screen tears, otherwise, keep this “Disabled” to get an uncapped refresh rate and lower latency. Consider turning on Nvidia G-Sync or AMD Freesync variable refresh rate (VRR) solutions if your monitor supports it.
FPS (Framerate Limit) helps prevent jitters due to framerate fluctuations to achieve consistent graphics and network performance. Keep this at “60“, unless you’re getting constant stutters. In that case, turn it on and keep it at your monitor’s refresh rate to get the best experience possible (usually 60). There is a way to uncap this within the game files to 120 as we shall see in the additional settings at the end.
Shadow Quality
“Shadow Quality” controls the resolution and quality of the shadow maps used in-game. This setting controls both the dynamic shadows for objects and characters as well as the sun-casted shadows. Going from High to Low decreases the resolution and quality of shadow maps. Going to “Off” completely turns off shadows, we recommend not doing this.
There’s a lucrative 16% boost on turning it off, but the screenshots below show the considerable loss in fidelity
High vs. Medium:5%
High vs. Low: 6%
High vs. Off: 16%
There’s a lucrative looking 16% boost on turning it off, but have a look at the screenshots below to witness the much higher loss in visual fidelity.
Shadow Quality: Off -> Low -> Medium -> High
Reflection Quality
“Reflection Quality” controls the reflection details in the environment by setting the rendering frequency and resolution of global scene reflections produced by large objects, such as tall buildings and scenery as well as nearby smaller objects, characters and screen space reflections (SSR) in shiny floors, etc. At Medium and above, we get access to SSR… in HSR. At Very Low, it’s just cube-map reflections.
Going down from “Very High” we get the following benefits:
High: 0.5%
Medium: 0.6%
Low: 0.9%
Very Low: 16%
The jump from Low to Very low is massive. Judging by the screenshots, we lose SSR at low. Hence you should either stick to medium or jump straight to very low.
Reflection Quality: Very Low -> Low -> Medium -> High -> Very High
Character Quality
This setting controls the level of detail (LOD) by changing the polygon count in the meshes of the characters in the game. The higher the setting, the more detailed the object’s geometry, and the higher the CPU load. This game also seems to change the texture resolution onfthe characters along with their cell shading, with shadows and highlights being simplified.
As seen above, High and Medium appear to be getting the same FPS, but the 1% lows are lower with High. Further as we noticed in the data, High utilizes slightly higher power on the CPU in this scenario. Low takes a visible leap. This indicates a polygon count decrease (CPU load) from High to Medium and a visible cell shading decrease (GPU load) from Medium to Low.
Character Quality: Low -> Medium -> High
Real-Time Character Shadows in Map Exploration
This setting only appears if the Character Quality is set to Medium or Higher, completely disappearing on the Low setting, and can only be toggled between “On” and “Off”.
In our test, we noticed a minimal change in FPS, along with a tiny change in power draw of the CPU as expected. As of now, we recommend leaving this on if your character quality is Medium or higher. Judging by the screenshots, visually the differences are subtle.
Real-Time Character Shadows: Off -> On
Environment Quality
Similar to Character Quality, but for the environment itself, this setting controls the level of detail of distant objects and changes their render distance, adjusting the distance (from the player) at which objects are culled from view, including vegetation, buildings, and enemy units (leading to pop-ins).
Versus Very High:
High: 0.6%
Medium: 0.7%
Low: 3%
Very Low: 4.3%
Environment Quality: Very Low -> Low -> Medium -> High -> Very High
Special Effects Quality
This setting adjusts the particle density and the quality of particle effects emitted by particle systems, lighting during combat, environmental animations, and skill animations, such as the ones from skill activations, ultimates, elemental attacks, opening chests etc. The higher the setting, the denser the particles present in the scene, and more effect interactions.
Going from High to Medium gives us a 0.3% boost, then there’s almost no change to Low, and then to Very Low gives us a 0.8% boost from High. Visually, you won’t notice the differences much and is fine to keep at very low without much loss in fidelity.
Special Effects Quality: Very Low -> Low -> Medium -> High (we tried to keep a similar action frame but it’s hard)
Bloom Effect
Bloom is the luminous glow of certain objects in the game world, such as light sources. Usually, the impact is minimal. As seen below, the FPS pretty much stays the same, only jumping slightly up at Very Low and Off. This is negligible and we can say this is a personal preference, so take your visual pick! (see the screenshots below)
Bloom Effect: Off-> Very Low -> Low -> Medium -> High -> Very High
Anti-Aliasing Quality
Anti-aliasing is used to smoothen jagged edges, most noticeable on the borders of objects as “jaggies”. Turning it on helps smoothen those edges out and makes the image look more cohesive at the expense of a slight blurriness. Changing between TAA (Temporal Anti-Aliasing), FXAA (Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing) and Disabled, we get the following FPS:
Going from TAA to FXAA gives us a healthy 6% boost, while disabling it completely grants a 10% FPS gain. FXAA can usually cause slightly blurrier textures, since unlike TAA which uses data from previous frames to smooth edges, FXAA just applies a post-processing filter on top of the frame itself, like a camera filter if you will. If you’re playing at 1440p or 4K, you can also simply leave AA off.
Light Quality
The Light Quality setting in Honkai: Star Rail controls the complexity and realism of lighting effects in the game, including dynamic lights, shadows cast by light sources and global illumination details. For example, on the lower settings, your character won’t cast a contact shadow and global illumuniation is disabled, with areas becoming much darker than before.
There is a huge improvement in FPS from this setting, probably the most impactful in the game. At the same time, as seen in the screenshots below, a lot of visual fidelity is lost as well. Performance gains compared to Very High:
High: 3.3%
Medium: 45%
Low: 63%
Very Low: 77%
Light Quality: Very Low -> Low -> Medium -> High -> Very High
Medium-Low is a decent compromise. Very Low is devoid of many visual elements which we don’t recommend. High and Very High are almost similar, so you can stick with either if you can make that FPS jump.
Rendering Quality
“Rendering Quality” or resolution scaling is a way to massively increase performance at the cost of resolution. We’ve kept this at the end since it is always recommended to play at native, ie 1. If you are still struggling with frames after trying out all the optimized settings above, it is time to try upscaling.
By default, the game starts at a Rendering Quality of “1.0“, which means it is rendering at the native resolution you have selected. Changing from 1.0, we get the following:
0.6 can look quite blurry and we run into a CPU bottleneck. We recommend 0.8 for the best boost in FPS. If you’re getting plenty frames already though and want to look at an even crisper delicious image, you can increase it to 1.2 and beyond, all the way up to 2.0 if you’re getting a good framerate!
Additional Settings (120 FPS Unlock)
Honkai: Star Rail by default, only allows an FPS cap of either 30 or 60. There is no option to make it unlimited. However, there is a hidden in-game setting to uncap it to 120 FPS. Since this is in-game and not a mod, there is no risk of bans or any such things. Changing it to anything higher reverts it back to a 60 FPS.
Run the game-> Graphics settings.
Select the “Custom” Graphics Quality, or change the FPS (or any other setting) if Custom is not visible. Close the game.
Search for “Registry Editor” in your windows search bar and run it.
Next, follow the path:
Compute -> HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Cognosphere -> Star Rail
Look for this file: “GraphicsSettings_Model_h2986158309” and double click it. The following window should show up.
The highlighted part is where you’ll see the “FPS” option. DO NOT change any other values. Change this FPS value from 60 to 120, hit OK and you’re done. Reopen the game and you should be able to see an FPS of up to 120. The in-game options menu will say 30, ignore that. Also, changing the presets at any time will revert it back to 60 FPS. Changing any other settings apart from these two should not affect it.
Honkai Star Rail: VRAM Usage
Honkai: Star Rail utilizes up to ~5 GB of graphics memory at 4K using the “Very High” quality settings at render scale 2. 1440p tops out under 3.8 GB, while 1080p uses up to 3.4 GB of VRAM. This should be even lower at a normal rendering resolution.
Honkai: Star Rail uses up to 3.5GB of VRAM at 4K at a normal rendering resolution. High keeps it limited to 3.3 GB, which reduces to 3.25 GB at “Medium,” 2.85 GB at “Low” and 2.71 GB at the “Very Low” quality preset.
Honkai Star Rail: CPU Bottlenecks
Honkai: Star Rail is only CPU-bound at the lower settings and rendering resolutions. At the “Very Low” preset, we notice a GPU-Busy Deviation of ~28%.
4K Very Low Preset
At a rendering quality of 0.6 on the “4K Very High” preset, we notice the highest GPU-Busy Deviation of ~38%.
Rendering Quality 0.6 @ 4K Very High Preset
The yellow lines indicate the “GPU-Busy Deviation”, which says how long the GPU had to wait for the CPU to hand it data, representing a CPU bottleneck. On anything above the lowest settings and resolutions, you should experience a GPU bottleneck instead, which is a healthy scenario.
Best Graphics Settings for Honkai: Star Rail on PC
