Indiana Jones & the Great Circle Optimized Settings for PC + Path Tracing Update

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is out on Steam and the Xbox Store (in early access). The game is still missing path tracing (full ray-tracing) which is expected to land with the launch patch tomorrow. In the meantime, we’ve tested all the graphics options including RTXGI (Ray Traced Global Illumination) which can’t be disabled. The game runs well across most hardware, but don’t take our word for it. Here’s our optimization guide with benchmarks for every graphics setting.

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.

Indiana Jones & the Great Circle: PC Requirements

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Test Setup

• CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K @ 5.3 GHz.
• 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.

Resolution & Graphics Presets

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle shows decent scaling across the three resolutions. From 90 FPS at 4K “Supreme,” we recorded an average of 158 FPS at 1440p, and 177 FPS at 1080p using DLAA (native). There seems to be a CPU bottleneck at 1080p, and we’ll look into that later.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle shows minimal performance scaling across its six graphics presets. From 90 FPS at the “Supreme” quality setting, the average framerate increased by just 6 FPS upon switching to the lowest graphics preset at 4K. The only notable change was the higher 1% lows at “Low.”

Path Tracing: Full Ray Tracing

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle features path-traced reflections, sun shadows, and indirect global illumination on PC. The first two are self-explanatory. Indirect global illumination, or diffuse lighting, accounts for multi-bounce light rays. It considers the light reflected and dispersed by non-luminous objects in the scenes, thereby acting as secondary light sources. It’s most evident indoors, in dimly lit areas, and at night.

Path tracing is incredibly taxing even on the fastest graphics cards. With path tracing maxed out, the GeForce RTX 4090 drops from 90 FPS to 38.6 FPS (less than half). The highest path tracing preset enables, sun shadows, reflections, and indirect global illumination. High disables the third one, while Medium disables reflections as well.

Luckily, you have little to worry if you’re running a GeForce RTX 40 series GPU. You should be able to max out all the path tracing options with DLSS upscaling and frame generation (at your suggested resolution) with an average of over 60 FPS. The RTX 4090 produces 105 FPS at the highest quality settings with upscaling and frame generation.

What’s the difference between ray and path-tracing? The two are based on the same principle of tracing how light rays traverse and interact with a scene. Here’s what sets the two apart:

• Ray tracing usually traces a single ray per pixel, from the camera (screen) into the scene:
  • The rays that hit a surface or object, illuminate them, thereby creating shadows or reflections.
  • The exact triangle intersected by each ray is located and its color is used to determine the lighting for that pixel.
  • Separate reflection, refraction, and shadow rays are generated for every applicable effect that are further traced until they hit an object.
  • Gathering this data, the rays then travel back to the light source, where it’s used to calculate the scene’s lighting.

• Path tracing is similar to ray tracing but differs at the start and the end. While ray tracing casts a single ray per pixel, path tracing casts several rays in random directions through each pixel.
  • These rays bounce off objects multiple times, across a wider area, tracing the path of many different rays before returning to the source with a lot more lighting data.
  • However, unlike ray-tracing, only a subset of the rays cast will be used to calculate the scene’s lighting.
  • Using the Monte Carlo simulation, an ideal and more probable number of paths are used for tracing the light’s back to the light source.
  • Path tracing can solve complex lighting scenes, including caustics, particles, and indirect multi-bounce illumination.

Shadows & Decals

Shadow quality only impacts visuals (notably) when the setting is reduced to the lowest quality option. Apart from that, the differences are trivial and hard to notice. The performance delta, likewise is minimal.

Decal Rendering Distance sets the LOD for various effects, including fog, props, paints, and other surface effects. It nominally impacts framerates, granting a 1-2 FPS boost when reduced to “Low.” The 1% lows also see a subtle gain.

Global Illumination & Reflections

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle leverages RTGI (Ray Traced Global Illumination) to improve indoor lighting and dispersal. It’s enabled by default, and can’t be disabled. Reducing the quality slightly boosts performance, accompanied by lower resolution RTGI.

Reflections enable low-resolution reflections that grant a minor performance gain when disabled. Of course, the impact will vary from region to region, with river coasts seeing larger FPS hits at higher-quality options.

Water Quality & Volumetrics

Water Quality sets the detail of water textures, with higher quality options enabling refraction (caustics), wetness, ripples, and vapors. Reducing it to the lowest improves performance by 3-4%, though river/lake adjacent regions might see larger gains.

Volumetrics sets the quality of fog, light shafts, and other related effects. It doesn’t appreciably impact performance in at least the urban locations of the game.

Hair & Texture Filtering

Hair Quality adjusts in-hair effects like ambient occlusion for NPCs and companion characters. It doesn’t notably impact the game’s performance.

Texture Filtering maintains the sharpness and detail of distant (perpendicular to the screen) textures. Lower-quality options employ Bilinear/Trilinear filtering, while higher-quality options leverage the newer and more effective Anisotropic Filtering. Reducing it grants a 3% FPS boost, but it’s best left at the highest option.

Upscaling & Frame Generation

The early access version of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle only includes DLSS upscaling and frame generation. FSR and XeSS will likely be added along with the day 0 patch. We recorded the largest gain upon switching from DLAA to DLSS “Quality” mode. Scaling down to “Balanced” and Performance” granted nominal FPS bumps.

The game’s RTGI (Ray Traced Global Illumination) implementation scales with resolution. Consequently, enabling upscaling reduces the resolution of ray-traced global illumination, reducing the lighting quality. The shift is most evident upon switching from native to upscaled.

Frame Generation grants a 40% performance boost over native when used without upscaling. When paired with upscaling, it can improve the average framerates by 24-30% at 4K “Supreme.”

Indiana Jones & the Great Circle: VRAM Usage

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle uses up to 15 GB of graphics memory at 4K “Supreme.” Reducing the texture quality to “Very Ultra” reduces it to ~13 GB, while “Ultra” stays below 12.5 GB. Either way, the game is a VRAM hog, utilizing up to 10 GB at the lowest graphics preset at 4K.

Even 1080p and 1440p leverage over 13 GB at the “Supreme” quality settings. Enabling upscaling reduces the graphics memory consumption by roughly 1 GB but frame generation increases it by the same amount.

Path tracing increases the VRAM usage to 17 GB at 1440p native, 16 GB with DLSS upscaling, and 19 GB with frame generation. At 4K, these figures increase to 18.6 GB, 17 GB, and 20 GB, respectively.

Indiana Jones & the Great Circle: CPU Bottlenecks

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is predominantly GPU-bound. Even at 1080p, we observed a GPU-Busy deviation of just 1%. Ergo, the game should run well on budget and low-end CPUs.

Path tracing raises the GPU-Busy deviation over 10% at 1440p and 4K with upscaling. Enabling frame generation offsets it back to near 0%.

Optimized Settings for Indiana Jones & the Great Circle

Path tracing is only recommended for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 and higher-end RTX 30 series graphics cards with at least 12 GB VRAM. If you experience stutters, reduce or disable path tracing, and if that doesn’t work, reduce the “Texture Pool” size a notch.

Settings	High-end	Midrange	Low-end PC
Resolution	4K (3840×2160)	1440p (2560×1440)	1080p (1920×1080)
FPS Target	120 FPS|144 FPS	75 FPS|90 FPS	60 FPS
Path Tracing FPS	60 FPS|90 FPS	60 FPS	–
Texture Quality	Supreme	Supreme (12 GB VRAM)	High or Ultra
Shadow Quality	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Decal Rendering Distance	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Global Illumination (RTXGI)	High	High	High
Reflection Quality	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Motion Blur	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Water Quality	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Volumetrics Quality	Medium	Medium	Medium
Hair Quality	High	High	High
Texture Filtering	Very Ultra	Very Ultra	Very Ultra
Path Tracing (RTX 40 GPUs)	Full (DLSS to Performance)	Medium (DLSS to Balanced)	Off
Upscaling (If PT is OFF)	DLAA|Quality	DLAA|Quality	Balanced
Frame Generation	On	Off	On (if avail)

CPU	Core i9-14900K/Ryzen 7 7800X3D	Core i7-13700K/Ryzen 7 7700X	Core i5-12600/ Ryzen 5 5600
GPU	GeForce RTX 4090	GeForce RTX 4070/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

Settings	RTX 4090	RTX 4080	RTX 4070 Ti	RTX 4070 Super	RTX 3080 Ti	RTX 4070
Resolution	4K	4K	4K|1440p	4K|1440p	4K|1440p	4K|1440p
FPS Target	120 FPS|144 FPS	90 FPS|130 FPS+	75 FPS|90 FPS	60 FPS|75 FPS+	60 FPS|75 FPS	60 FPS|75 FPS
Path Tracing FPS	60 FPS+ at 4K	60 FPS+ at 4K	60 FPS at 1440p	60 FPS at 1440p	60 FPS at 1440p	60 FPS at 1440p
Texture Quality	Supreme	Supreme (Very Ultra for PT)	Very Ultra|Supreme (High for PT)	Very Ultra|Supreme (High for PT)	Very Ultra|Supreme (High for PT)	Very Ultra|Supreme (High for PT)
Shadow Quality	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Decal Rendering Distance	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Global Illumination (RTXGI)	High	High	High	High	High	High
Reflection Quality	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Motion Blur	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Water Quality	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Volumetrics Quality	Medium	Medium	Medium	Medium	Medium	Medium
Hair Quality	High	High	High	High	High	High
Texture Filtering	Very Ultra	Very Ultra	Very Ultra	Very Ultra	Very Ultra	Very Ultra
Path Tracing	Full (DLSS to Quality)	Full (DLSS to Performance)	Medium (DLSS to Balanced|FG Off)	Medium (DLSS to Balanced|FG Off)	Medium (DLSS to Balanced)	Medium (DLSS to Balanced|FG Off)
Upscaling	DLAA|Quality	DLAA|Performance	DLAA	Quality|DLAA	Quality|DLAA	Quality|DLAA
Frame Generation	On	On	On (Off for PT)	On (Off for PT)	Off	On (Off for PT)

Indiana Jones & the Great Circle: Best Settings for Low-end PC

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle runs remarkably well on low-end hardware…as long as you keep path tracing disabled. The GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB averaged 70 FPS at 1080p “Supreme” quality graphics settings with DLSS set to quality mode.

The GeForce RTX 4060 laptop GPU on the Alienware x14 produced similar numbers at 1080p, but the texture quality had to be reduced to “High” and DLSS set to balanced mode.

Here’s our analysis of the game’s performance on low-end PCs featuring the RTX 60-class GPUs.

Settings	RTX 3060 12 GB	RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB	RTX 4060 8 GB	RTX 4060 Laptop GPU 8 GB
Resolution	1080p|1440p	1080p|1440p	1080p|1440p	1080p|1440p
FPS Target	60 FPS	60 FPS	60 FPS	60 FPS
Texture Quality	Supreme	High	High	High
Shadow Quality	High|Medium	High|Medium	High	Medium
Decal Rendering Distance	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Global Illumination (RTGI)	Medium	High	Medium	High
Reflection Quality	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	High
Motion Blur	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Low
Water Quality	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	High
Volumetrics Quality	Medium	Medium	Medium	Medium
Hair Quality	High	High	High	High
Texture Filtering	Very Ultra	Very Ultra	Very Ultra	Very Ultra
Path Tracing	Off	Off	Off	Off
Upscaling	DLSS Quality|Balanced	DLSS Quality|Balanced	DLSS Quality|Balanced	DLSS Balanced|Performance
Frame Generation	Off	Off	Off	Off
Vegetation Animation Quality	Ultra|Off	Ultra|Off	Ultra|Off	Off