Palworld Optimization: Every Graphics Setting Benchmarked

Palworld is among the many surprise hits of 2024 with over 50K concurrent players and 93% positive reviews. It is still in early access but offers a ton of diverse content eclipsing popular Pokemon games. Palworld is built atop the Unreal Engine and is highly scalable, and capable of running on even the slowest of desktops or laptops. Here’s a dive into the various graphics settings available in the game and their impact on performance and visual fidelity.

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.

Palworld PC System Requirements

Palworld’s minimum system requirements imply that it should run comfortably even on integrated graphics processors such as the Radeon 780M. A quad-core CPU launched anytime in the last 10 years should suffice alongside 16 GB of system memory and 40 GB of storage (SSD preferred). These specs likely aim for 1080p 30 FPS at “Low/Very Low” settings.

The recommended system requirements are much higher, demanding a Core i9-9900K and a GeForce RTX 2070, alongside 32 GB of main memory. This targets 1080p 60 FPS at the “High” or “Epic” quality preset. It translates to a Core i5-12400F/Ryzen 5 5600 and an RTX 3060/RX 7600 in terms of the latest available hardware.

Test Bench

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
• Cooler: Lian Li Galahad 360 AIO.
• GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4070 FE.
• Motherboard: MSI MPG X670E Carbon WiFi.
• Memory: 8 GB x2 @ 6000 MT/s CL30.

Resolution Scaling & Graphics Presets

Palworld scales well across resolutions and graphics quality presets. The game averages 121 FPS at 1080p, up from 88 FPS at 1440p and a paltry 44.6 FPS at 4K using the “Epic” quality graphics preset. That’s a 3x difference between FHD and UHD, indicating a fully GPU-bottlenecked workload.

Palworld features five graphics quality presets that show similar variations in performance and quality. The lowest preset is 2.1x faster than the highest, averaging 188 FPS and 88 FPS, respectively. There’s a substantial difference in the quality of the two, including grass density, LOD, shadows, and ambient conclusion.

View Distance & Grass Detail

View Distance adjusts the render distance of grass and its associated shadows, with “Low” rendering only a few meters, and “Epic” covering the whole scene in foliage. It also sets the distance at which trees and player structures lose shadows and ambient shading. View Distance has a nominal impact on performance, with the lowest setting averaging 7-8% higher than the highest.

Grass detail sets the density of grass and foliage. The lowest preset removes all the grass, while “Epic” renders dense foliage with shadows. Indirectly, it also affects the number of shadows cast by grass and other vegetation. It has a negligible impact on performance.

Shadows & Effects Quality

Shadows are the most intensive graphics effects used in Palworld. The lowest setting is roughly 30% faster than the highest. That said, it removes all the shadows from the game, making it look flat and 2-dimensional. Medium is as low as I’d go.

Effects quality adjusts the quality of screen space reflections, translucency, refraction, and the detail of certain material objects. It has a mild to moderate impact on performance (8-9%).

Upscaling, AA & Field of View

Palworld features DLSS upscaling and some form of temporal super-resolution (TSR) that upscales images by an unspecified amount (>50%). TAA works well but can hurt performance. Consequently, for NVIDIA RTX users, DLSS is the only logical solution.

Palworld uses DLSS 3.1 which boosts performance by 50% to 80%, depending on which preset you use. Epic’s TSR grants a 10% uplift, indicating the use of a slightly lower internal resolution with an accumulation filter.

By default, Palworld has a 75-degree field of view, but this can safely be increased to 90 without worrying about potential performance drops.

Palworld VRAM Usage

Palworld uses over 6 GB of graphics memory or VRAM at 1440p “Epic.” Reducing the quality to the lowest cuts it to around 4-5 GB. Increasing the resolution raises the VRAM consumption by roughly 750 MB to 1 GB.

Palworld CPU Bottlenecks

Palworld is predominantly GPU bound, with a GPU-busy deviation of 8% at 1080p “Epic.” Even reducing the graphics quality to “Very Low” doesn’t increase the deviation above 6%. You should be able to run this game on most modern processors without much issue.

Best Graphics Settings for Palworld