South of Midnight landed on PC, Xbox, and Game Pass last week. Developed by Compulsion Games and published by Xbox, it’s an action/adventure platformer built using the Unreal Engine 5. Like many recently releases, it drops Nanite and Lumen GI to improve scalability and performance across a wider range of devices. Most users shouldn’t have issues running the game, but those who do can refer to our optimization guide.
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.
South Of Midnight: PC Specs
Min
- OS: Windows 10/11
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 3 1300X / Intel i3-8100
- Memory: 12 GB RAM
- Graphics: AMD RX 580 / Nvidia GTX 1060
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 60 GB available space
Rec
- OS: Windows 10/11
- Processor: AMD 1600X / Intel i5-7600K
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: AMD RX 6600 / Nvidia RTX 2060 / Intel Arc A580
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 60 GB available space
South of Midnight: Resolution & Graphics Scaling
South of Midnight scales well across resolutions, as seen with other GPU-bound Unreal Engine 5 games. We recorded an average of 92 FPS at 4K, 133 FPS at 1440p, and 163 FPS at 1080p using the “Ultra” quality preset.
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.
Likewise, the performance varies significantly with the graphics presets. The highest quality options net an average of ~90 FPS at 4K (+DLAA). Scaling down the quality results in the following gains:
- Very High/High: 112 FPS (+24%).
- Medium: 129 FPS (+40%).
- Low: 140 FPS (+52%).
Shading Quality & View Distance
Shading Quality adjusts the resolution of various effects, including volumetric lighting, fog, reflections, etc. The impact is subtle, both visually and performance-wise. Apart from fog, the difference is quite negligible.
View Distance sets the rendering distance (and LOD) of geometry. However, in most cases it only adjusts the LOD of shadows, reflections, and other lighting effects. The impact is hardly noticeable.
Shadow Quality & Post Processing
Shadow Quality sets the resolution and LOD of shadows. Some shadows are replaced by low-resolution proxies at high and below. Interestingly, the camera angle also contributes to it. Compared to Ultra, the lower quality options are:
- Very High: +2%.
- High: +3%.
- Medium: +7%.
- Low: +10% faster.
Post Processing sets the quality of various late stage shaders, including ambient occlusion, bloom, eye adaptation, tonemapping, etc. Interestingly, the high quality option is the slowest, performing a smidge worse than the ultra and very high quality modes.
- The medium and low quality options are up to 10% faster than the rest.
- Ambient Occlusion quality is scaled down at high and disabled at the medium quality option.
- Eye adaptation and tonemapping are disabled at the lowest quality option.
Effects & Foliage Quality
Effects quality sets the quality of screen space reflection, refraction, and other translucency effects. The ultra and very high quality options are 17% and 4% slower than the lower quality options, respectively.
Foliage Quality sets the density and draw distance of grass and other micro-foliage. The visual and performance impacts are trivial.
Upscaling & Anti-Aliasing
South of Midnight features NVIDIA DLSS 3.7, AMD FSR 3.1, and temporal upscaling solutions. Being a GPU-bound game, upscaling grants massive performance gains. Compared to native DLAA:
- The DLSS quality upscaling mode is nearly 40% faster
- Performance mode offers 67% higher frame rates.
- You can upgrade to DLSS 4 using our guide.
South of Midnight: VRAM Usage
South of Midnight uses up to 9 GB of graphics memory at 4K, 7.7 GB at 1440p, and 7 GB at 1080p using the maximum quality settings. Switching to high reduces VRAM usage by a GB.
South of Midnight: CPU Bottlenecks
South of Midnight is predominantly GPU-bound with a peak GPU-busy deviation of 4-6% at 1080p using a mix of medium and high quality settings.
South of Midnight Performance Summary
- Shadow Quality: Lowering it to medium grants a 7% performance boost at the cost of blurry shadows and reduced LOD.
- Post Processing: Lowering it to medium grants a 7-8% FPS boost, but you lose ambient occlusion.
- Effects Quality: Reducing it to very-high quality grants a 16% uplift at the cost of slightly worse reflections.
South of Midnight PC Optimized Settings
| Graphics Settings | High-end | Midrange | Low-end PC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resolution | 4K (3840×2160) | 1440p (2560×1440) | 1080p (1920×1080) |
| FPS Target | 120 FPS | 120 FPS | 60 FPS+ |
| Shading Quality | Ultra | Ultra | Ultra |
| View Distance | Ultra | Ultra | Ultra |
| Texture Quality | Ultra | Ultra | Ultra |
| Post Processing | Ultra | Ultra | Ultra |
| Shadow Quality | Ultra | Ultra | Ultra |
| Effects Quality | Ultra | Ultra | Ultra |
| Foliage Quality | Ultra | Ultra | Ultra |
| Upscaling | DLSS Balanced | DLSS Balanced | DLSS Quality |
| High-end (4K) | Mid-range (1440p) | Low-end (1080p) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Core i7-13700K|Ryzen 7 7700X | Core i5-12600K|Ryzen 5 7600 | Core i5-12400 AMD Ryzen 5 3600 |
| GPU | GeForce RTX 4080 Super | GeForce RTX 4070 Super | RTX 3060|RTX 4060 |
| Memory | 32GB (dual-channel) | 16GB (dual-channel) | Less than: 16GB (dual-channel) |
