The Last of Us 2 Settings for Low-end PC: RTX 3060, RTX 3060 Ti & RTX 4060

The Last of Us 2 got a fairly shoddy PC port earlier this year. While the game performs well on most machines, it looks pretty outdated. For a 5-year-old title, we expected higher frame rates. It heavily utilizes temporal upsampling, which can produce prominent ghosting artifacts. Unfortunately, this can’t be disabled either. Here’s how the game performs on an entry-level PC.

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.

The Last of Us 2: PC System Specs

The Last of Us 2: Low-end Benchmarks

The Last of Us 2 performed decently on our entry-level PC, averaging over 60 FPS using the highest quality settings (“Volumetric Effects” quality was reduced to medium) at 1080p. We didn’t use any upscaling and opted for DLAA instead.

The same settings can be paired with balanced or performance mode upscaling at 1440p for an average of over 60 FPS. Indoor scenes and outdoor environments lacking volumetric lighting produce much higher frame rates than the prologue (used for the benchmark). If you’re facing FPS drops indoors, turn down bounced lighting.

VRAM Usage & CPU Bottlenecks

The Last of Us 2 uses up to 10.5 GB of graphics memory at 1080p “Very High” quality using DLAA. Gamers with 8 GB GPUs may need to enable upscaling (balanced) and reduce the texture resolution a notch. Fortunately, the game is completely GPU-bound with no signs of a CPU bottleneck.

Low-end PC Settings: The Last of Us 2 Remastered