Warhammer 40K Darktide Optimization: Best Graphics Settings for PC 2024

Warhammer 40K: Darktide is a hidden gem with a cult following that refuses to give up on the franchise. Despite being a technical mess at launch, the coop shooter has done well post-release with several free updates and bug fixes at regular intervals. This guide analyzes Darktide’s performance, including every graphics option, resolution, and upscaling preset, to determine the optimized settings for a range of PCs.

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.

Warhammer 40K Darktide System Specs: With Ray Tracing

Warhammer 40K: Darktide System Specs: Without Ray Tracing

Contents & Testing Methodology

• Contents:
  1. Resolution & Graphics Presets.
  2. Ray Tracing: RTXGI & Ray Traced Reflections.
  3. Screen Space Reflections & Global Illumination.
  4. Ambient Occlusion, Light & Volumetric Fog Quality.
  5. Motion Blur, DOF, Bloom & Subsurface Scatter.
  6. Upscaling & Frame Generation.
  7. VRAM usage.
  8. CPU bottlenecks.
  9. Performance Summary.
  10. Optimized Graphics Settings for Warhammer 40K: Darktide (2024).
• Hardware setup used:
  • CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K @ 5.4 GHz (P-core).
  • 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.
  • Worker threads are best set to 8. On AMD Ryzen CPUs with 16 cores, you can increase the count to 12. Core i5/Ryzen 5 systems with 6 physical cores should reduce it to 4.

Warhammer 40K Darktide: Resolution & Graphics Presets

Warhammer 40: Darktide scales relatively well with resolution, averaging 49 FPS at 4K, 74 FPS at 1440p, and 95 FPS at 1080p using the highest quality settings with TAA. The game is mildly CPU-bound on higher-end systems with a moderate to severe bottleneck on lower-end PCs.

Warhammer 40K: Darktide exhibits significant performance scaling across the three graphics presets, and the optional ray-tracing options. The lowest quality preset produced an average of 147 FPS, followed by “Medium” with 115 FPS, and “High” yielding 81 FPS at 4K.

Ray Tracing reduces the framerates by 40%, bringing the mighty RTX 4090 below 50 FPS at 4K. For an optimal experience, even the fastest PCs will require upscaling and perhaps frame generation at UHD.

Ray Tracing: RTXGI & Ray Traced Reflections

Ray tracing tends to tax even on flagship graphics cards, and Darktide is no exception. This coop Warhammer 40K game features RTXGI (Ray Traced Global Illumination) and Ray Traced Reflections, and each substantially enhances Darktide’s lighting and ambiance.

RTXGI is relatively less intensive, reducing performance by 20% or more at the highest quality setting. Interestingly, the rasterized “Global Illumination” is about as intensive as RTXGI “Medium” at the highest quality setting. We recommend leaving this enabled on NVIDIA RTX GPUs.

RTXGI or Dynamic Diffuse Global Illumination (DDGI) consists of:

• Placing probes: First, numerous probes are placed in the game world.
• Ray trace and shade: These are used to trace and shade rays cast from active probes (light sources) into the scene.
• Update probes: The data gathered by the rays is stored as irradiance and distance to geometry which is then used to compute diffuse lighting.

DDGI can be extended to infinite-bounce global illumination by combining probe data temporally across frames. Unlike most ray-traced settings, RTXGI/DDGI is independant of screen resolution (and by extension, upscaling) and. The quality of lighting depends on the probe density and radiance.

Ray-traced reflections are the most frametime-draining option of Warhammer 40K: Darktide, reducing the average FPS by up to 30% in some areas of the game. Rasterized “Screen Space Reflections” are 20-25% more performant at the “High” quality setting, with “Low” increasing the deficit to 37% and higher.

Screen Space Reflections & Global Illumination

Screen Space Reflections are low-resolution reflections of onscreen objects rendered on glossy objects as a low-quality substitute for ray-traced reflections. Despite that, they’re plenty exhaustive, draining the game’s performance by up to 14% at the high-quality setting.

Pre-baked GI (rasterized global illumination) isn’t as fast as you’d think, delivering lesser performance than RTXGI “Medium” at the high-quality preset. We recommend using it only on AMD Radeon hardware. GeForce RTX users are advised to enable RTXGI.

Ambient Occlusion, Light & Volumetric Fog Quality

Ambient Occlusion renders self-contained shadows rendered along the edges and boundaries of surfaces. Disabling it isn’t recommended, and “High” is the most suitable option for the majority of gamers. Disabling it grants an 11% performance gain at 4K.

Light Quality enables pre-baked shadows using shadow maps. The “Medium,” “High,” and “Extreme” quality options perform roughly the same, while “Low” is a couple of FPS faster.

Volumetric Fog enables 3D fog which can be quite important in certain sequences of Darktide. Fortunately, it only minimally impacts performance and should be left at the default value.

Mesh Quality & Anti-Aliasing

Mesh Quality adjusts the LOD or mesh complexity of different objects in the scene. Lower values lead to more pop-ins due to close-range rendering, while higher options minimize them by rendering high-quality geometry at a distance. 2 is the sweet spot for budget and low-end PCs, granting a 5% performance boost over 5.

If (for whatever reason) you aren’t using upscaling (use it!), you’re left with temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) and Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA). The former is moderately taxing but worse than DLAA, while the latter fails to tackle shimmering.

Motion Blur, DOF, Bloom & Subsurface Scatter

Motion Blur and Depth of Field (DOF) are surprisingly FPS-draining, reducing the average framerate by up to 6% at 4K. It’s best to disable both.

Bloom and Subsurface Scattering are relatively tame, only marginally reducing framerates, while bringing much-needed light to the otherwise gloomy world of Warhammer 40K.

Upscaling & Frame Generation

Upscaling is a given for 60 FPS and higher at the “Extreme” quality settings with ray-tracing at 4K. Gamers playing at 1440p and above are advised to utilize the DLSS/FSR “Balanced” or “Performance” quality mode, while “Quality” works best for 1080p.

The three upscaling presets grant a 45%, 63%, and 84% performance uplift over native 4K when running the game at the highest quality setting with ray-tracing “High.”

Frame Generation is a requirement for those wanting over 100 FPS on average at the highest quality setting (with ray-tracing), or simply running ray-tracing on AMD Radeon hardware. Fortunately, there’s DLSS and FSR 3.1-based frame generation, allowing anyone to double their framerates. Frame generation boosts framerates by 40-50% at 4K, and is particularly useful if you’re running an older or lower-end CPU.

Warhammer 40K Darktide: VRAM Usage

Warhammer 40K: Darktide uses up to 13 GB of graphics memory at 4K “Extreme” with ray-tracing enabled. Disabling RT reduces the VRAM usage to 10 GB, while “High” tops under 8 GB. The “Low” quality preset uses roughly 7 GB of graphics memory at 4K.

Darktide utilizes nearly 10 GB and 9 GB of VRAM at 1440p with and without ray-tracing. Switching to 1080p slightly reduces the graphics memory consumption to 8.84 GB and 8.4 GB, respectively.

Warhammer 40K Darktide: CPU Bottlenecks

Warhammer 40: Darktide is mild top moderately CPU-bound, exhibiting a GPU-Busy deviation of 20-30% at 1440p “High,” with and without ray-tracing. Reducing the graphics quality worsens the bottleneck, but improves the overall framerate. Ray-tracing has a sizable impact on the CPU bottleneck.

Warhammer 40K Darktide: Performance Summary

• Ray-Traced Reflections: Ray-traced reflections is the single most intensive graphics setting in Darktide, reducing the average framerates by over 20%.
• RTXGI: RTXGI is also quite performance-draining, granting a 21% FPS uplift when disabled in favor of low-quality GI.
• Screen Space Reflections: Screen space reflections boost the average framerates by 10% or more when disabled.

Warhammer 40K: Optimized Settings for PC 2024

Warhammer 40K: Darktide Settings for Low-end PC

Warhammer 40K: Darktide performs well on low-end PCs, though you’ll need to disable ray-tracing or lower it to “Low.” A GeForce RTX 3060 paired with a hex-core i5-12600 averages over 60 FPS at 1080p when paired with DLSS and frame generation. Ray tracing has to be disabled, while Screen Space Reflections are reduced to low for an optimal experience.

Darktide uses over 7 GB of graphics memory on the RTX 3060, exhibiting a mild CPU bottleneck, which may rise to problematic levels in crowded areas.