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God of War PC: Best settings for max FPS and performance

How to improve performance and boost low FPS in God of War on PC? If you are looking for the best settings for God of War on PC, this extensive guide will give you all the information you need to know.
God of War PC: Best settings for max FPS and performance

God of War, a game many rightfully consider to be one of the best games of the previous generation, has finally arrived on PC!

Originally released in 2018, God of War has achieved tremendous success on the PS4, becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation game of all time and universally acclimated by both fans and critics alike. 

It is praised for its epic story, numerous memorable moments and interactions between Kratos and Atreus, breathtaking visuals, great level design, and satisfying combat system. And now, PC gamers will finally have a chance to enjoy this once-in-a-generation masterpiece.

Despite originally being a PS4 game, God of War for PC brings numerous improvements, additional visual settings, graphics enhancements, and more.

If you want to jump right into the action, but before that you want to make sure to have the best and most optimised experience, here are some tips and tricks in regards to graphics settings you should use.

God of War PC system requirements

Before we jump to settings, the first thing you should know is the game's system requirements, and to set your expectations accordingly.

Somewhat surprisingly, God of War for PC is not as demanding as some may expect it to be, which makes sense, as, after all, it is a game from early 2018, developed for the PS4 originally.

Minimum requirements (720p, 30 fps)

  • OS: Windows 10 64-bit
  • Processor: Intel i5-2500k (4 core 3.3 GHz) or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 (4 core 3.1 GHz)
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 960 (4 GB) or AMD R9 290X (4 GB)
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Storage: 70 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: DirectX feature level 11_1 required
God of War PC: Best settings for max FPS and performance
God of War on PC offers various visual improvements. (Picture: Sony)

Recommended requirements (1080p, 30 fps)

  • OS: Windows 10 64-bit
  • Processor: Intel i5-6600k (4 core 3.5 GHz) or AMD Ryzen 5 2400 G (4 core 3.6 GHz)
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 1060 (6 GB) or AMD RX 570 (4 GB)
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Storage: 70 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: DirectX feature level 11_1 required

Of course, if you want to run the game on even higher settings, such as 1440p/60FPS or 4K/60FPS, you will need a better machine.

  High Settings  Best Performance Ultra Settings
Average Performance 1080p, 60 FPS 1440p, 60 FPS 4K, 60 FPS
GPU NVIDIA GTX 1070 (8GB) or
AMD RX 5600 XT (GB)
NVIDIA RTX 2070 (8GB) or
AMD RX 5700 XT (8GB)
NVIDIA RTX 3080 (10GB) or
AMD RX 6800 XT (16GB)
CPU Intel i7-4770k (4 core 3.5 GHz) or
AMD Ryzen 7 2700 (8core 3.2 GHz)
Intel i7-7700k (4 core 4.2 GHz) or
AMD Ryzen 7 3700x (8 core 3.6 GHz)
Intel i9-9900k (8 core 3.6 GHz) or
AMD Ryzen 9 3950x (16 core 3.5 GHz)
RAM 8 GB DDR 16 GB DDR 16 GB DDR

 

What are the best God Of War settings on PC?

God of War PC: Best settings for max FPS and performance
God of War offers a variety of graphics settings to fine-tune your experience for optimal performance on PC. (Picture: Sony)

Now when we've seen requirements, you probably have a clearer idea of how can you expect God of War to work on your gaming rig.

As we've seen, the requirements are nothing too scary, and we can also say that Sony is a bit too cautious with these recommendations, as on average, stated specs will be able to bring you much better results compared to what we see above.

With that said, if you are struggling to achieve optimised experience and you are not sure what to sacrifice in order to boost your God of War FPS and have better performance without losing too much visual fidelity, this is what we recommend:

  • Model Quality: High
  • Texture Quality: Ultra
  • Shadows: Original
  • Atmospherics: Original
  • Anisotropic Filtering: Low
  • Ambient Occlusion: Original
  • Reflections: Ultra 

Texture and model quality is largely depended on your GPU's RAM, so if you have enough RAM to load up the high-quality textures and models, you should always keep them on High and Ultra quality, as otherwise, they will not hinder your performance, and there will be just a slight difference in FPS (~2 FPS per level of quality).

One of the biggest improvements the PC version of God of War has brought to the table is the quality of shadows in the game. Unfortunately, this is also quite a burden on the PC, and it will eat you a lot of resources, resulting in lower performance. To avoid that, we recommend keeping them on "Original", which means you will have the same shadows as those on the PS4.

God of War PC: Best settings for max FPS and performance
Shadows in God of War for PC are significantly improved. (Picture:

The "Atmospherics" setting regulates the quality of environmental effects, such as fog, smoke, water splashing, rain, and others. This has also been significantly improved in the PC version.
And while it looks great, it comes at a cost, and it can result in stuttering and huge frame drops if your rig cant handle areas with a lot of fog, thus we advise you to keep it on either "low" or "original" in order to avoid performance issues if you have a low-end PC.

The next one is Anisotropic Filtering, which helps with the quality of textures that are at oblique viewing angles. While this can improve visual fidelity, we think that in terms of overall importance this setting is at the bottom of the list, thus you can safely put it to "Low" or "Original". It will not ruin the beauty of the game, while you will gain a significant boost to your FPS.

Ambient Occlusion is the next one for which we advise you to keep it on the "Original" setting. If your PC can handle it, cranking it up to High or Ultra will result in drastic visual improvements, but will also result in around 10% loss in FPS.

God of War PC: Best settings for max FPS and performance
If you want the best balance between performance and image quality for God of War on PC, we advise you to go with the "Original" option for every setting. (Picture: Sony)

Finally, and oddly enough, Reflections are surprisingly low taxing on performance, and thus you can safely go with High or even Ultra without losing much FPS.

And with that, our "How to improve performance and boost low FPS in God of War on PC" guide is complete. 

As you can see, going with the "original" settings seems like the best way to experience God of War on PC, as it will look mostly the same as it was on the PS4, but also allow you to play in higher resolution and give you more FPS.
So, start with "Original" on every option, and then do fine-tuning until you find the perfect balance between optimal performance and visual fidelity.

Featured image courtesy of Sony.