This guide will show you the best graphics settings for Deathloop for medium-end gaming PCs. You will have a smoother experience in-game, and it might also help you eliminate various performance issues, if you are having any, of course.
Deathloop – Graphics Settings Guide
Arkane Lyon’s super ambitious project, after getting delayed since last year, is finally here. Deathloop is an action-adventure FPS title published by Bethesda. If you have already played the game, or watched the trailers. You might have already figured out that Deathloop borrows plenty of aspects from the critically acclaimed series, Dishonored. That is because, Dishonored is a also a product of Arkane Lyon. In fact, the game is built on the same engine as Dishonored.
Deathloop involves two rival assassins, who are caught in a mysterious timeloop on the island of Blackreef, doomed to repeat the same day for eternity. Players get to play as Colt, the only chance for escape is to end the cycle by assassinating eight key targets before the day resets. Learn from each cycle – try new paths, gather intel, and find new weapons and abilities. Your main objective is to break the loop.
The game has been released only for PS5 and PC. And while the PS5 players are enjoying a smooth experience in the game. PC players, on the other hand, are facing some performance issues. You know, the obvious ones. I mean, I don’t blame them. The requirements to run Deathloop smoothly, are pretty ludicrous.
But this is the best thing about PC gaming. You don’t need overpriced hardware to play games, as you can tweak the in-game graphics settings of the game you want to play and then get the best performance out of it, even if you don’t have a high-end gaming rig. Let’s check out the guide now:
Graphics Settings
- Screen Resolution: 1920×1080 (16:9)
- Display Mode: Full Screen (I always recommend Full Screen because you don’t lose performance)
- Monitor: Generic PnP
- Brightness: 12 (Personal preference)
- Field of View: 95 (I found this to be good enough)
- NVIDIA Reflex: Off (Go ahead and turn it on if you have a RTX card)
- Low Latency: Off (You don’t need this for single-player mode)
- V-Sync: Off (Locks the game to 60 fps for some reason)
- Upscaling: Off (AMD FSR in Deathloop is really bad, in my opinion. More information below)
- AMD FSR Mode: Won’t work with Upscaling off (If you want AMD FSR, set Upscaling to AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0.)
- Adaptive Resolution, FPS Target, Mode: Won’t work with Upscaling off
- FPS Limiter: 120 (If you don’t care about getting more than 60 fps, keep it on 60)
- Texture Details: Low (Surprisingly, only Low and High are available)
- Model Details: Medium (Doesn’t affect performance much. Most of the Models don’t have much detailing anyway)
- Shadow Details: Medium (A demanding setting. Set it to Low, if you are using something weaker than the GTX 1060)
- Water Details: Medium (Saw no change in performance with this set to Low)
- Terrain Details: Medium (Setting this on Low makes the ground look blurry at times)
- Decal Details: Medium (Saw no change in performance with this set to Low)
- Ambient Occlusion: FidelityFX CACAO Quality (Makes the game look a lot sharper. FidelityFX CACAO Balanced works well too)
- Sun Shadows: Simple (No option to turn this off)
- Post-Process Anti-Aliasing: Temporal (Tested all the other options, and found this to be the best. Every other option makes the game look extremely jagged)
- TXAA Sharpness: 6
- Sharpness Post Process: Standard (You lose performance with FidelityFX CAS)
- Camera Motion Blur: Off (Please, stop using motion blur)
- Bloom: Yes (Bloom in Deathloop is quite subtle)
- Depth of Field: No (Personal preference, you get a slight performance boost)
- Lens Flare: Yes (Disabled lens flare artifacts give better performance, but the change is very minimal)
- Light Shafts: No (You won’t notice the difference)
Now, there is a reason I said that AMD FSR in Deathloop is bad. In my Bloodhunt graphics setting guide, I actually recommended that you turn on AMD FSR, as it boosts the performance of that game by a huge margin. I personally didn’t like it because it adds unnecessarily Sharpening to the game. I don’t like my games to look extra sharpened. AMD FSR in Deathloop on the other hand is a complete different story. The setting straight up makes the game look blurry, and makes the textures of stuff at a distance, look washed out. Yes, you get a good fps boost. But it is almost like playing the game on 720p resolution. Here is the comparison between Deathloop with AMD FSR set to max quality and AMD FSR Off:
Use AMD FSR only if you are using a really weak GPU, and you don’t care much about visuals at all. Then this setting would be a great help. You will get a nice performance increase.
Specifications of Test system
- CPU: Ryzen 5 5600x
- GPU: Zotac RTX 2060
- RAM: 16 GB DDR4 3200mhz
- HDD: 2 TB 7200 rpm
- SSD: WD Blue 1TB
- Monitor Resolution: 1920×1080
- Graphics Driver: Nvidia Game Ready Driver v471.96
Normally, I test games on GPUs, like the GTX 1050ti. But according to the official minimum system requirements list, you need a GTX 1060 to play Deathloop at 1080p, 30 fps. At the lowest settings. Do you though?
Deathloop performance analysis
Normally, what I do is, I write about how the game performed on my system, and what was my experience. This time, I decided to make a full video on this. Here is Deathloop, running on the exact same settings given above, on a RTX 2060 and Ryzen 5 5600x:
I have only played the initial levels so far. Where neither am I fighting a lot of people, nor am I using my abilities and causing explosions everywhere. But I did manage to get close to a constant 100 fps, with the settings given above. As you can see, the game doesn’t look bad at all. In fact, I would say that if you have a GTX 1060, you would be able to get a lot more FPS than 30, at low-medium settings.
| Minimum FPS | Average FPS | Maximum FPS |
| 81 FPS | 94 FPS | 120 FPS (Locked) |
Update – 09/20/2021
Nvidia has launched a new Game Ready Driver that provides optimal support for the latest update to Deathloop. The version is 472.12. Install it and let me know in the comment section below, if the game’s performance has improved for you or not.
Update – 09/21/2021
AMD has also launched a new Adrenaline driver for Deathloop. The version is Adrenalin 21.9.1 Optional. Install it and let me know in the comment section below, if the game’s performance has improved for you or not.
If you think that this guide has helped you, then let us know in the comment section below. Also, try checking out our other guides on Deathloop. Who knows, you might end up finding a something you have been looking for.
That’s all folks!
Last Updated on September 21, 2021
Shoaib, 30, is a simple guy who loves to play video games, and enjoys new cuisines sporadically. He has been gaming since he was 7 years old, and with an experience of 22 years, under his belt, there is not a single AAA game in this world, that he hasn’t played. Despite being a MBA Graduate he decided to follow his passion. And because of his love for gaming, Frondtech came into existence.