God of War Best Graphics Setting to Fix Stuttering and FPS Drops

This guide will show you the best graphics settings for God of War for low-end gaming PCs. You will have a smoother experience in-game, and it might also help you eliminate various performance issues like Stuttering and FPS Drops, if you are having any, of course.

Best God of War PC Graphics Settings

God of War is finally available on PC. Who would have thought. God of War? On PC? What a time to be alive! I mean, this one of those games for which people actually buy PS4s over Xbox. I know a lot of people who are God of War fans, but they haven’t played the game even once. Because they never owned a PlayStation. They became fans by only watching the gameplay videos. Yes, just gameplay video, from YouTube. And, now that God of War is finally out on PC. They are extremely overjoyed.

The God of War PC version features:

• High Fidelity Graphics – Striking visuals enhanced on PC. Enjoy true 4K resolution, on supported devices, [MU1] with unlocked framerates for peak performance. Dial in your settings via a wide range of graphical presets and options including higher resolution shadows, improved screen space reflections, the addition of GTAO and SSDO, and much more.
• NVIDIA DLSS and Reflex Support – Harness the AI power of NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) to boost frame rates and generate beautiful, sharp images on select Nvidia GPUs. Utilize NVIDIA Reflex low latency technology, allowing you to react quicker and hit harder combos with the responsive gameplay you crave on GeForce GPUs.
• Controls Customization – Play your way. With support for the DUALSHOCK 4 and DUALSENSE wireless controllers, a wide range of other gamepads, and fully customizable bindings for mouse and keyboard, you have the power to fine-tune every action to match your playstyle.
• Ultra-wide Support – Immerse yourself like never before. Journey through the Norse realms, taking in breathtaking vistas in panoramic widescreen. With 21:9 ultra-widescreen support, God of War™ presents a cinema quality experience that further expands the original seamless theatrical vision.

Speaking of the performance of the game, God of War PC is fairly optimized, and runs quite well for the most part. I have tested the game on four different systems, consisting of GPUs ranging from RTX 3070 to GTX 1050 ti. And I didn’t face any sort of game breaking performance issues while playing the game. Of course, the game was running like a breeze on the RTX 3070 and the RTX 3060 Ti, and no so much on the GTX 1050 ti. But the fps that I was getting, is still more than ‘playable’.

But I can understand that not everyone is sitting with a high-end GPU. That is why I decided to make this graphics settings guide, catered towards the users who are experiencing problems like fps drops and stuttering during fights. Let’s check out the guide now:

Graphics Settings

• Display Mode: Borderless – I had no choice, but to go with ‘Borderless’ here. I am surprised that God of War is lacking Fullscreen. Horizon Zero Dawn, that was released almost 2 years ago, had Fullscreen mode. Borderless is not the best display mode, when it comes to performance
• Output Resolution: 1920×1080 – This whole graphics settings combination, is supposed to be for 1080p. I cannot guarantee good performance with these settings on 1440p or 4k resolutions
• Aspect Ratio: Auto – ‘Auto’ is good. This really helps with Ultrawide monitors.
• Vsync: Off – I tested the game on 4 different systems, and I didn’t notice any screen tearing issue during my testing. So using Vsync doesn’t make any sense here. Also, most of the gaming monitors come with ‘FreeSync’ or ‘G-Sync’, nowadays. Use this, only if you are experiencing heavy screen tearing.
• FPS Limit: Off – I normally recommend capping fps in games, that make my GPU usage shoot up to 99%, causing it to heat. But I didn’t face that issue here. But, if you are experiencing heavy stuttering and very steep fps drops, then matching the fps limit with the refresh rate of your monitor will help.
• Motion Blur: 0 – Depends on your personal preference. Personally, I don’t like Blur in my games.
• Film Grain: 0 – God of War PC already has a small amount of Film Grain by default. In my opinion, that is more than enough. No need to increase that.
• NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency: Off [Advanced] – Honestly, I would have asked you to enable this, if this was a competitive game. Single player games don’t really need Reflex, IMO. If you want, you can turn it on, though. Doesn’t really affect performance.
• Latency Markers: Off [Advanced] – I have no idea what this is. On or Off, didn’t see any changes.
• Latency Flash: Off [Advanced] – I have no idea what this is. On or Off, didn’t see any changes.
• DLSS: Off – Please put down your pitchforks, and let me explain. The Deep Learning Super Sampling or DLSS, doesn’t magically boost fps, as a lot of gamers think. It downgrades the native resolution, and then upscales the image, also applying a ton of sharpening in the process, to reduce the blurriness. Just set DLSS to Quality[Highest setting], and see the Render Resolution. It will show 1280×720. Yes, it does give you a decent performance boost. But God Of War is already well-optimized. You don’t need DLSS in God of War, unless you are not being able to get ‘playable’ fps. Of course, if you want, you can use it. Because at the end of the day, it depends on your preference. I am just a stranger on the internet :D. Check out the difference:
  
• FidelityFX Super Resolution: Off – FSR in God of War, is worse than DLSS. It doesn’t look as crisp as DLSS. But yes, it can easily enhance performance with a single click. Set it to ‘Ultra Quality’, if you are planning to use it.
• Render Scale: 100% – Lowering this will make the game look blurry
• Preset: Custom – Otherwise, you would be able to change the settings
• Texture Quality: Original – Surprisingly, the difference between Original and Ultra, is not that huge. Of course, you won’t get a huge performance boost on Original over Ultra. But, it is during those scenes, where there is a lot going on the screen, is when you will notice the difference in performance. Here is the comparison:
  
• Model Quality: High – ‘High’ will give around 7% more performance, compared to ‘Ultra’. I didn’t notice much visual difference between High and Ultra, actually. There was a significant visual difference between ‘High’ and ‘Original’, though.
• Anisotropic Filter: Minimum – Setting this to ‘Min’, allowed me to get a nice boost of 14-15fps, over ‘Ultra’, on the GTX 1650 Super. I am not sure, if I checked properly, but I didn’t notice any visual difference between ‘Minimum’ and ‘Ultra’. Correct me, if I am wrong.
• Shadows: Original – Ah, yes. The ‘heavy-hitter’ in this game. It affects both the resolution and filtering of dynamic shadows. Don’t ask any questions. Just keep it at Original. You will get a huge fps boost. I would have recommended ‘Low’. But, that looks bad. Check out the difference:
  
• Reflections: Ultra – Surprised? Don’t be. There aren’t many areas in this game, that use heavy reflections. After all, this is a PS4 title, that has been ported. You can even set this to Ultra+, and you won’t notice any difference in performance. Changing this to ‘Original’, gave me a 1 fps increase. Yes, 1 fps. Lower this, don’t lower this, IDC.
• Atmospherics: Low – Another one of those settings, that has no impact on visuals, but gives nice a fps boost, when set to ‘Low’. ‘Low’ increased the performance by almost 11%, when compared to ‘Ultra’.
• Ambient Occlusion: High – Don’t lower this, unless you are really struggling to get ‘playable’ framerates. This makes the shadowy spots look darker, which in return, makes the game look slightly better.

I could have easily decided to set everything to the lowest possible. But, I didn’t want the game to look too bad. The settings given above will give decent performance, without sacrificing too much on the visuals department.

God of War System Requirements

Before moving on to the performance analysis, check out the official system requirements for God of War PC once:

Specifications of Test system

I am seeing a lot of articles and videos, where content creators are testing God of War on RTX 3080s, 3090s, RX 6800 XTs, etc. What is the point? We all know what the GPU market is like at the moment. How many users are really sitting with those GPUs? According to the latest Steam Hardware Survey, the top 5 most used GPUs at the moment are, GTX 1060, 1050ti, 1650, RTX 2060, and GTX 1050. And I didn’t see a single big content creator, other than YouTuber Santiago Santiago benchmark the game on these cards. Anyway, let’s move on to the performance analysis.

God of War PC – Performance Analysis

First, let’s take a look at how the game looks with the settings given above:

If you ask me, this looks still look better than the PS4 version. In fact, this almost on par with the PS5 version. The game runs flawlessly on the GTX 1650 Super, with the settings given above. I don’t think there is even a need for me to mention its performance on my other cards, like the RTX 3070 or the 3060 Ti. Overall, God of War is really well optimized. And not even a single time, during my 4 hours of testing, I felt the game was not running well. Trust me, when I say, you can get ‘playable’ fps in this game, even on a GTX 1050 Ti.

My only complaint is that, this game lacks Full Screen mode, and doesn’t have any setting to change the Anti-aliasing. I get it, that it is a 4-year-old game. But, it is 2022. When was the last time you played a game on your PC, that didn’t have any setting to change the Anti-aliasing? Even the indie games have it. And the Full screen mode, Horizon Zero Dawn and Death Stranding, the games that were release 1-2 years ago, had a Full screen mode. No idea, why the option is missing in this game.

Anyway, God of War runs really well on PC, and you should not have any problem playing this game on low end GPUs like the GTX 1050 ti, or the GTX 1650.

If you want, you can actually check out this benchmark video of God of War PC, running on a RTX 3060 ti, paired with a Ryzen 5 5600x. All settings are maxed out:

If you think this guide has helped you, then let us know in the comment section below. And for more God of War PC guides, keep an eye on Frondtech. We will be covering every single technical issue of the game on the launch day. Good luck!

That’s all folks!

Last Updated on January 23, 2022

Shoaib

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.