Death Stranding is now available on PC and the port is pretty good. The graphics performance is superb and you can run the game on older hardware with the settings turned down. In this Death Stranding PC optimization guide, we are going to go over the best settings of the game so that you can make the tweaks that you need to run the game at 60 FPS or higher.
If you are here then we assume that you do not have an RTX card to run DLSS and that you are having trouble running Death Stranding PC at 60 FPS. With that in mind, the following are some tweaks that we recommend.
Death Stranding PC Optimization
There aren’t a lot of settings that you can mess around within the game but there are some that you can turn down that will increase performance. For the display settings, we recommend setting it to the resolution of your monitor.
Set the maximum FPS limiter to 60. If your hardware is particularly old and cannot run the Death Stranding PC at 60 FPS then you have the option to set the limiter to 30 FPS.
By limiting the game at 30 FPS, player can enjoy the game at higher graphical settings as the GPU will have much more headroom. Given that it’s a single-player game, you won’t have any problem playing the game at 30 FPS with motion blur enabled. However, it’ll be at the cost of gameplay smoothness.
Graphics Quality
If the default setting is not working for you then you can tweak this setting and turn it down to medium before trying low.
Model Detail
Model detail is also going to impact performance. If the default setting is not working for you then can tweak this setting and turn it down to medium before trying low.
Memory for Streaming
Stick with the low option for this one if you are using older hardware.
Shadow Resolution
Stick with the low option for this one if you are using older hardware.
Ambient Occlusion
Turning this setting off will give you a small boost in performance.
Screen Space Reflections
Turning this setting off will give you a small boost in performance.
Anti-Aliasing
Switch between FXAA and TAA to see which one works best for you and gives you the best performance. If none do the trick then you can turn this setting off but you will see a significant impact on image quality especially at 1080p.
Depth of Field
Keep this setting off.
Motion Blur
Keep this setting off.
Sharpness
This setting does not have any effect on performance (that we know of). So feel free to do what you want with it.
How To Boost Performance
Death Stranding is GPU bound for the most part. Meaning, the more powerful the GPU is, the more performance you can squeeze out of it. Here is how you can boost the game’s performance. First, install the latest GPU drivers and disable in-game v.sync.
Also, make sure to enable DLSS if you have an RTX GPU. It’ll help boost the game’s performance significantly. In case you don’t have an RTX GPU, then here is what you need to do. Even if you do own an RTX GPU, enable DLSS and follow the steps below.
Open Nvidia Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings > select Death Stranding from the list. Make the following changes.
Anisotropic Filtering – “Application Controlled”
Anti-aliasing-FXAA – “Off”
Anti-aliasing-Gamma Correction – “Off”
Anti-aliasing Mode – “Application Controlled”
Anti-aliasing-Transparency – “Off”
CUDA GPUs – “All”
Low Latency Mode – depends on the player.
Max Frame rate – Enable it if you intend to limit FPS. Also, limiting the FPS will reduce GPU Load.
Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA) – “Off”
OpenGL Rendering GPU – “Auto”
Set Power Management to “Prefer Maximum Performance”
Shader Cache – “On” only if you are using an HDD. Don’t need to enable it for an SSD.
Set Texture filtering – Quality to “High Performance”
Triple Buffering – “Off”
Set Vertical Syn to “On”
Virtual Reality Pre-Rendered Frames – “Use 3D Application Settings”.
Apply these changes and the players should notice an increase in Death Stranding’s performance on PC. In case, the performance boost is negligible or you want to squeeze more out of the GPU, then set Vertical Syn to “Fast”
However, Fast sync won’t work if you have enabled the Max FPS limit. Fast Sync allows the GPU to act in a similar manner as G.sync or Freesync. It allows the GPU to render as many frames as it can for the game, like the vertical is disabled, but there won’t be any screen tearing.
However, the GPU will waste the frames in excess of the display’s refresh rate. Meaning, if your display supports 60 Hz and the games in rendering at 80 FPS, it’ll waste the 20 FPS in excess and will only display 60 FPS. This option works best for displays with higher refresh rate.
These settings should give you a significant boost in performance for Death Stranding.
That is all for our Death Stranding PC optimization guide. You can check out our guide on how you can get more likes in the game. You can also check out our guide on how you can beat Higgs.
If you are interested in learning more about the game then you can check out our Death Stranding guides hub.