What are the best Crimson Desert PC settings? The huge action-adventure game from Pearl Abyss is finally out, and we are just starting our own adventure in Pywel. However, we’ve already been looking at the Crimson Desert performance on PC and tinkering with the graphical settings. This is what we recommend setting them to.
On top of our investigation into Crimson Desert settings on PC and the framerate impact of the different options, we’ll be exploring more of Pywel for the next few weeks, so you can check out all our guides and more via our Crimson Desert game hub.
Of course, if you haven’t purchased Pearl Abyss’ first big single-player fantasy game yet, you can do so through the Humble Store here should you want to support our continued work at Game Watcher.
Crimson Desert PC Settings for Visuals and Performance
While many PC gamers were worried following the reveal of Crimson Desert’s hefty system requirements for high-quality graphics, I can confirm the final release performs quite well… as long as you’re willing to use image reconstruction, Frame Generation, and below-max settings.
Of course, the optimal Crimson Desert graphics settings will depend on your PC build, and as far as we can tell, the specs shared by Pearl Abyss are quite accurate if you want to run the game without Frame Generation. The new technology is well worth using if your base framerate is high enough though.
These are my findings for each setting while running the game on a GeForce RTX 4070Ti (12GB), AMD 7800X3D CPU, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM at 6000Mhz while in the middle of the first town Kliff visits at 1440p with DLSS (latest model) set to Balanced:
- Cinematic preset: 86 FPS / 150 FPS with FG on
- Ultra: 86 FPS / 160 FPS with FG on
- High: 86 FPS / 164 FPS with FG on
- Medium: 86 FPS / 167 FPS with FG on
- Low: 86 FPS / 173 FPS with FG on
There’s some peculiar behaviour when it comes to presets, at least in busy areas with lots of NPCs. As you can see, FG did manage to bump my performance with each lower preset (but not by much). While running the game with only real frames, it saw little-to-no-changes, at least when it comes to averages. At lower settings, however, my GPU didn’t max out, so there seems to be some kind of issue with utilisation at low settings here, at least on mid-to-high-end hardware.
You can also bump and lower each setting individually, but as usual in modern games, the heavy hitters should be Shadow and Lighting quality. Ray Tracing can only be set to “on” while sticking to the presets, and the performance hit seems small too. There’s an extra setting found on the Video tab that changes everything though: Nvidia DLSS Ray Reconstruction.
The two screenshots above show Crimson Desert running maxed out at the Cinematic setting with (left) and without (right) Ray Reconstruction enabled. RT AO, RT shadows, RT lighting, and RT reflections all seem to be part of the package here, greatly improving the entire visual presentation and even adding visual flourish that simply isn’t there when using the regular RT “on” setting without RR.
It’s the single most important graphical setting in the game, but also one that comes with the heaviest performance cost. On the same PC and running the Cinematic preset, the FPS results were the following:
- Ray Reconstruction on: 59 FPS / 103 FPS with FG on
That’s a whopping 26 FPS difference without FG and 47 FPS lost if using FG. Needless to say, it’s highly encouraged to only tackle RT with RR if you’re already very comfortable with your base Ultra/Cinematic performance and don’t mind using DLSS for image upscaling and FG.
In my opinion, if you can keep the performance above 60 FPS constantly, it’s well worth activating, as it dramatically boosts the presentation across the board and cleans up the image and several visual oddities that are omnipresent otherwise. Frame Generation doesn’t introduce much input lag either when around or above 60 real frames per second (Reflex should be set to “on” because why not).
Crimson Desert Optimization & Performance Mods
Though we’re still waiting for proper optimization mods and deeper cuts into Pearl Abyss’ BlackSpace Engine, we can already recommend a couple of performance mods which could help the more limited hardware builds and those looking to offset some of the game’s more cumbersome aspects.
MFG X4 unlock for Crimson Desert by velasquez3589
This first Multi Frame Generation mod attempts to break the feature open for both Nvidia GPUs and other unsupported ones. While it’s rough for now and can lead to unintended visual issues, it’s a promising start. This mod relies on the DLSS Enabler tool.
Responsive Camera - Input Lag Fix by 993499094
Actually more of a regular configuration file tweak which can partially be achieved through the in-game setting, but useful regardless. It tweaks the odd input smoothing that makes the camera feel like it lags around your character.
Related Crimson Desert Articles:
- Crimson Desert - Everything You Need to Know
- Crimson Desert System Requirements and Performance Specs
- Crimson Desert Twitch Drops
- Crimson Desert GeForce Now Support
- Crimson Desert Mods Hub
- Crimson Desert Steam Deck Performance
If we’ve overlooked some graphical tweaks or you have valuable feedback of your own with a different PC build that could be useful, reach out via the Contact Us page. You can find us on socials too.
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