It’s turned out to be a delightful surprise for Souls series enthusiasts. This game combines the challenging progression found in FromSoftware games with the endless play potential of roguelikes, all while preserving the fundamental fight mechanics and boss encounters from its predecessor.
Unfortunately, it seems that the performance issues of Elden Ring on its PC version resurface in Nightreign. To run this game smoothly on contemporary systems, a decent hardware setup is essential. However, users with older systems may need to adjust the settings for a smooth frame rate. Fortunately, we’ve taken care of the legwork for you. Here are our suggested graphical settings for Elden Ring on PC.
Nightreign PC Port Performance
In the game Elden Ring, Nightreign’s PC version appears to perform slightly better than the standard version. However, it’s important to note that this game continues to struggle with many of the technical issues found in FromSoftware’s previous title. For instance, on an RTX 4090 and Ryzen 9 7950X setup, frame rates remained at a steady 60 FPS, but there were frequent interruptions by microstutters (brief frame drops) lasting between 20-50 milliseconds while exploring the Lands Between. Notably, even high-end machines may still encounter these microstutters in the open world, regardless of their specs. Machines with less powerful components might experience longer or more frequent stutters altogether.
Frame Rate Drops On Modern GPUs
In their update notes for Patch 1.0.1, FromSoftware has acknowledged and addressed the frame drop problem. As a temporary solution, they advise players to adjust their graphics settings to either ‘Medium’ or ‘High’ settings until a new patch becomes available.
During our tests, reducing your game settings doesn’t seem to affect microstutters, yet it significantly improves 1% low frames per second (FPS). If you often encounter significant frame rate drops during battles, it’s generally beneficial to adjust your settings to lower values.
Just like other FromSoftware games, the frame rate for Elden Ring Nightreign is capped at 60 frames per second. There isn’t a built-in way to bypass this limitation without using custom mods, and as of now, there are no such mods available. Vsync is always turned on in the game, but you can disable it manually through your GPU manufacturer’s control panel. However, disabling Vsync won’t eliminate the 60 FPS cap and may cause visible screen tearing instead.
In Nightreigh, there’s no option for upscaling or frame generation, so if you’re having trouble maintaining 60 FPS, you might need to adjust your graphical settings or screen resolution for improved performance. It’s important to mention that Nightreigh is primarily dependent on the CPU rather than the GPU, much like other games from FromSoftware. This means that even at a native 4K resolution, the game doesn’t make extensive use of a system’s GPU. If you’re playing this game on older hardware or portable devices such as the Steam Deck, reducing the internal resolution will likely provide smoother performance.
Graphical Presets Comparison
Above is an image gallery displaying the four graphical presets of Nightreign, arranged from least to most intense: low, medium, high, and maximum.
- Low: Disables most shadows and reflections. Textures are blurry and look poor at all resolutions.
- Medium: Enables shadows and reflections. Shadows appear pixelated, but textures have more definition.
- High: Notable improvement to shadow and shader detail. Textures appear the same.
- Maximum: Shadows are sharper. All other settings have no discernible difference from high.
The ‘Low’ preset is not recommended for most PC setups due to several drawbacks. It minimizes shadows significantly, reduces lighting quality to a resolution where individual pixels can be distinguished, and exhibits poor pop-in issues while switching LODs (Level of Detail) for detailed assets. This setting is suitable only for portable devices.
Medium setting delivers a more enhanced graphical experience, though it comes with a slight reduction in performance. Features such as ambient occlusion and contact shadows are incorporated, and most textures exhibit improved quality. However, volumetric lighting remains somewhat blurry at this level; therefore, increasing these settings to high might be beneficial if your system has sufficient capacity. A graphics card like the RTX 2060 or RX 5700 XT should manage around 50-60 frames per second at 1080p. Systems more powerful than this shouldn’t encounter any difficulties when running on medium.
LOD Pop-In
Distant terrain and shadows have noticeable pop-in on the low and medium presets.
As a gamer, I’d say crank it up to ‘high’ for an overall visual experience that’ll make your eyes pop! Going medium to high might take a noticeable bite out of your performance, but the enhancements in shadow detail and ambient lighting are usually worth the compromise for most gaming rigs. Any RTX 30-series graphics card or its AMD counterpart should be able to manage this setting smoothly at 60 frames per second (FPS), though you might occasionally dip during intense gameplay moments.
In simpler terms, the Maximum setting primarily enhances contact shadow details, but all other aspects appear almost identical when viewed with the bare eye, even at 4K resolution. The performance decrease from Maximum to High is generally not significant enough to warrant it for most computers. If you’re experiencing inconsistent frame rates or have settings set to Maximum, consider reducing them to High before making any further adjustments.
Best PC Settings
Graphics Settings
|
Textures |
Medium or High |
|---|---|
|
Antialiasing (AA) |
High |
|
SSAO |
High |
|
Depth of Field |
Off |
|
Motion Blur |
Off |
|
Shadows |
Medium or High |
|
Lighting |
High or Maximum |
|
Effects |
Medium |
|
Volumetric Lighting |
High |
|
Reflection |
High |
|
Water Surface |
Low |
|
Shaders |
High |
|
Global Illumination |
High |
|
Grass |
High or Maximum |
If your system still struggles with these settings, set all graphical options to medium.
For this graphics setup, we’ll primarily rely on the “high” preset as our starting point because it provides an optimal balance between graphical quality and performance. The maximum setting is only beneficial for enhancing the “Lighting” and “Grass” details, since these factors appear to influence how far objects will be rendered away from your character’s position. A higher setting will result in reduced pop-in effects.
Leaving aside the graphics settings related to resolution, the two most significant hits in first-person shooter games are going to be textures and shadows. We advise you to set both at least at the medium level, preferably high if your system can manage it. The visual decrease from medium to low is not worth the minor performance improvements you gain. Additionally, consider setting the effects quality to medium. This provides a slight improvement in performance without any reduction in visual quality. Lastly, you might want to lower the water surface quality to low as it doesn’t appear to have any discernible impact on overall graphical quality.
As a gamer, if motion sickness bothers you or you’re not a fan of blurring effects, I’d suggest turning off the depth of field and motion blur for a clearer visual experience. Keep in mind that these settings can affect performance, especially on high-quality graphics, and may make combat more challenging to navigate.
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2025-05-31 14:35