Best Elden Ring PC Settings 2026: FPS Boost, Performance and Graphics Guide

Elden Ring has one of the most complicated relationships with PC hardware of any major release this decade. Since its February 2022 launch on Steam, the port has been defined by shader compilation stutters, inconsistent frame pacing, and a notable absence of native DLSS or FSR support — unusual for a title of this scale. The Shadow of the Erdtree DLC (June 2024) compounded these issues by introducing some of the most GPU-demanding environments in the game. With the right settings configuration, however, most modern hardware can deliver stable 60 FPS in the base game and solid performance throughout the DLC. This guide covers every GPU tier, the most effective stuttering fixes, and how to get upscaling working without native support. For a broader framework that applies to any PC game, see our PC game settings optimization guide.

System Requirements: Minimum, Recommended and 2026 Reality

FromSoftware’s published system requirements have not been updated since launch, but the actual hardware needed for stable 60 FPS — particularly with Shadow of the Erdtree — is higher than the official recommended spec suggests. The table below reflects real-world 2026 performance targets.

The elevated CPU requirement reflects how CPU-intensive Elden Ring becomes in large open areas. Older quad-core processors frequently hit a CPU bottleneck before the GPU becomes the limiting factor in areas like Limgrave, Leyndell, and Scadu Altus.

VRAM Requirements by Resolution

Elden Ring’s VRAM demands vary significantly by resolution and texture quality. Exceeding your VRAM budget does not lower average FPS — it causes stutter as the game streams textures from system RAM. Match texture quality to your VRAM tier using this table.

Recommended Settings by GPU Tier

Use the table below as your starting point. These presets target stable 60 FPS at the listed resolution in standard base-game areas. Shadow of the Erdtree DLC zones may require dropping one setting tier — see the DLC section below. For budget and older hardware, our Elden Ring low-end PC settings guide covers additional optimisations for sub-60 FPS hardware.

*Ray tracing can be enabled on RTX 4070 or higher at 1080p–1440p at a cost of approximately 15–25% FPS. At RTX 4070 this means dropping from roughly 90 FPS to 65–75 FPS at 1440p High — acceptable if your target is 60 FPS, not recommended if you want headroom. Handheld PC users will find platform-specific configuration in our Elden Ring Steam Deck settings guide, covering TDP limits and resolution scaling.

The Highest-Impact Settings to Change First

Before running a benchmark or adjusting individual sliders, apply these changes in order. They produce the largest FPS gains across all hardware tiers.

1. Ray Tracing — Off (Unless RTX 4070 or Better)

Ray tracing in Elden Ring is implemented as a post-processing effect for ambient lighting and shadow softness. The visual improvement over standard rasterisation is marginal — primarily affecting shadow edges in static scenes that are difficult to perceive during active gameplay. The performance cost is significant: typically 20–30% FPS reduction. On any GPU below RTX 4070, the cost exceeds the benefit by a wide margin. Disable it immediately on all tiers and only re-enable after confirming your target frame rate is stable with everything else.

2. Shadow Quality — Drop from High to Medium

Shadow quality is the highest single-setting FPS lever in Elden Ring. Dropping from High to Medium delivers approximately 15–20% more FPS in GPU-bound scenarios with minimal perceptible visual difference during gameplay. The Lands Between’s predominantly outdoor environments with natural directional lighting make shadow resolution differences far less noticeable than in interior-heavy games. Reduce shadows to Medium as your first quality cut before touching anything else.

3. Depth of Field — Off

Depth of field blurs objects outside the camera’s focal point. During Elden Ring gameplay this means your peripheral vision and distant terrain are actively blurred — counterproductive in a game where reading enemy positions and environmental awareness are core mechanics. Elden Ring does not offer a separate gameplay/cutscene toggle, so the setting applies universally. Turn it off.

4. Motion Blur — Off

Motion blur applies directional smearing during camera movement. In Elden Ring combat, this activates during roll animations, backstep, and camera panning — precisely the moments that require the clearest visual information. It also contributes a post-processing render cost. Disable on all hardware tiers.

5. Ambient Occlusion — Match to Your Tier

Ambient occlusion adds contact shadows in crevices, under characters, and around environmental objects. The visual difference between High and Medium AO in Elden Ring is subtle in open-world areas but more apparent in castle interiors. Budget tier: set to Low or Off. Mid tier: Medium. High tier: High. Turning AO completely off produces a noticeably flatter image — Low is preferable to Off if your frame rate budget allows.

Stuttering Fix Guide

Elden Ring’s stuttering issues are well-documented. The port launched without adequate shader pre-compilation, causing hitches of 100–500ms the first time new visual effects are encountered. Additional causes include VRAM overflow and system configuration. Work through these fixes in order.

Fix 1: Let Shaders Compile on First Launch

On first launch after installation or after updating your GPU driver, Elden Ring runs a shader compilation pass. Allow this to complete fully before playing — it typically takes 3–8 minutes depending on hardware. Do not skip or interrupt it. Once complete, the majority of first-pass shader hitches disappear. If you update your GPU driver and stuttering returns, delete the shader cache at %localappdata%\FromSoftware\ELDENRING\ to force a clean recompile rather than loading a corrupted partial cache.

Fix 2: Windows Pagefile Increase

The most effective fix for persistent stuttering — especially when VRAM is near capacity — is increasing the Windows pagefile size. When Elden Ring’s VRAM usage approaches the card’s limit, Windows swaps texture data to system RAM or the pagefile. A small default pagefile makes this swap slow and irregular, producing stutter. Navigate to: System Properties → Advanced → Performance Settings → Advanced → Virtual Memory → Change. Select your fastest SSD, choose Custom size, set Initial = 20480 MB and Maximum = 40960 MB. Apply and restart.

Fix 3: VRAM Management

Running texture quality one tier too high for your VRAM causes chronic stutter throughout the session. Use MSI Afterburner’s on-screen display to monitor VRAM usage in real-time. If VRAM usage exceeds 90% of your card’s capacity during normal gameplay, lower texture quality by one tier. A 6 GB card running High textures at 1440p will consistently overflow — Medium textures at that resolution are the correct setting.

Fix 4: DirectX 12 vs DirectX 11

Elden Ring offers a choice between DirectX 12 and DirectX 11 in the launch menu. DX12 theoretically provides better multi-threading, but several GPU and driver combinations produce significantly worse frame pacing under DX12. AMD GPU owners in particular have reported more consistent frame delivery with DX11 in some driver versions. If stuttering persists after the above fixes, test DX11 by launching the game and selecting it from the API menu. Run the same route through a stutter-prone area and compare results.

Fix 5: Keep GPU Drivers Current

Both NVIDIA and AMD have issued game-specific driver optimisations for Elden Ring post-launch. NVIDIA’s Game Ready Driver updates improved shader caching and reduced hitching on RTX hardware. Always verify your driver is current before investigating further — a driver update alone has resolved stuttering for a significant number of players.

Upscaling in Elden Ring: No Native DLSS or FSR

Elden Ring does not include native DLSS, FSR, or XeSS support. This omission remains in place through 2026 — FromSoftware has not added upscaling via any post-launch patch. You cannot access temporal upscaling through the in-game settings menu. Two practical workarounds exist.

Lossless Scaling (Recommended)

Lossless Scaling (available on Steam for approximately $7) injects FSR, DLSS Frame Generation, and other upscaling modes into any game by intercepting the frame buffer before it reaches the display. It works with Elden Ring running in borderless windowed mode. Set your in-game resolution to your upscaling source (e.g. 1080p internal for a 1440p display), enable Lossless Scaling with FSR mode, and it reconstructs to your display’s native resolution. Image quality is comparable to native FSR Quality mode. Limitations: adds approximately 5–10ms of latency (negligible for single-player), and frame generation modes can produce minor artifacts during very fast camera panning.

Anti-Aliasing as a Partial Substitute

Without upscaling, anti-aliasing selection carries more weight. TAA (Temporal Anti-Aliasing) is the correct choice — it uses temporal reconstruction to smooth edges and reduce aliasing, providing the closest in-engine analogue to upscaling’s image reconstruction. SMAA is sharper but produces more visible aliasing on fine geometry such as distant foliage and stone filigree. FXAA is low quality; avoid it. Elden Ring does not offer MSAA.

Recommended Settings at 1080p, 1440p and 4K

*Ray tracing at 4K on RTX 4080 or RTX 4090 is viable if you target 40–50 FPS and use Lossless Scaling’s frame generation to push perceived frame rate above 60. Without frame generation, ray tracing at 4K drops most RTX 4080 setups below 50 FPS in demanding areas.

Shadow of the Erdtree DLC: Performance Notes

Shadow of the Erdtree introduces some of the most GPU-intensive environments in the entire game. Scadu Altus — the DLC’s main open area — features dense foliage, complex directional lighting, and high enemy density that produces a 20–30% FPS reduction compared to equivalent base-game areas on identical settings. The underground zones (Rauh Base, Enir-Ilim) push GPU load further due to complex interior lighting.

Practical DLC adjustments: if the base game runs at stable 60 FPS on High settings, enter the DLC with Shadow Quality lowered to Medium and Grass Quality reduced one tier. These two changes typically recover the FPS delta introduced by the DLC’s additional load. Users on 8 GB VRAM should monitor usage carefully in SotE zones — they regularly push 7.5–8 GB at High textures, triggering VRAM overflow stutter on cards that handled the base game without issue.

CPU Performance: Why Elden Ring Is CPU-Intensive

Elden Ring runs on FromSoftware’s proprietary engine, which does not distribute simulation load efficiently across multiple CPU cores. In large open areas with high enemy density, a significant portion of the game’s simulation runs on a small number of threads — meaning a fast CPU is more valuable than a high core count. Older quad-core processors can bottleneck at 60–75% GPU utilisation while the GPU waits for simulation data from the CPU.

To diagnose a CPU bottleneck: enable MSI Afterburner’s per-core CPU usage display. If a single core is running at 95–100% while GPU usage is below 80% and FPS is below target, you have a single-thread CPU bottleneck. Lowering graphics settings produces little improvement in this scenario because the rendering pipeline is not the constraint. Practical mitigations: close all background applications, including browser tabs (these consume meaningful single-core CPU capacity); set the Elden Ring process priority to High in Task Manager; and confirm Windows is using the High Performance or Balanced power plan rather than Power Saver. CPUs at or below Intel’s 8th/9th generation or AMD Ryzen 2000 series are most susceptible to this bottleneck in Leyndell and Scadu Altus.

Getting the right settings makes a big difference — see elden ring rog ally settings for the optimal config.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Elden Ring so stuttery on PC?

Elden Ring’s PC stutter has three main causes. First, shader compilation hitches: the game compiles shaders at runtime on first encounter with new visual effects, causing 100–500ms freezes. Allow the full shader compilation pass to complete on first launch and delete the shader cache after driver updates. Second, VRAM overflow: textures that exceed GPU memory are fetched from system RAM, producing irregular frame delivery. Match texture quality to your VRAM tier and apply the pagefile fix. Third, engine-level frame pacing issues in the PC port that persist even on high-end hardware in certain areas — these are partially but not fully resolved by patches. Testing DX11 instead of DX12 helps some users, particularly on AMD hardware.

What are the best settings for RTX 4060?

At 1080p: Shadow Quality Medium, Texture Quality High (the RTX 4060 has 8 GB VRAM), Ambient Occlusion Medium, Anti-Aliasing TAA, Depth of Field Off, Motion Blur Off, Ray Tracing Off. This targets stable 60 FPS in base-game areas. At 1440p, drop Shadow Quality to Low–Medium to maintain 60 FPS in demanding zones. The RTX 4060 supports DLSS but Elden Ring has no native DLSS implementation — use Lossless Scaling if you want upscaling at 1440p on this card.

Does Elden Ring have DLSS?

No. As of 2026, Elden Ring does not include native DLSS, FSR, or XeSS support. FromSoftware has not added any upscaling technology via post-launch patch. The only way to use upscaling with Elden Ring is through a third-party tool such as Lossless Scaling, which injects FSR or frame generation externally. This requires running the game in borderless windowed mode, adds minor latency overhead, and works effectively for single-player without meaningful drawbacks at that latency level.

Sources

1. Valve / Steam. Elden Ring — System requirements and store page. Steam.
2. Bandai Namco Entertainment. Elden Ring — Official product page. Bandai Namco.
3. Digital Foundry / Eurogamer — Per-game graphics settings analysis and PC performance breakdowns. Eurogamer.
4. Tom’s Hardware — GPU benchmarks and PC gaming hardware performance analysis. Future Publishing.

Michael R.

I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.