Apex Legends is a competitive game by nature. Each match can be a bloodbath, and you’ll need to constantly improve to keep up with the meta.
While practicing your skills will play an important role in your Apex career, you should also ensure you’re playing the game under the most optimal conditions. For players on PC, even the tiniest factor can determine their success in certain situations. From gaming mice to monitors, there’s usually something to improve in your setup. Before you start focusing on peripherals, though, you should make sure that your PC is powerful enough to run Apex smoothly.
If you’re averaging below 60 FPS, upgrading your peripherals setup won’t have that much of an impact. Depending on your setup, increasing your frames can be as easy as adjusting your in-game settings, but most of these changes will reduce the visual quality of Apex. The performance gains can be high enough to justify the visual losses, though—and in the competitive world of Apex, you’ll need every advantage you can get.
Getting used to these settings can take a while at first depending on your setup. The new settings should start feeling natural again the more you play, but you can always make further adjustments to make sure the settings feel right for you.
Though making these adjustments should net you quite a few additional frames in Apex, they may not be enough for players who are trying to play the game with both low-end and old PCs. Recent low-end hardware should be powerful enough to run Apex decently, but older-generation hardware may have started showing its age. When this is the case, upgrading your PC can be the final measure.
Before you make the big decision of whether to buy a new PC, give a spin to the following settings and see if you can squeeze in those additional frames to make Apex feel more smooth.
- Display mode: Full Screen
- Aspect Ratio: Native Aspect Ratio
- Resolution: Native resolution
- Using your native resolution will often be the best option to ensure the best visual quality. Decreasing this setting is only advised for players looking to play Apex in a stretched resolution or those who can’t average smooth frame rates even with the lowest settings. Decreasing your resolution can give you a noticeable frame boost, but Apex will look noticeably worse.
- V-Sync: Disabled
- Not only does V-Sync use a considerable amount of resources, it also introduces a slight input lag, which can be a deal breaker for competitive gamers. Considering even milliseconds can matter in Apex, you won’t want to add any kind of delay into the equation.
- Anti-Aliasing: Disabled
- Anti-aliasing can make games look more realistic since it brushes off sharp edges and makes everything seem more aesthetic. The setting uses too many resources, though, which makes it a no-go if you’re struggling for some frames.
- Texture Streaming Budget: Low or Medium
- Your graphics card’s VRAM will be the deciding factor when it comes to your Texture Streaming Budget. Even if you have more than 6GB of VRAM available, keeping this setting at low can be beneficial for performance.
- Texture Filtering: Anisotropic 2X
- Texture Filtering uses considerably less amount of resources when compared to other graphical settings. While you can also turn this one off for performance, keeping it at 2X shouldn’t hinder your frames in a noticeable way and Apex may look slightly better.
- Ambient Occlusion Quality: Low
- When you set Ambient Occlusion Quality to low, you’ll instantly notice the visual difference. While the game will look slightly darker and less colorful, you can net a few frames out of the trade.
- Sun Shadow Coverage: Low
- Sun Shadow Detail: Low
- Spot Shadow Detail: Off
- Dynamic Spot Shadows: Disabled
- Shadow settings can be considered as essential in games like CS:GO since it helps players detect enemies by their shadows. While the same can also be done in Apex, the hectic nature of the game makes it rare to take advantage of the shadows. You won’t lose much competitively by turning them off.
- Volumetric Lighting: Disabled
- Model Detail: Low
- Effects Detail: Low
- Impact Marks: Low
- Ragdoll: Low
- Depending on your PC’s performance, you can also set these four settings to Medium. Anything above Medium, however, will be unnecessarily high if you’re looking to get the most amount of frames from your system.
Making these changes in Apex should boost your FPS boost, but you can also make a few changes outside of Apex. These tweaks will have less of an impact when it comes to increasing your frames, but they can add up when it comes to the overall performance boost they provide.
Disabling the Xbox Game Bar and turning Game Mode on are two of the easiest changes you can make. In addition to those, you can also explore your graphics card’s control panel. Through these control panels, players can choose what their graphics cards prioritize while gaming.
If you’ve never adjusted your GPU control panel settings, you should search for a recent gaming optimization guide for your manufacturer. These tips often go over all the available settings in the control panel, helping you decide which ones you should turn off or on for the best performance.
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