Hideo Kojima’s post-apocalyptic postman sim Death Stranding has lastly arrived on PC, and thank goodness we have been in when the doorbell rang, as a result of we’ve been eagerly awaiting this particular supply for fairly a while. Death Stranding comes filled with a swathe of upgrades for PC, together with 4K resolutions, unlocked body charges, ultrawide monitor help, particular Half-Life missions and, in fact, a terrific massive picture mode so we are able to get pleasure from taking pleasant footage of Norman Reedus, sorry, Sam Porter Bridges’ gurning face. A bit like that header picture up the highest there.
Even higher, Death Stranding runs like a dream on PC, as my early PC performance tests confirmed that even a lowly Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 can hit a clean 60fps on max settings at 1920×1080 no drawback. As such, most PCs ought to have the ability to stand up and operating with Death Stranding fairly simply. Just in case you might be fighting Death Stranding’s PC graphics settings, although, I’ve put collectively this helpful efficiency information that will help you get the game operating as easily as attainable.
Death Stranding PC necessities
Before we dive into learn how to get the very best settings and the very best efficiency from Death Stranding, let’s remind ourselves of Death Stranding’s PC necessities. As you may see under, Kojima Productions have laid out three specs for his or her futuristic courier ’em up, and my very own exams affirm that the 60fps 1080p spec may be achieved on the game’s high Very High graphics preset.
Death Stranding minimal PC necessities (30fps, 720p):
CPU: Intel Core i5-3470 / AMD Ryzen 3 1200
RAM: 8GB
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 (3GB) / AMD Radeon RX 560 (4GB)
DirectX: 12
Storage: 80GB
OS: Windows 10
Death Stranding really useful PC necessities (30fps, 1080p):
CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 / AMD Ryzen 5 1400
RAM: 8GB
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4GB) / AMD Radeon RX 570 (4GB)
DirectX: 12
Storage: 80GB
OS: Windows 10
Death Stranding really useful PC necessities (60fps, 1080p):
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 / AMD Ryzen 5 1600
RAM: 8GB
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB) / AMD Radeon RX 590
DirectX: 12
Storage: 80GB
OS: Windows 10
Alas, I don’t have both a GTX 1050 or RX 560 to see what Death Stranding’s minimal PC necessities imply in apply, however I do have a few older graphics playing cards, together with my trusty GTX 970, to assist me discover out in my efficiency evaluation under.
I’ll additionally present you what the game appears like on every of its varied graphics presets, and which settings you may change off to assist enhance your body price even additional must you discover your graphics card is struggling a bit, otherwise you want to push into increased resolutions, resembling 2560×1440 or 4K. And keep in mind, should you’ve received an Nvidia RTX card, all it’s good to do is switch on its clever upscaling DLSS 2.0 tech, as that may flip any RTX card, even the RTX 2060, right into a 4K 60fps powerhouse.
Death Stranding PC graphics settings
There are 4 predominant graphics presets in Death Stranding and you’ll alternate between them on the fly: Low, Medium, Default and Very High. You’ll discover them in Systems, contained in the Options menu the place there’s a devoted Graphics Settings tab.
This additionally contains the game’s Display settings, resembling setting your decision, most body price and your monitor’s side ratio, the latter of which will probably be necessary should you’ve received an ultrawide monitor and wish to make use of its new 21:9 help.
Here’s what every graphics preset appears like in apply:
As you may see, there aren’t that many drastic modifications between every preset. All of them have almost identical-looking foliage within the foreground with an analogous degree of element and density, and every one has draw distance, too, so that you’re not shedding an excessive amount of of the game’s visible affect as you scale down its graphics settings.
Low, in fact, does have some noticeable variations in comparison with Very High – it misses a few these very distant skyscrapers within the background, its lighting results aren’t fairly as fancy or assorted, and its terrain isn’t fairly as complicated, both. Overall, although, every preset appears fairly darn beautiful, and its Low preset is definitely the most effective wanting of its form that I’ve seen for a while.
How to get the very best settings in Death Stranding
As I stated earlier, anybody with a GTX 1060 / RX 590 or above shouldn’t have any drawback getting the game to run at 60fps on Very High settings at 1920×1080, and anybody with an RTX 2060 / RX 5700 or above ought to have the ability to do the identical at 2560×1440, too. Plus, due to the game’s DLSS 2.Zero help, anybody with an RTX card will even have the ability to play the game at 60fps on max settings at 4K in the event that they so want.
However, in case your graphics card is a bit older than a GTX 1060 otherwise you’re merely struggling to hit these pretty clean body charges, you may flip down the next settings to assist enhance your PC’s efficiency. All the figures under are primarily based alone testing with my GTX 970, which I paired with my trusty Intel Core-i5-8600Ok processor and 16GB of 2133MHz Corsair Vengeance RAM.
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Turn off Ambient Occlusion
On Very High, my GTX 1970 was managing a median body price of round 48fps at 1920×1080, however turning off Ambient Occlusion gave me one other couple of frames per second, boosting my common as much as round 52fps.
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Turn on FidelityFX CAS
You can achieve one other small efficiency enhance by switching off Death Stranding’s Anti-Aliasing setting, however there’s no use to take action whenever you’ve received the choice of switching on its FidelityFX CAS help, the CAS of which stands for Contrast Adaptive Sharpening. This is a little bit of tech developed by AMD, but it surely works on all sorts of graphics playing cards to assist restore misplaced element whenever you allow TAA (or temporal anti-aliasing). It helps to sharpen the picture with out taking a toll in your graphics card’s efficiency, and I discovered it really gave me a giant body price enhance, too, bumping my common proper over the 60fps mark.
When enabled, you additionally get a further Sharpness slider starting from 0-100. I managed to spice up my body price over 60fps just by setting it at 10, however I noticed additional good points once I elevated the extent of sharpness a bit. Not by a lot, all instructed. Setting it at 25 gave me one other couple of additional frames, for instance, but it surely flattened out fairly shortly after that. 100 additionally produced a picture that was far too grainy for my liking, so that you’ll must experiment with it to discover a degree of sharpness that works for you. Either manner, it’s device for bumping up your body price.
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Turn down Shadow Resolution
Shadows and lighting are sometimes a number of the most demanding results in PC games, so firming down Death Stranding’s Shadow Resolution function is one other manner to assist in giving your body price a small enhance. Dropping it right down to Medium allowed my common body price to creep up one other couple of frames, for instance, whereas choosing Low gave me one other handful on high of that. It received’t provide you with a dramatic enchancment to your body price, but it surely all provides up when mixed with the consequences above.
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DO NOT flip down Memory For Streaming
If all that also isn’t providing you with a clean body price, nonetheless, you then’ll probably must drop right down to the subsequent graphics preset, as I discovered there aren’t any extra particular person settings you may change off that gives you a good body price bump. Sadly, Death Stranding doesn’t have any Resolution Scaling options to assist upscale the game from a decrease decision to the one in your monitor so you may nonetheless preserve all these pretty graphics results in play, so that you’ll must make do with Default, Medium or Low relying in your graphics card.
Do not tamper with the Memory For Streaming setting. This isn’t for streaming the game on-line, in any case. This is to do with the speed at which the game ‘streams in’ its varied property, resembling all these pretty wanting rock textures and much away objects.
The extra graphics reminiscence that’s accessible, the sooner and smoother the game will run. Turning this setting down might make you are feeling higher concerning the numbers within the Available Graphic Memory setting immediately under it, for instance (particularly if your required settings technically require extra reminiscence than what your graphics card has its disposal), however your efficiency will undergo because of this.
For instance, my GTX 970 has 4GB of VRAM, however the game tells me it might solely use 3.4GB of that. Very High technically requires 4GB of accessible reminiscence at 1920×1080, Default and Medium want 3.7GB, whereas Low wants simply 2.5GB.
As is plainly evident from what you’ve simply learn, it’s not just like the game will topple over like an overburdened Sam Bridges should you select a setting that goes barely over your accessible reminiscence restrict, so don’t be too postpone if the numbers don’t fairly match up. When I attempted turning the Memory For Streaming right down to Low whereas retaining every thing else on Very High, my common body price fell again right down to the mid 40s, because it was clearly struggling to stream in these prime quality property on a restricted quantity of reminiscence.
Obviously, in case your graphics card is of specific classic and solely has 2GB of VRAM, you then’ll most likely must lump it and easily make do with Low from the outset, as your efficiency actually will undergo should you try to overload it with Very High, which is double what it might deal with. If your VRAM’s in roughly the appropriate ballpark, although, there ought to be a bit of little bit of wiggle room.
Otherwise, go forth and luxuriate in, fellow postal buds, as there’s not rather more I can inform you. I’ll be taking a better take a look at Death Stranding’s DLSS tech very quickly, so be careful for that, and naturally, you probably have any ideas of your personal, remember to share them within the feedback under.