How to get the very best efficiency in Sea Of Thieves on PC

After years of roaming the secluded waters of Xbox Game Pass and the Microsoft Windows Store, Sea Of Thieves has lastly sailed onto Steam, and that will help you make sure that your PC is in ship form situation, I’ve put collectively this helpful information on find out how to get the very best efficiency from Rare’s pirate journey so that you’re not left lurching from one body to the following as you plunder the excessive seas.

Below, you’ll discover all the pieces it is advisable to get began with Sea Of Thieves, together with the game’s PC necessities and which settings you possibly can flip off to assist maintain that body price hoisted good and excessive. After all, as one of many best pirate games on PC, to not point out one of many best PC games to play in ultrawide, it could be a disgrace to not see this game at its perfect.

Sea Of Thieves PC necessities

The excellent news is that Sea Of Thieves’ PC necessities are fairly manageable. Even Rare’s beneficial specs for enjoying the game at 60fps at 1920×1080 on Medium or ‘Rare’ settings aren’t that demanding, so it’s best to have the ability to get Sea Of Thieves operating fairly effectively even should you haven’t upgraded your PC for quite a lot of years. Here they’re in full:

Minimum PC necessities: (720p, Low, 30fps)

CPU: Intel Q9450 2.6GHz / AMD Phenom II X6 3.3GHz
RAM: 4GB
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 / AMD Radeon 7750
VRAM: 1GB
Storage: 60GB
OS: Windows 10 (1607 Anniversary replace)

Recommended PC necessities: (1080p, Medium, 60fps)

CPU: Intel Core i5 4690 / AMD FX-8150
RAM: 8GB
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 / AMD Radeon R9 380X
VRAM: 4GB
Storage: 60GB
OS: Windows 10 (1607 Anniversary replace)

Extreme PC necessities: (4K, Ultra, 60fps)

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790 / AMD Ryzen 5 1600
RAM: 16GB
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti / AMD Radeon RX Vega 64
VRAM: 8GB
Storage: 60GB
OS: Windows 10 (1607 Anniversary replace)

To assist us even additional, Rare have offered trendy equivalents for his or her slightly aged GPU necessities over on their official Sea Of Thieves PC Requirements page. For the minimal specs, you’re taking a look at an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1030 or AMD Radeon R7 450, whereas the beneficial specs successfully equate to an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 470.

Meanwhile, the acute 4K spec doesn’t have a contemporary equal simply but because the beneficial playing cards are solely a few years previous. From expertise, although, I’ve discovered that the GTX 1080 Ti is kind of on par with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2070 or RTX 2070 Super as of late, whereas a Vega 64 provides you fairly equivalent efficiency to AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 XT, so anybody with one in every of these playing cards ought to have the ability to bump their decision as much as 4K no drawback.

However, should you do discover your PC’s struggling to run Sea Of Thieves easily, then you definately’ll discover all the pieces it is advisable to learn about find out how to get the very best efficiency beneath, together with which settings you possibly can flip off (or tone down) to assist enhance your body price.

Sea Of Thieves graphics settings

Sea Of Thieves doesn’t have a built-in benchmark, so my efficiency testing relies off stay gameplay within the game’s Adventure mode. My check PC has an Intel Core i5-8600Okay at inventory speeds and 16GB of RAM, together with the 1909 model of Windows 10 and all the newest graphics drivers put in.

Before we dive into the specifics, although, let’s check out Sea Of Thieves’ graphics settings. You can discover them within the Graphics Settings and Video Settings choices in the primary Settings menu. Video Settings allows you to regulate your monitor decision, refresh price and backbone scaling (extra on that beneath), whereas Graphics Settings allows you to regulate the game’s high quality settings. There are 5 graphics settings in Sea Of Thieves: Cursed, Common, Rare, Legendary and Mythical.

You can, after all, create your individual customized settings in addition to go for a set of Recommended settings primarily based in your PC’s configuration, however these are the 5 defaults. Here’s what they seem like in follow:

Interestingly, even the highest Mythical high quality setting has “Cursed” Particle Effects Quality, Particle Resolution and Animation Quality choices. The former tops out at “Rare” high quality, however the latter two can each be pushed as much as “Mythical” should you’ve received sufficient grunt in your GPU and CPU. Just for comparability’s sake, right here’s what the game seems like with all the pieces whacked up so far as it’s going to go.

Max Mythical settings engaged…

As you possibly can (hopefully) see (click on to enlarge for a greater look), Low is fairly minimal on the subject of the previous shadow division and the encompassing sea water seems like a single block of turquoise. The excellent news, although, is that you just’re nonetheless essentially wanting on the similar variety of timber, leaves and grass patches as you’re on larger settings, which isn’t at all times the case on low settings.

In reality, the one tangible variations between Sea Of Thieves’ 5 completely different graphics choices are the standard of the sunshine and the standard of the water, the latter clearly being crucial choice right here given how a lot time we’re going to be spending gazing out at sea. While Mythical clearly presents the loveliest, most lovely wanting waves of the lot, it’s if you hit Rare that there’s a noticeable enchancment to the ripples and the best way gentle interacts with the waves. As such, you’ll need to maintain Water Detail on Rare as a naked minimal, as a result of actually, that is most likely the best-looking physique of liquid you’ll ever see in a video game.

In reality, you’re most likely fairly secure pushing all of these settings as excessive as you possibly can, as my very own testing reveals that Rare’s beneficial PC necessities are very a lot on the conservative aspect of what’s truly potential.

Indeed, with my GTX 1060, I wasn’t simply in a position to hit a constant 60fps on Medium or ‘Rare’ settings at 1920×1080. I used to be hitting between 70-90fps on its default Mythical settings, which solely dropped to round 65-80fps after I bumped up the remaining three Cursed settings so far as they’d go.

It carried out fairly effectively at 2560×1440, too, solely dipping as little as 50fps with its very high settings in impact. The remainder of the time, it averaged a fairly constant 60fps, typically hitting highs of round 70fps relying on how a lot there was occurring onscreen. As a consequence, anybody with a GTX 1060 or above should not have any hassle whacking these settings up as excessive as they will do at each 1920×1080 or 2560×1440.

How to get the very best settings in Sea Of Thieves

Still, should you’re discovering your graphics card isn’t fairly as much as snuff, these are the settings it’s best to tweak to provide your PC a pleasant massive efficiency increase. I began with all of the settings maxed out with my GTX 1060 at 1920×1080 after which tweaked them individually to see which of them gave me the largest bounce in my common body price.

• Turn down Shadow Quality – Dropping this from Mythical to Rare gave me a lift of at the very least 10fps at 1920×1080 after I was operating about on the island outposts, and might be the one greatest increase you can provide to your PC’s efficiency by altering a single setting.
• Turn down Model Detail – A barely smaller increase this one, bumping up my common body price by round 5-6fps, however that is nonetheless a worthwhile change if you wish to try to maintain that Water Detail setting beautiful and excessive. All it does is have an effect on how shortly objects drop to a decrease high quality when your graphics card begins to chug a bit, however given the game’s cartoonish artwork type this shouldn’t be too noticeable within the grand scheme of issues.
• Change your Resolution Scaling – Found within the Video Settings slightly than the Graphics Settings menu, this allows you to run the game at a share of your chosen decision (say, 90% of 1920×1080, should you decide 90), and the game will then be upscaled again to mentioned decision. This takes a few of the load off your GPU whereas sustaining larger high quality settings. Dropping it to 90 gave me a lift of at the very least 7fps, for instance, whereas 85 gave it a lift of at the very least 10fps.

Changing different settings individually gained’t have an effect on your body price that a lot, so these three settings are the very best ones to tweak if you need the very best high quality with out dropping completely all the pieces all the way down to the following graphics default. Of course, when you have any suggestions of your individual, make sure you share them within the feedback beneath.