Elden Ring PC performance: best settings, fps cap, and stuttering fixes

Elden Ring just received a massive update. The new Shadow of the Erdtree expansion is like an entirely new game, so I dove back into the Lands Between to see where Elden Ring is at on PC. The game has seen numerous updates since launch that improve stuttering, add ray tracing, and more.

Still, you’ll need the best settings for Elden Ring if you want to get the most out of the game. I’ve spent hundreds of hours in the game at this point, and in that time, I’ve learned not only how to optimize performance on PC but also how to remove the frame rate cap, fix stuttering, and add features like upscaling and frame generation to the game.

The best settings for Elden Ring

After testing all of the settings individually, here are the best settings for Elden Ring:

• Texture quality: Medium
• Antialiasing quality: Low
• SSAO: Medium
• Depth of field: Off
• Motion blur: Off
• Shadow quality: High
• Lighting quality: Medium
• Effects quality: Medium
• Volumetric quality: High
• Reflection quality: High
• Water surface quality: Low
• Shadow quality: Medium
• Global illumination quality: High
• Grass quality: High
• Ray tracing: Off

We’re handling Elden Ring differently than a lot of other games we write performance guides for. Like every previous From Software release on PC, Elden Ring is capped at 60 frames per second (fps). That makes testing with different cards tough, as a lot of modern rigs can easily hit the cap.

There are ways to remove the fps cap in Elden Ring, as well as improve the smoothness of the game with frame generation — more on that below.

Instead of platonic performance, we put together a PC using midrange parts from a few years ago — a Ryzen 7 1700X, an 8GB RX 580, and 16GB of RAM. This is actually below From Software’s recommended spec, but we were still able to manage a playable frame rate at 1440p with setting tweaks and a full 60 fps at 1080p with the Medium preset.

The two biggest wins are depth of