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That said, there have been plenty of optimization and performance issues reported by the community from the closed betas for the game all the way up until the present day. So, let’s take a look at some of the settings, graphical or otherwise, in Warhammer 40k: Darktidethat seemed to help people the most with performance.

6 CPU Worker Threads

Let’s start things off with the setting change that helped people the most, the Worker Threads option that can only be found in the launcher menu and not in-game. No need to get into the specifics of what ‘Worker Threads’ are or how they work in conjunction with a player’s CPU, but just know that the fewer ‘Threads’ enabled, the more of the graphical burden for running Darktide is put on the GPU. So, for someone who has a nicer, newer GPU but a bit of an older CPU, this change would make a sizeable difference in their performance.

And, for players who want to easily figure out how many cores their CPU has (AKA the same number as their ‘Threads’), just know that the setting in the Darktide Launcher maxes out at 2 less than the CPU’s total core count. So, if the option can only go up to 14, then that CPU has 16 cores, and so on.

5 Nvidia DLSS & AMD FSR 1.0 On

This next setting choice is sadly one that tends to make games look a noticeable amount worse, but it’ll make a big difference in overall performance. DLSS and FSR are yet another concept too complex to describe fully, but they’re basically Nvidia and AMD’s versions of an AI that tries to give the player the highest resolution to frames-per-second balance at all times using upscaling and other micro-adjustments. In fact, even older games like Skyrim are retroactively having DLSS added to them.

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Having this on for any mode will impact Darktide quite a bit. Balanced is helpful but in particular, both the Performance and Ultra Performance modes have seen the biggest return from the fans so far. Just keep in mind that if the game has this noticeable sort of ‘blur’ to it, most noticeable when looking at weapons in the inventory, then this option is most likely the culprit. That, or it’s a combination of the Lens Quality, Motion Blur, and Depth of Field options.

4 Any & All Ray Tracing Setting Off

Ray Tracing is a type of lighting technology thats been in films and cinema in general for quite a long time. But, it’s a graphical innovation that has only been implemented in video games since the days of Metro Exodus in 2019.

And, since then, Ray Tracing has been incredibly demanding on hardware in every game it’s in, even with the newest GPUs that are the size of an aircraft carrier. And, it’s no different in Darktide, as turning off all of the Ray Tracing options will immediately show players a massive boost in their overall stability and FPS. Additionally, when using specific weapons almost every Operative has access to, such as a Flamer or a Purgatus Force Staff, Ray Tracing can become even more resource intensive while it’s trying to accurately deal with the lighting these effects give off.

3 Framerate Cap On

This next one is sort of an obvious inclusion, but one that people often forget about. Setting a framerate cap in games is almost always preferable to leaving it off, and there’s a good reason for that. Screen-tearing can start to become a problem if a game starts outputting some absurdly high FPS, and a framerate cap usually stops this. Plus, on the higher difficulties of Darktide, the pure number of spawns can make the frames take a nosedive.

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Additionally, some games will just use as many of a computer’s resources as they can if they’re not given limits, which has its pros and cons. For the most part, if players just set their FPS cap to just a bit above their monitor’s refresh rate, it’ll help out with their performance.

2 Anti-Aliasing Off

Anti-Aliasing, whether it’s FXAA or TAA in Darktide specifically, is always a graphical option to keep in mind when trying to optimize a game’s performance. Yes, it can make some of the best-looking games even more visually impressive, but it takes a lot of processing power to smooth out all those lines in real time.

That said, if a player is experiencing some performance issues in Darktide, Anti-Aliasing likely has a hand in it. The game has an absurd amount of detail on screen at all times from enemies to gore to backgrounds and more, so turning this off will make the game look a bit more “jagged” but it will likely improve performance by a noticeable amount. This option can only be modified if Nvidia DLSS or AMD FSR is off.

1 Volumetric Fog Medium To Low

Volumetric Fog, like Ray Tracing and Anti-Aliasing, is another graphical option that pops up in video games regularly. And, also like Ray Tracing and Anti-Aliasing, it’s a pretty demanding feature.

If both Ray Tracing and Volumetric Fog are on, Darktide players will likely notice how much more atmospheric the maps are, but they’ll do so with their game running almost half as well, so it’s usually not worth it. That said, for players who happen to find one of the Special Conditions on any Mission Type that make the whole mission incredibly foggy, it’ll look a whole lot worse with Volumetric Fog off.

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is available now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox Game Pass.

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